Interestingly, many Afghans remembered the U.S. involvement in the jihad against the Soviets and saw the United States (and by extension U.S. troops) and Afghanistan as two countries bound together by war. At the same time, they viewed Americans as being religious people, as opposed to the (as viewed by Afghans) atheistic Soviets.
In contrast, most Afghans in the border areas—through all levels of society— viewed Pakistan as an enemy. They considered Pakistani involvement in the insurgency a clear and obvious fact, and remembered the recent Pakistani backing of the Taliban. They perceived coalition forces, through their presence, as deterring Pakistani meddling.
Islam in RC-East
Islam influences almost all facets of Afghan life and is a basic foundation of society. Even the smallest towns have mosques, and farmers in their fields stop for prayer wherever they may be standing. Historically, Islam has helped unify Afghanistan and the Afghans. Roughly 85 percent of the country is Sunni; the remainder is Shiite.6 In RC-East, the Hazaras were the largest Shiite group; most of the remainder of the population was Sunni. Tolerance between the two groups as well as Hindus, was the pre-1979 norm. The traditional form of Islam in Afghanistan, while tremendously influential in society, is not particularly radical, although there was heavy social pressure to conform to norms—including the conversion of the Nuristanis to Islam in the 19th century. It also appears to have only minimal hierarchy within RC-East, instead having independent local leaders. Although influences from the Deobandi school of the subcontinent, as well as Wahhabist and Salafist thought from the Arab world have made inroads, the traditional version remains predominant. Sufism is also practiced, and Sufi leaders such as Pir Gailani have both spiritual and political influence in border regions.
Increased Influence of Mullahs
The influence of mullahs and other religious leaders increased in recent decades in RC-East, according to many Afghans, some of whom described mullahs as previously being tolerated more than venerated. Magnus and Naby7 explained the traditional role of the mullah as “a man who led the prayer, presented a sermon on Fridays especially, recited or read from the Koran, officiated at life-cycle services, adjudicated disputes, and taught boys how to read the Koran.” By 2005 in –RC-East, there was a split in the ranks of the mullahs, with a minority supporting the Taliban and its ideology, and a more moderate majority supporting the Afghan government. This split resulted in violence, with attacks on and assassinations of moderate mullahs.
Economy and Development
Afghanistan was and is one of the poorest countries in the world— the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP’s) 2004 report on Human Development Index noted that “Afghanistan’s [2002] HDI value of 0.346 falls at the bottom of the list of low human development countries, just above Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Sierra Leone.”8 Life expectancy in 2002 was just over 44 years, and national literacy rate was just above 28% (but only 14.1 percent for females), one of the lowest among developing countries. Adjusted per-capita GDP was only $822. Particularly in the rural areas of RC-East, the general lack of basic services and the meager gains from subsistence farming could be shocking to outsiders from developed countries. While these numbers improved by 2008, clearly this very low baseline was a challenge for development workers and counterinsurgency efforts.
Much of the population in RC-East is rural, subsisting on irrigated crops and livestock, while the towns support small shopkeepers and limited light industry. Overall, poverty is endemic, and even the most well-off towns are far from wealthy.
At the national and international levels, the Interim-Afghanistan National Development Strategy (I-ANDS and eventually the ANDS) and the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund provided overarching frameworks. However, these plans were just being implemented during this period, and local Afghan officials as well as coalition officers were often not well informed about them. The “lead nation” concept was agreed to at the Tokyo donor’s conference in 2002, designating individual nations with responsibility for a specific developmental area (for example the Italians were to lead on justice, and the Germans on the police). However, such designations generally did not translate to activity by these nations on the ground in RC-East.
General Overview of Government
The general structure of local governance had been established over previous decades, although the series of wars had caused already weak structures to deteriorate. In theory, the Afghan government is a strongly centralized system, with power mostly flowing from Kabul. In practice, the central government had limited influence in much of RC-East, due to lack of financial and human resources, corruption and inefficiency, and the inherent difficulty of governing the border regions and its people. Roles and responsibilities were defined in law, although in practice it was often ad hoc, driven by personality, and varied considerably between and within provinces. The relationship between the central government in Kabul and the provinces was not always clear and often depended on personal relationships.
At the top of the local political hierarchy were the provincial governments, headed by governors, appointed directly in Kabul for open-ended terms. Ministries’ representatives for provinces reported to Kabul, and were not accountable to the governor. The district governors, also appointed, the only officials the majority of Afghans ever met, were on the bottom rung of governance. Municipal government was ill defined in many ways, covering both urban and rural areas of varying sizes. Elections in the fall of 2005 chose members of the provincial councils, as well as members of the wolesi jirga (the lower house); members of the meshrano jirga (upper house) were indirectly elected.
During this period, the Afghan Government at all levels—national, provincial, district, and municipal—was undergoing a slow and difficult process of reestablishing itself. Rebuilding (or building) government in the middle of an insurgency, with limited human and financial resources, was difficult, and tribes and communities often provided governance where the reach of the formal government did not extend. At least on paper, Afghanistan has one of the world’s most centralized governments, which put control of development planning and funding in the ministries in Kabul. At the same time, the ministries were “stovepiped,” with lines of authority extending directly to officials of that ministry in the provinces, often bypassing governors’ or mayors’ offices.
Pakistan’s Influence on the Border Areas
RC-East shares a long border with Pakistan, mostly the North West Frontier Province (NWFP, later renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) along with a small border with Baluchistan in the south. The Federally Administered Tribal Area (within the NWFP) fronted much of this roughly 1500 kilometer shared border. Much of the actual border was the Durand Line, drawn by the British in the late 1800s and never accepted by the Afghan Government. This line effectively divided the Pashtun populations in both countries, although in many places, it was more a line on a map than a firm border dividing two countries, with people and goods flowing across with only limited regulation. The reality of a largely artificial border dividing the Pashtuns, coupled with closely related and linked insurgencies on both sides of the border, meant that events in Pakistan had a very direct impact on RC-East (see chapter 9 on the Afghan–Pakistan border for a more detailed discussion).
Meeting between U.S. soldiers and local Pashtun leaders to discuss
development projects. Afghan interpreter to left, in black fleece jacket and hat.
Paktika Province, winter of 2004.
Meeting with local men to discuss U.S. presence and development
programs. Pesh Valley, Konar Province, 2004.