The pervasive ‘hearts and minds’ theory guiding counterinsurgency doctrine contends that military-led reconstruction reduces violence in post-conflict settings.| Using rare data from Afghanistan, this column questions the theoretical and empirical basis of that perspective. Military-led projects in the health sector are found to successfully alleviate violence, whereas those in the education sector actually provoke conflict. The destabilising effects of education projects are strongest in conservative areas, where public opinion polls suggest education projects breed antipathy towards international forces.Imposing liberal values creates conflict in traditional areas. Another paradox of liberalism.
Vox.eu
Reconstruction and conflict: Losing hearts and minds
Travers Child | PhD candidate in Economics, Tinbergen Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The former government there, Taliban, provided sanctuary for Al Queda to conspire to commit international murder/terror with impunity... so it had to go...
ReplyDeleteFranko-
ReplyDeleteYou got it all wrong. They were just standing up for the good traditional people of the world against the evil liberals. Its our fault they attacked us. You know because infidels in muslim countries deserve to be killed because allah.
If al Queda, while enjoying the sanctuary of the Taliban, had not done the 9-11 attacks we would not be there...
ReplyDeletethey could still be peacefully stoning people at the half time of soccer games and everything... nobody here really cares about Afghanistan the whole place could get swallowed up and no one here would give a shit...
Afghanistan has mineral wealth:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Afghanistan
Better the paradoxes of liberalism then the paradoxes of "traditional" read backward cultures.
ReplyDeleteThat may be true to a certain extent but there is no absolute criterion available for deciding among world views or the types of framework that underlie similar ones.
There are tradeoffs with all of them.
My own world view is a combination of liberalism and traditionalism, and that is true of a very large number of people, including most US voters.
The paradoxes that arise in each have to be confronted, rather than being ignored or explained away (usually by handwaving).
Totally agree Tom It's just my personal perception of you and others on this site that you guys are seemingly 100% focused on the paradoxes and ills of the West.
ReplyDeleteBut I am no extreme moral relativist. There are objectively better and worse ways to have a society work. There are objectively better and worse ways of morality.
Going into Afghan culture is like literally going back into time. The tribal Traditions that Afghanistan still has is the tradition of all human sociey. A modern nation-state society is the next evolutionary rung above our tribal past. At least under the specific metric of how to organize larger, more flexible and diverse Networks of people encompassing larger and larger Geographic areas.
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ReplyDeleteTo me one of the funniest bits about the taliban and Al qaeda (According to George Freidman founder of Stratfor) is that they seemed to really believe that they had caused the destruction of the Soviet empire, seeing as the collapse happened just a year or so after the soviets pulled out. That they had "defeated the evil godless empire".
ReplyDeleteThis is what Zbig thinks and he was the chief strategist that devised arming the "freedom fighters" under Osama that later morphed into AQ. Asked not long ago whether it was worth it he said, absolutely, it resulted in the collapse of the USSR.
http://www.takeoverworld.info/brzezinski_interview_short.html
It's not a paradox for groups to want what they want at the expense of others. It would be strange to live in world where every situation is win-win. In reality, there are win-lose and lose-lose situations. Compromise is a way of striking a balance. War/conquest is a way of not having to find balance.
ReplyDeleteThe efforts in Afghanistan are rife with corruption. There is no intent to improve the lives of the people, only to grab as much as possible for oneself. The longer term goal may be to secure the country for exploitation and profit.
If we wanted to destroy Afghan culture, we would attempt social engineering.