Rory Stewart & Mr Micawber in Afghanistan

Noa Zrk

Handling Afghanistan is not as hard as it looks. We managed it reasonably well during the Raj. The point to remember is that its ungovernable. Play the tribes off against each other, or pay them off. In this the Italians were right. Far cheaper to buy and destroy their heroin and establish a cordon sanitaire around the place than try to conquer or pacify it. Our continued presence, supinely supporting a foolish US pan-colonial expedition, in this wretched place, merely serves to provide a focus for tribal unity and discontent in Afghanistan and Islamic extremism outside it.

Rhoda Klapp

"there certainly seems something to be said for muddling along as best we can in the hope that, at some point, something will turn up. "

You callous idiot, our people are getting killed out there for nothing while you wait for something to turn up.

daniel maris

Well I would say that a lot of this is not rocket science. We did do something analogous to social engineering in post war Germany and, to a lesser extent, in Japan. Look at what we did in terms of removing and neutralising negative elements, using employment as bribe, promoting our politics etc. I am not saying the two societies are analogous. BUt I am saying that in Iraq and Afghanistan we never even began to approach the sophistication of our approach in 1945 - some 65 years ago. We seem to have lost the art completely of steering a society towards democracy.

Of course Afghanistan is not Germany. But people are people everywhere and respond to the same sorts of signals and incentives. The fact is we did Afghanistan on the cheap, leaving the basic power structures completely in place.

C. E.Chase

Peace, order, balance of power cannot be acheived in Afghanistan by going big or going small with the wrong objective in mind. Apart from its bustling towns and cities, this country is barely civilized, as is the case in other countries where women are oppressed, dissidents are shot point blank in soccer stadiums, crude bombs are cowardly placed alongside roads and neighboring countries allow unarmed journalists of a differing religious background, from a democratic country to be abducted and decapitated in the name of.....Alah?!! Please people, this is a religious war, as well as a war for territorial control in a country whose borders have changed more times in the last 150 years than the costume changes in a Madonna concert. Did any of you see Black Hawk Down? aka Crackheads with guns. We Americans learned our lesson there and got out fast. Afghanistan is not on crack but on a high of opium sales with a little subsidizing from its Arab neighbors to the West. The Taliban historically have a foothold in the region due to former borders that once linked the countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan under one flag. Al Queda and the Taliban sympathize with one another along religious lines. Have you seen the movie "The Land"? Rent it. Man will go very far to reclaim that which he believes belongs to him. Give him a God given incentive to accompany that and you've got a Holy War. The Bible. Have you read it? Check it out; primarily the Old Testament. One war after the other. Territorial disputes. Begins with God sending out Abram from Ur to the promised land.....a land of milk and honey. Afghanistan right now, does not sound like the "promise land" to me, but an awful lot of people are making promises they can't keep to its people. Stewart is right and so is the the US military. His objective is more cautious but reasonable; state building one NGO at a time. Ours? Daisy bombs are about the only thing that would work in the inhospitanble mountainous region where most of the conflict is being waged: go big ....or go home. Our objective?Less clear. The right course? God finally led Abraham's descendants into the promised land. . . a land that they still have. Why? God is on their side. He promised them and God always keeps His promises. Can anyone else keep their promises to Afghanistan? Can one man, Rory Stewart, or one bold acting country with a chip on its shoulder the size of a crater in downtown Manhattan find the solution to the quagmire that is now Afghanistan? And how many arm-chair quarterbacks from countries that won't involve themselves in this conflict must we tolerate listening to when they ARE involved: heroin from Afghanistan is making its way into every country worldwide and infecting those countries with something far worse than H1N1. Afghanistan is the world's problem and deserves the world's attention/participation. A small country hijacked by brutal regimes, drug trafficking/production and political corruption. Sounds like a few other countries like Columbia, Haiti, Mexico. Except those countries didn't harbor for training, 19 hijackers who waged a religious war on 9/11. Nor did they align themselves with one another as the Taliban and Al Queda have done, or as Germany and its allies did during WWII. There is no middle road here. But I do believe it begins with the people of Afghanistan getting it straight with God; presumably the same God that led Abraham's descendants into the promised land. When they lacked faith, when they fell prone to idols in the desert or followed other regimes, they were led to wander for 40 years and never saw the promise land. Then their descendents got right with God and He led them into battle and into the promise land. When Afghanistan gets rid of its idols and false gods (corruption within the Taliban, al queda, drug trade etc.) and gets its religious house in order, we may be able to see the forest for the trees...and Afghanistan may become a land flowing with milk and honey.

NJM

Alex, I wish for once Rory Stewart would just give it a rest. Yes, he's well educated, speaks several languages, has written books, and was a soldier himself.

But almost everything he has said about Iraq & Afghanistan in the last 5 years has been complete nonsense.

I seem to remember him in 2007, being a panellist at the Spectator's "Intelligence Squared" debate alongside that idiot Tony Benn. He was arguing against the Petraeus 'surge' & calling for an immediate withdrawal. (At least Christopher Meyer & Ali Allawi were calling for a phased withdrawal & regional negotiations etc). And even that plan was stupid, dangerous & not going to work either.

Thankfully Lt Pete Hegseth - who doesn't speak with a posh accent & isn't full of his own pseudo-intellectual self-importance - argued brilliantly, with William Shawcross, to support the new 'surge' strategy. The audience responded to their articulate arguments & they persuaded many. And the rest is history...

I'm amazed that anyone in the media takes Stewart's "anti-surge" & "anti-neocon" bleetings seriously anymore.