Canadian soldiers gearing up for a move from forward operating base Camp Nathan Smith back to
Kandahar air field. Oct. 2, 2010.

I’m back in Canada now, although I have yet to go through the miles of notes and hours of tape recordings necessary to filter through the information and get a clear image in my head of what’s really going on in Afghanistan.

For now, my foggy impression is that it’s a country we’ll have to spend a generation and tens of billions of dollars to keep from becoming a failed state again.

On the military side it would be inaccurate to say we are winning. Not that NATO was ever losing any war against the nebulous, shadowy insurgency that continues to wreak havoc against the people of Afghanistan.

General Stanley McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy is forthright in its declaration that there will never be a military victory. The mantra in the country now is “Afghan-led” and the new timetable for semi-autonomous security for the country is 2014.

That date does not seem to be at all realistic, but so long as the U.S. government continues to prop up artificial security and economic bubbles by flushing $6-8 billion in cash to a country with an annual GDP of just $14 billion, it makes sense that the country will become a little more stable.

The bubbles created by foreign injections of cash — whether it be the hundreds of millions spent by CIDA or contributions from other governments around the world — means there are two kinds of Afghanistan. One kind is safely “behind the wire” of steel and bulletproof glass and men with guns that can put large holes through mud walls from beyond what can be seen by the naked eye.

The other kind of Afghanistan is the one lived by the people on the outskirts of the bubbles, and who have experienced little or no improvement in quality of life in a country regarded as being perhaps one of the poorest on the planet.

Afghanistan has few natural resources to speak of. The cynical anti-war activists who decry the blood for oil “occupation” do not realize that the country is far worse off by not actually having resources that might bring it prosperity and stability. The country is facing a food shortage of several million tonnes of wheat this year due to floods in Pakistan, and will have to find a neighbouring country to import the deficit to stave off famine.

The country is completely land-locked, meaning it can’t help itself through trade routes. Nor does it have any rivers that reach the ocean, becoming almost entirely dependent upon Pakistan’s benevolence to get everything from ordinary essentials to the supply lines of NATO’s formidable heavy metal that continues to roll in. [As though another 100 LAVs will somehow make or break a fight against men using 30-year-old Russian Kalashnikovs in the desert.]

Corporal Logan of the National Support Element division in Kandahar air field shows reporters the kind of
weapons seized from Taliban fighters in battle. The corporal is holding a modified AK-47, the kind of weapon
of choice for militants the world over. Oct.3, 2010

The U.S. Army seems to have a pretty good idea that the insurgency can’t be defeated militarily. The massive war machine present in Kandahar, Helmand, and Kabul are all an unspoken recognition that the military-industrial complex is doing its part for the American “stimulus” in the economy. One doesn’t need to see the thousands of armoured vehicles gathering dust near the perimeter of the Kandahar Air Field wire to understand that.

To see Kandahar City, one must board a heavily armoured vehicle – countries share the machinery available, so it can be anything from a LAVIII to a Cougar and other classified modes of armoured car – and watch the outside world from a letterbox slot of bulletproof glass. There’s something altogether uninspiring on the security equation of requiring .50 calibre guns mounted on the top of these monstrosities in order to safely travel past men riding donkey carts and shoeless children running alongside the vehicles waving.

And yet nothing is so bleak as to be the black and white world of media clips about suicide bombings and assassinations. Certainly the security situation is dire, given that journalists not behind 15 square miles of concrete and razor wire will require flak jackets, helmets and armed security personnel just to accomplish the task of reporting the facts. But Afghanistan is many solitudes and many narratives beyond all we have seen on television.

Certainly there are the burqa-clad women with their dazzlingly blue robes swirling behind them as they stroll down the streets of Kandahar. And there are fanatical men with long black beards rocking back and forth in their detention cells in KAF, awaiting transport to Afghan custody. Those are two of the most familiar faces to Afghanistan’s tragic story.

But there is also a young, hip, and western-embracing youth movement who, very much like their Persian counterparts next door, have very progressive egalitarian views that are at odds with the illiterate generation who experienced the Taliban. Behind closed doors in Kabul, in the news rooms of the budding free press, and the corridors of a struggling free market trying to bring about cellular and internet service to the masses, is the hope for Afghanistan’s future. Here you can find men working with women who may or may not wear headscarves, fiddling with their cell phones and checking their email in much the same way that any western youngster might do.

Young and confident Afghans in Kabul make up a demographic of modernized, literate, and progressive
men and women like these two journalists working at Tolo TV. Oct.5, 2010.

And beyond the technological push that is changing the culture, so too does India’s Bollywood have an effect on the young Afghans who resist the radicalizing influence of their Pakistani neighbours. The vanguard to sexually suggestive and provocative liberalism is streaming over the television air waves on a daily basis, broadcasting India’s stars for impressionable Afghans to daringly emulate.

The truth is that the investment of blood and treasure into Afghanistan has no basis in absurd conspiratorial theories involving western occupation for personal gain. The country is a sinkhole of corruption and warlords euphemistically referred to now as “power brokers”, who continue to act in counter-interest to the needs of their country.

Literacy in the country is so poor that the goal of the government is a wildly optimistic adult literacy rate of 48% by 2015. And the “social infrastructure” being created by western infusion of cash – a term I use to describe the rapid construction of a social security network installed inorganically to battle corruption – is certainly unsustainable without a generational presence of international aid.

Flying over the craggy brown mountains of southern Afghanistan’s sand heading for Kabul, the sporadic oases of greenery can be seen in the valleys of the inhospitable landscape below. One can’t help but think that the Taliban will never be extricated from the thousands of tiny nooks and crannies in a land that seems impenetrable to change.

Yet one is also left with the metaphorical impression that the lush valleys snaking through the mountains are symbolic of the resilience of an ancient people. The hardships of the past 30 years are but a footnote in the history of a people who still bear the genetic mark of Alexander the Great. Though Afghanistan is referred to as the graveyard of empires, it is a mistake to think that it has repelled all outside influences.

There is sincerity both in the work ethic of the soldiers who believe in a mission they are willing to die for, as well as the anecdotes of Afghans who seem to have more patience and optimism than the Canadian public. The latter, after all, have a much larger stake in this struggle than we do.

Seeing a country from behind steel and bulletproof glass is no way to get a sense of what it’s all about.
Photo taken Oct.2, 2010 on drive from FOB Camp Nathan Smith to KAF.