Well at Least the Heroin is Safe

The United States has recently announced that Afghanistan has the status of a major ally.  This is good news for Afghanistan which in most people's eyes barely has the status of a country.  Nevertheless this is a clever move by the United States.  In one swoop they have secured their nation's heroin supply.

As one looks over the list of major allies of the United States one finds names like Pakistan, Egypt and Israel (and, um, Australia).  One can't help thinking that the Americans use the term "major ally" in circumstances where most other people would probably select a phrase like "serious liability".

I can think of many terms to describe Afghanistan that you could put the word "major" in front of.  Heroin producer for example or policy disaster.  Shithole is yet a third.  Somehow "ally" doesn't really get a mention.  Afghanistan isn't even allied with itself much less anyone else.  A more accurate statement would have been something like "the United States has announced that approximately two blocks of downtown Kabul is a major ally".

Reality aside there are still good reasons why the US shouldn't have made that announcement.  It is the diplomatic equivalent of nailing your colours to the mast.  When the United States leaves (and it will) and Afghanistan disintegrates into a tribal bloodbath (and it will) then whoever is president or secretary of state will probably be able to do without snide reminders from the other side of politics that this gore spattered hellhole is a major ally.  At some point the Americans are going to have to cut Afghanistan adrift (in which case they will look like fools) or commit to a pretty much permanent occupation force in order to prevent their "major ally" from cannibalising itself to death.  At some point they're going to have to leave anyway and the more blood they lose before that happens the worse they're going to look.

There are some countries it is better not to have as allies.  They are the geopolitical equivalent of those family members you hastily put into rehab before meeting outsiders.  If the United States wants a policy that will work in Afghanistan then they should pull all their troops out and attempt to destabilise the country from the outside.  This is what is going to happen anyway but at least they would be able to claim a policy success.

It isn't as though any of this should be news to the Americans or anybody else.  Despite having lousy weather and exporting nothing except heroin and refugees Afghanistan seems to have exerted an almost mystical attraction to the superpower of the day.  From Alexander the Great onwards they all left faster than they went in.  I don't understand the attraction as even Afghans don't seem to like the place that much.  Presumably there are geopolitical reasons for getting involved in Afghanistan (geopolitical being a word which loosely means "something stupid we're getting up to in a foreign country").  Of course a lawless and anarchic Afghanistan makes it the perfect hideout for socially unacceptable groups like Al Qaida and the UN Security Council which is why the US went in in the first place.  It would be churlish of me to point out that so far almost as many Americans have died in Afghanistan as did in the September 11 attacks.

I suspect that the reason why empires have continually invaded Afghanistan is because they think they can effectively deal with the inhabitants by invading the country.  This is a fallacy, Afghanistan is too weak to break.  There is no nerve centre you can effectively hit to change anything on a fundamental level. Alexander's empire is gone, so is the Mongol empire, the Mughal empire (which originated in Afghanistan), the British empire and the Russian empire.  What remains?  Afghanistan.

Let the last word go to an Afghan tribal chief from part way through the 19th century.  He was talking to a British officer at the height of that empire who was expounding on all the benefits that would come the country's way if it took its place as part of Britain's colonial empire.  The chief acknowledged that there were many great advantages that could come from British rule but, "we would rather stay as we are than accept a ruler strong enough to tell us what to do."