For Life, Liberty, and Failed States

Foreign Policy Magazine in conjunction with the Fund for Peace has released the 2012 Failed States Index.

 This information is typically useful for scholars of terrorism because failed states can be fertile recruiting grounds for terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda.

Others use the index as a rallying cry to pressure their governments to do something about the abject human misery that is spawned by malfunctioning and broken states.

This years list is headlined by

·         Somalia

·         The Democratic Republic of Congo

·         North Sudan

·         South Sudan (NOT RATED)

·         Chad

·         Zimbabwe

My larger point in writing this blog is to question whether we should even be ranking failed states at all.

 The notion of ranking failed states does seem quite subjective and heavy handed. It makes it sound like the problems in Zimbabwe are somehow worse than that of Afghanistan and Haiti, who finished sixth and seventh respectively.

I venture to say that the average Afghan or Haitian would find common cause with Zimbabwean.

Further, state failure in my view, cannot be measured through some magical set of calculations and reduced to a numerical value.

There are people on the end of these numbers who are suffering from everything from autocratic governance to little affordable food and water.

 Many suffer from several ailments. I think this index would be more helpful, if it came with explanatory country by country data that explained the numbers.

The Chicago-Afghanistan Paradox

There’s an old axiom in television news that says “If it bleeds, it leads.” Apparently this notion is limited to blood spilled in warzones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent article that appeared in the Huffington Post seems to argue that Americans stand a better chance of being killed in Chicago Illinois than Afghanistan.

At the time the article was published, 228 people in Chicago had been killed compared to 144 in Afghanistan this year.

You stand a better chance of being killed in Chicago than Afghanistan—a warzone.

Yet, many Americans outside of Chicago have heard little about the urban war that is going on in Chicago. I think if people were dying at a rate of 2-3 a day in a major American city, I’d like to know about it.

I think it’s great that we make a point of honoring the sacrifices of men and women who fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan, but what makes the 144+ soldiers who died in Afghanistan this year any more important than the moms, dads, and children that were killed within their own neighborhoods?

Where’s the national outrage over the 5,000 Chicagoans killed since 2001 versus the 2,000 soldiers in Afghanistan? Does death somehow mean more, if your soldier?

Review of “At War With PTSD: Battling Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Virtual Reality"

Robert N. Mclay acknowledges that PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is one of the most difficult disorders to treat because it doesn’t show up on our most advanced medical tests, there’s no one treatment that works for everyone, and it’s often hard to convince people that PTSD exists.

 In “At War With PTSD: Battling Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Virtual Reality, Mclay takes us through the emotionally raw journey of using virtual reality to treat soldiers with PTSD.

 Several of the early chapters are devoted to explaining PTSD through both psychological definitions, and personal stories that help illustrate the effects PTSD can have. 

There’s nothing terribly overpowering about the psychological lingo as Mclay writes in an easy to understand conversational manner.

Then he discusses the doubters of PTSD and the pitfalls of wanting to study virtual reality as a form of treatment for PTSD.

Perhaps most interesting was the sections where he discusses the competing companies who manufacture the virtual reality gear because I already figured that it might be difficult to get soldiers to accept the reality of PTSD.

The premise behind virtual reality for PTSD is that soldiers have suffered some trauma. Using virtual reality, we can create something that closely resembles this traumatic event and give the soldiers the opportunity to deal with it.

What I really liked was that Mclay does not portray himself as the god of PTSD, by illustrating that there is no perfect treatment for PTSD.

 I further appreciated that he remembered that the soldiers’ families have to deal with PTSD as well.

Overall, a thoughtful and cautious, yet hopeful, look into PTSD and virtual reality.

The Village Rampage

I was very saddend and angered to learn of the rampage of a lone U.S. soldier through a remote Afghanistan village that left seventeen Afghans civilians dead and five injured—including women and children.

 This is the last thing the American mission in Afghanistan needs given the already high tensions over the recent Quran burning and the ensuing protests. The Afghan people have grown tired of the perceived American population and this heinous incident may only strengthen the calls for America’s withdraw.

From a personal level, this episode is an insult to the good and decent men and women in uniform I’ve met through my classes and otherwise. We must not let the actions of one deranged man desecrate the good works performed by our upstanding men and women.

For military investigators, you need to conduct a thorough investigation that is open and transparent to the damning eyes of Afghan society. I know this probably isn’t the military way of doing business, but it’s the only way I see to attempt to save face here.

Afghan Immunity: Karzai’s No Man’s Land

The above incident also has pronounced implications for a long term basing agreement with the U.S. that would keep a smaller number of American forces in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 withdraw deadline.

 As part of the deal, the U.S. would be seeking immunity from the Afghan legal system for our troops. Given the recent protests over the Quran, and the potential firestorm over the recent civilian killings in Afghanistan, I don’t know how Harmid Karzai can accept such a deal or decline it.

If Harmid Karzai is a rational political actor, he will want to set himself up for a post-American Afghanistan. This means he has to take a hard-line against potentially criminal activity committed by American soldiers within the country to prevent a coup or assassination from the hardline elements in Afghan society.

 Yet, Karzai is largely seen as a leader imposed by America, so he needs American support in order to retain the Presidency of Afghanistan. Failing to give American soldiers immunity could jeopardize this.

What we’ve Lost

I think it sucks that we’ve lost so many young men and women in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because it feels like they had so much more of everything to give us.

 Their love, their friendship, their laughter, their smiles, all of that has now been silenced save for pictures and the cinemas of our mind.

If I had my wish, war would be a banished tool of barbarians and we’d all live in peace…but alas, this world exists beyond our reach.

 No one ever dies though, as long as we never forget them, not just as soldiers, but as human beings who shared with us their hopes, dreams, joys, and ambitions, and made us better in the process.

Wish you were here.

Getting Real on Afghanistan

I’ve been avoiding a question ever since I started Book Diplomacy that I get quite often “What do I think about Afghanistan”?

I think the Bush administration made the right move in invading Afghanistan following the September 11^th attacks. The error which given the circumstances is inexcusable is in failing to understand the history and culture of Afghanistan. If they had studied either they would’ve understood how illogical imposing the Western conception of heavily centralized government on Afghanistan was.

 Afghanistan is a heavy fractionalized, tribal, society that in my view needs something approximating mixed sovereignty-where the centralized authority has authority over things like international affairs, defense, and global trade, while allowing local leaders control over local and regional matters.

We are not going to blast Afghanistan into a modern democratic state, no matter how many guns or bombs we have. Our best hope for victory may be for Afghanistan may be for the average Afghan to say that America left it better than they found it. Right now, I don’t know if anyone can say that given the ramped corruption of the Karzai government and anger over NATO’s night-raids. Opium is the most profitable economic item within the country and there’s a remarkably stubborn insurgency movement there.

 Is Afghanistan better with Karzai and American troops or the Taliban…that question should be fairly easy to answer…but I’m very much afraid what will happen to the good Afghan people when we do leave. Do they form a country or descend into warlordism? The thought keeps world leaders up at night, I’m sure.