Iraq and Afghanistan

This morning's paper tells us that 325 non-Iraqis have been captured in Iraq. It goes on to say that these persons are not considered by the American Government to be "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions. It is proposed and assumed that they will be warehoused in yet another Guantanamo-like detention facility. Leaving aside the torture and mistreatment that has been reported at these facilities, the continuation of the Guantanamo approach leads to some alarming consequences. (For readers who wish to go into this discussion at greater length, consider the following excellent discussion produced by the International Committee of the Red Cross.)

The United States is playing fast and loose with the definitions and standards that have been developed through the Geneva Conventions and international practice. In fact, there is no category of persons that are assumed by the Conventions to be completely "not protected". What has been done is suggest that there are no protections for captured persons who are not engaged in lawful combat but yet acting against our interests in a war situation. These include spies, military or not, civilians casually attacking our forces or interests, or combatants not in uniform or under the organized control of an opposing army. A lawful combatant is one fighting us in a normal military situation. An unlawful combatant is one attacking us outside those parameters. The Geneva Conventions do assume that an unlawful combatant is not imprisoned in the same manner as a regular soldier. His care is not subject to the same standards. And, unlike a normal Prisoner of war", he is subject to trial for his actions, often a military trial. During World War II, the United States captured some German saboteurs landed by a Uboat. They were tried and executed. The Supreme Court affirmed our right to do so, and it is this precedent that has been used to justify recent governmental actions against unlawful warriors.

There are two problems with the approach. First, because the persons captured are not regular prisoners of war, international law does not thereby give us carte blanche to do anything we wish. International rules against torture and the mistreatment of persons in custody still apply. Second, persons detained outside the normal rules for prisoners of war have the right to a trial. There is no right to indefinite incarceration without trial in either American or international law.

The American government argues that in a world of terrorists, the whole world is the battlefield. Therefore, it would be most imprudent to allow persons suspected of being terrorists back onto this new field of battle. There is some justice in this argument. Yet it conflicts with the opinion of much of the watching world that believes that persons innocent of any provable violent actions should not be jailed indefinitely without access to lawyers and due process. The fact that the U.S. government appears to agree with this position if the person is an American citizen appears to support the international view. American citizens in Guantanamo are being given lawyers and trials, if slowly and reluctantly.

In spite of the antipathy of the Administration and, unfortunately, a large part of the American public, to international institutions, the eventual solution to this problem must come through the development of international means of processing the cases of these persons. This may require a new kind of court and new kinds of international detention facilities. It may also mean that some persons are let out into the world to commit more mayhem. But our system of justice allows this to happen frequently with those processed by our courts. And the alternative of not treating this running sore in international relations, and maintaining ever-growing facilities incarcerating persons whose crimes have never been adjudicated, may be a much worse alternative.

Whatever happens, the opponents of American policy in this regard, whether domestic or foreign, need to get beyond just criticizing what is occurring and start working toward a resolution of what is a real problem.

In today’s Op-Ed, Thomas Friedman takes a highly realistic, but somewhat questionable view of what we are about in Iraq. He essentially says that the freedom we are bringing the Iraqis is the freedom to kill one another if they wish to. He argues that what we have now is Iraq is a civil war. Essentially our job now is to get through the election so that we might transfer the full job of fighting the civil war to the Iraqis where it belongs. If the Iraqis cannot put together a civil compact that will allow them to end the war, then God help them. We do not have the responsibility of staying until they are up to the task — which may be never.

Friedman asks "What kind of a majority are the Iraqi Shiites ready to be — a tolerant and inclusive one, or an intolerant and exclusive one? What kind of a minority do the Iraqi Sunnis intend to be — rebellious and separatist, or loyal and sharing?" Unfortunately, these questions already have their answers. Neither side, nor the Kurds to the side, will be all that idealistic. If we rely on their kindness and good faith, the game is lost. How they will view the pros and cons of not so promising alternatives is another matter, one that Friedman does not go into.

