Not ‘straight’ but at whom

On June 6, just before the Loya Jirga began in Kabul, The New York Times ran an article entitled “Training an Afghan Army That Can Shoot Straight.” America is doing the training. Headlines to the contrary, Afghans can already shoot straight. Real issues: 1) At whom are these straight shooters likely to aim? and 2) Does this training mission represent a wise use of our own military?

History is prologue, and no historian got Afghan marksmanship better than poet Rudyard Kipling in his 1886 “Arithmetic on the Frontier”: “A scrimmage in a Border Station/A canter down some dark defile/Two thousand pounds of education/Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.” 19th century Afghan muzzle loading jezails killed many an expensively tutored English officer-and-gentleman. Early 21st century technology hasn’t changed the equation: Give an Afghan a gun, any gun, and he’ll figure it out – perhaps to the giver’s peril. Just ask, most recently, the Russians.

To be fair, perhaps this 2002 U.S. effort shows that we have, in fact, learned from others’ mistakes, that we want the Afghans to be their own boss when it comes to armed force, that we realize the impossibility of their being bossed, long term, by us or anyone else. And finally – another nation-state era truth – that a national army, like a national airline or currency or radio broadcast service, can bring a country together in practice and in symbol.

Hence the insignia patch of the 500 member 1st Battalion of the Afghan National Army, about to complete its initial ten weeks of training by US Special Forces. The patch centerpiece is a map of Afghanistan enclosed within by two sheaves of wheat [old national dependence on agriculture] and overlaid with a fountain pen [new national commitment to education] and two crossed rifles [recognition of what, for better and worse, Afghans have always done best]. ” Allah u Akbar” – God is great – is emblazoned at the top. Green, red, and black bars at the bottom celebrate Afghanistan’s newly reinstated national colors. Symbolically stated, all the proper notions.

But precisely because of all those symbols, the patch looks crowded and complicated, rather like the cluttered bedroom wall of adolescence: pennants, posters, trophies, slogans, and other marks of identity experimentation. Energy and imagination going every which way. Such will be the main problem with a pre-maturely created Afghan National Army: lots of firepower but no firm controls. Responsive more to random instincts than to stable institutions.

Between Kipling and the Soviet invasion – especially between 1955 and 1978 – there was a sort of national army, the only one in Afghan history. Great care went into securing its loyalty to central government and to prevent formation of regional or ideological cliques. Recruits from different ethnic groups were mixed together. Draftees almost never served in their own home areas. The officer corps, dominated by Pashtuns, was frequently shifted among the provinces. Government, even in those comparatively peaceful decades, never took for granted its military’s political allegiance.

With good reason. Two coups – 1973 (almost bloodless) and 1978 (blood everywhere) – led to national ruin. Both succeeded precisely because key military contingents betrayed legitimate civilian authority. Rebel troops in 1978 killed the president in his palace and the minister of defense in a chicken coop.

Fast forward to 2002 and an Afghanistan far less settled than in the 1970s. Back then the president selected his defense minister. Now, smiles to the contrary, President Karzai is unhappily stuck with newly self-promoted “Field Marshal” Mohammed Qassem Fahim. Why? Because even after last month’s Loya Jirga, Fahim’s Tajiks still hold military sway in Kabul.

Several weeks ago a Pentagon official blandly expressed confidence that an Afghan National Army – under its defense minister (Fahim) – would support Karzai (see “Wise, Foolish, and Classified,” June 6). What’s the record since then? Are soldiers obeying orders?

“Yes,” said a Colonel Najibullah in the Times piece, explaining that his command obeys him because of American presence. Unexplained: What will happen when American trainers leave?

Najibullah seems like a good man. Himself a Tajik, he objected when one of Fahim’s upper echelon ordered him to post a portrait of martyred Tajik hero, Ahmad Shah Masood. Such portraits, in numerous editions, festoon areas under Tajik control (see “Whose Parade?” May 10). Even so, Najibullah strives for unity by staving off iconography: “There are many tribes in Afghanistan, and [once one portrait gets hung] everyone will want to put up pictures of their own leaders.” Meanwhile, however, even he admits that Tajiks, who account for perhaps 25 percent of all Afghans, constitute a majority of the ANA’s 1st Battalion. You’d think Fahim would be satisfied.

Not according to a Kabul diplomat who wishes to remain nameless. Fahim, he says, won’t give more than 150 AK-47s (Kalashnikov assault rifles, staple weapon of all sides in Afghanistan) to the 1st Battalion, a force meant to be under his ministry’s control. Why not? You’d think he’d want to arm this new army. Is the field marshal short on guns?

Very far from it. U.S. handouts last fall and Taliban weapons captured since have greatly augmented Fahim’s stockpile. His refusal stems from a preference for his own Tajik militia. These troops, mostly from the Panjsher Valley, represents for Fahim a much more dependable – and independent – power base than anything America or Hamid Karzai can concoct. Panjsheris, like all Afghans, can shoot straight. Fahim believes that his home valley cronies, compared to the all-comers 1st Battalion, are less likely to shoot straight at him.

Remember: We speak here of the newly confirmed minister of defense. He (or someone like him) would run (or try to run) the Afghan National (or so-called “national”) Army. Again this question: Is training the ANA a good use of Pentagon resources?

What else, in addition to pursuing al-Qaida, could our military better be doing in Afghanistan? Stay tuned – albeit too late for our recent U.N. Security Council veto on Bosnia peacekeeping – for “21st Century Soldiers” in the Bangor Daily News. Only our country voted against the U.N. Bosnia measure. Why is the world’s sole superpower so alone and afraid?

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.