The producers are American and it seems to have debuted yesterday on Al Jazeera English's YouTube Channel.
The opening observation that by transacting directly with the tribes they will become independent local governments moves to the root of the tension, as they are already the de facto governments in so many ways absent other trappings of the state yet an enabled central government remains the strategy.
Comments
I question those who discount this approach. I think supporting the tribes (the people) is the right approach. I think the people is the government, and to recognize anything else is a distraction from whats important, whats right.
I also think the tribes are effective. They care about their survival, their land, and they are the ones with the passion to defend it. I would be inclined to forget the central government, stop the nation building, give these tribes enough support to defend themselves from the Taliban.
I think we are trying to be impartial, but we really end up being indifferent.
Bob,
As you stated we don't understand the game, and the few people who do will never be in key leadership positions. We had a young officer reinvigorae an old concept(tribal engagement) with a well written article, but it was largely based on one short tour in one location at one point in time, and without a lot of thought a large group of people bought into it out of desparation.
This is a caution against governmental manipulation as much as it is against tribal manipulation. This was a pretty balanced portrayal of the complexities.
Is the Karzai government illegitimate and corrupt in the eyes of much of the Afghan populace? Definitely. Of course Guhl Aga Shirzai supports him. He has grown rich from his early days in Kandahar to the present in joining the US/Karzai team and is the master of the art of turning a Governorship into a personal cash machine. Anything that threatens that system threatens him, and he will employ his considerable power and influence to resist it.
Is there inter and intra tribal conflict and competition? Definitely. We will never fully understand the depths of these dynamics and will always discover we made foolish mistakes by believing what we are being told by men who are very skilled at telling one what they want to hear. Even our most skilled and savvy experts at this will admit they have been played and manipulated countless times. It is the nature of this game. Success has been defined as working with a guy who is "60/40" for generally good agendas, vice falling in with the ones who are "40/60". It's all messy.
At the root of this all I see the Afghan Constitution that was heavily influenced by US leaders who feared militias and warlords and believed in the power and goodness of centralized governments, teaming up with Afghan leaders who recognized the power and influence they could wield through such a system. We were blinded by what we believe to be good, and by those saying cleverly what it was we wanted to hear. Now we have created a massive centralized Ponzi scheme of a government that is divorced from the legitimacy of its populace, supported by equally corrupt and power abusing Governors (who owe their position to Karzai and not the populace they serve) like Sherzai.
We are in over our head, but while sniping at the fringes of the problem through tribal engagement can provide some sort of measureable, temporary progress for us to show as metrics of success; it does little to address the core.
Promotion of broad reconciliation, tied to a major constitutional convention (Jirga) as a two-step program to move from this transitional period we have been in the past 8 years to the future is, IMO, the key.
Anything else is ignoring the root cause and to be mired endlessly in games of intrigue that we have no understanding of.
Tequila,
Good point and analogy. The Iraqi gov't did finally come around and accept the Sons of Iraq, which in turn led to the significant drop in violence (though other factors contributed as well.)
The take home message may be that effective stability and/or COIN ops must include the central government AND the tribes. It's messy & precarious business -- the type of fuzzy circumstances westerners don't like much. But without engaging a nation's multiple centers of gravity, the subsequent sense of marginalization can act as a barrier to lasting progress.