But this raises the question again, "By What Right Did We Launch This War"? If as Friedman says, the Iraqis did not want liberation in our sense, and if we cannot make them want it, then what was a achievable goal that made the war worth it to the Iraqi people and the Americans? Yes, Saddam was terrible. He killed lots of Iraqis, he held them down. But within this shell many lived reasonably successful lives. We had it in our power to keep Saddam away from weapons of mass destruction and improving marginally the standard of living of average Iraqis. It would have cost less for all concerned. We should make these calculations again when we are faced with a similar temptation to end tyranny. (By the way, I believe life in North Korea is a good deal worse than that in Saddam's Iraq. So here we go again. . . )

The discussion of the apparent ability of the Republican Party in the last election to capture the “values” issue has confused and alarmed many democrats. Slowly most Democrats are coming to realize that in fact the election was not won on the basis of the adherence of voter’s to “family values”. It probably had much more to do with a perception that George W. Bush was more of a leader. (Now, dear Democratic reader, set aside your own visceral reactions to the President. The important issue here is what the average voter thought. Bush seemed more decisive. So he makes mistakes, but don’t we all.) In fact, in state and local elections the Democrats came out slightly ahead of the Republicans.

What is most curious about the discussion is this insistence on the importance of “family values” when speaking within a political context. As far as politics are concerned, the important values are not family, but “community” or “civil”. Those involved in political affairs at the national level have traditionally assumed that the issues appropriate to families are within the purview of individuals or families, and are most appropriately dealt with there. When these values are not up to the task of socializing successive generations, then there is a network of personal or family counselors, religious or secular, to help define and instill family values that alone make this process succeed.

To turn to the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan on which this blog has concentrated, the problem is not that the Iraqis or Afghanis have insufficiently developed “family values”. What they lack is a sense of responsibility and commitment to wider national communities. We will help in these countries in so far as we assist in the development of community and civil values, even sometimes at the expense of family values.

Political systems exist because there is a need for a mechanism or institution to deal with common issues that go beyond what individuals and families can do acting separately. This concept that there is a higher community interest is what makes it imperative that all people pay their taxes, vote in elections, respect the laws of their community and nation, and serve on juries when called upon. It is also imperative that the community, or in the large, the nation-state, considerable the welfare of all its members, all its citizens, and when they see they are in need of better security, better health services, or better schools, that they pool together community resources to provide these. In recent years, this common responsibility, this set of community values, has been most commonly espoused by the Democratic Party. This is why this is the party that believes in the strengthening of welfare, educational, environmental, and health systems that benefit all people and all generations — even if this requires repealing tax cuts, thereby increasing over the short-term the “pain” of a few.

When the nation-state is no longer the appropriate institution to deal with issues that transcend its borders, then other mechanisms and institutions must be developed to deal with issues on the trans-national level. That is why we have the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and a plethora of other international bodies. These are imperfect institutions, but they are increasingly necessary institutions, and the development of more encompassing community and civil values are the only ways in which we will as the human community be able eventually to make these institutions serve the purposes of all. This is why the Democratic Party believes that the United States should play a responsible leadership role in the growth of the institutions of the World Community, even if this means compromising at times the absolute sovereignty of the American state.

Much of what is said here would not go over well with all constituencies in the United States. But it is the responsibility of Democrats to define what they stand for, to define the values that lie behind the policies they applaud. Only then can they embark on the great educational effort that any campaign, political or otherwise, requires.

There are again many discussions of the fact that violence is not abating as the elections come nearer. Violence directed at all those involved with or guarding the election process seems actually to be increasing in intensity in the Sunni Arab areas. Iraq’s President has discussed the possibility of postponement; the defense Minister has talked of it in Cairo; the Prime Minister even spent time on the phone with Bush discussing the problem. It is hard for the Americans to allow a delay as long as the Ayatollah Sistani says no. What the Americans face is that they now have the Kurds and most of the Shi’a on their side, and these groups, particularly the Shi’a leadership, are counting on the January elections giving them control of the country. Even a follower of Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City is now campaigning for a new ticket that will support al-Sadr’s cause if elected (this in addition to the twenty or so Sadrites already have on the list of the more general Shi’a establishment). Delay, and we may begin losing them. Hold the election, and we will at least look good to this large “constituency”.

The problem with delay is that a short delay is unlikely to change the situation very much. On the other hand, a long delay would reinforce the idea that we are simply an occupying power, that we have no intention of actually leaving. This idea would be easy to sell in the already anti-American Sunni Arab world, and might start being believed elsewhere as well. Meantime, the Coalition determination to stay no matter what would be weaken as time passed. What, then, could be done to make a short delay more useful?

Perhaps the place to start would be to make a much greater effort to seal the border with Syria while at the same time putting more pressure on Syria to stop the movement of men, materiel, and money into Iraq. The Syrian government might even be encouraged to arrest or expel some of the Iraqi Baath leaders in Syria that are maintaining the violence. Another approach would be to allow Shi’a militias to be reactivated. These could be used to guard main thoroughfares and squares in Baghdad, as well as being deployed along major transportation arteries. They could be paid for their efforts: in the past they have consisted largely of unemployed young men. Of course, they would not be the best of troops. But they might do as well as, and be able to supplement usefully, the police forces that are now the weakest reed in the election protection effort. These two measures, along with the already occurring increase in American forces, could conceivably bring the violence down immediately before and during an election held in April instead of January.

Today’s paper points again to the extreme difficulty of controlling opium production in Afghanistan. The country has now become the leading producer of opium in the world. Only three percent of its irrigated land actually produces opium, but return from this crop can be as much as thirty times that of wheat, the traditional crop. The results are what we have noted in many other hard drug producing countries, particularly in South America. In Colombia, drug production and the drug trade have made impossible the institutionalization of democracy and the “freeing” of the country as far as the majority of the rural people are concerned.

The drug trade in Afghanistan has produced hundreds if not thousands of instantly wealthy persons, and provided them with armed retinues. In the province on the southwestern tip of the country discussed in today’s paper, the whole economy has been essentially taken over. The trade here is primarily through Iran into Europe. The Iranians are doing their best. They have financed the building of many Afghan police stations on the border to help. But whatever successes the control programs have, the drugs keep coming. The warlords controlling much of the country outside the cities are financed in large part by drugs. And as fast as drug/war lord is replaced or removed others take his place. Kabul has said that it will move energetically against the trade. With the help of the British they are eradicating crops and arresting growers and traders. The problem is that facing hunger, eradication makes more enemies than friends, both for foreigners and the government.

Out of a population of 30,000,000, nearly 80% live an essentially subsistence existence in rural areas (perhaps 2,000,000 of these are still refugees, primarily in Pakistan, but most will return to rural areas). Twelve percent of the country is listed as “arable”, but much of this has returned to desert in recent years due to overgrazing, erosion, and drought. The average rainfall is twelve inches. Dry farming with this rainfall at this level on rocky soils often fails. Small irrigated patches along creek beds provide the major sustenance. Only three percent of the country remains forested. An agricultural revival program is being pursued with foreign assistance, irrigation channels are being reopened. More of this should be done. But for most Afghans it won’t be enough to give them a living even in spare Afghan terms.

We must come up with an approach that does more than eradicate opium or try to force people back into growing cotton or subsistence crops. The first fact that must be faced is that most rural Afghans do not have enough land to support themselves in an average year raising food crops. They need a cash crop to make it through the hard years. Second, Afghanistan does not have enough water or arable land (nor a good enough transportation system nor viable potential markets) to make possible another cash crop with anything like the return of opium. The solution for Afghanistan must come through a rapid change from a barely functioning rural subsistence economy to a rural economy based on small manufacturing (as a first step to an eventual change from a rural to an urban society). This is obviously easier said than done. But the Afghan government and its friends should not keep butting their heads against the geographical facts of the country. If we were not so enamored of a free trade regime that transfers production from the wealthy countries primarily to China, we could conceive of ways to guarantee markets for certain chosen items for, let us say rural Colombians and Afghans, with the European Community, Russia, and the United States buying predetermined amounts of what is produced. We then could invest in getting such production started and building the required infrastructure. (The next job is to figure out what production might be viable.)