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Nov 9, 2021 Ricardo Hausmann

كمبريدج ــ افترض أنك لا تعرف أي شيء عن دولة ما منخفضة الدخل باستثناء الحقائق التالية. كان نصيب الفرد في دخلها السنوي عام 2020 نحو 509 دولارات فقط، وهذا سابع أدنى مستوى في العالم. خلال السنوات العشر حتى عام 2019، انخفضت تدفقات المساعدات السنوية إلى النصف، ليصبح نصيب الفرد فيها 114 دولارا، أو 31 سنتا للفرد في اليوم. نتيجة لهذا، انخفض نصيب الفرد في الناتج المحلي الإجمالي بنحو 14% خلال هذه الفترة. في الوقت ذاته، انخفض نصيب الفرد السنوي في الواردات بمقدار النصف خلال الفترة من 2012 إلى 2020، ليصل إلى 179 دولارا، أو 49 سنتا فقط للشخص يوميا ــ وهذا واحد من أدنى المستويات في العالم. وكان نصيب الفرد في الصادرات، عند مستوى أقل من 38 دولارا، هو الأدنى في العالم. كما ارتفع معدل الفقر الرسمي من 38% في عام 2011 إلى 47.3% في عام 2020.

في ضوء هذه الأرقام، لن تتوقع أن يكون السكان متحمسين كثيرا للوضع الراهن. ولن تتوقع أن تحصل الحكومة على قدر كبير من الدعم أو تُـظـهِـر قدرة كبيرة على تحسين الأحوال هناك.

الواقع أن تدفقات المساعدات إلى ذلك البلد لم تكن بأي حال من الأحوال كبيرة بشكل غير عادي. وفقا للبنك الدولي، كان نصيب الفرد في المساعدات بنحو 114 دولارا في عام 2019 أقل من المساعدات التي تلقتها 26 دولة أخرى، بما في ذلك الصومال (121 دولارا)، البوسنة والهرسك (141دولارا)، اليمن (151 دولارا)، جمهورية أفريقيا الوسطى (159 دولارا)، لبنان (223 دولارا)، الأردن (277 دولارا)، الضفة الغربية وغزة (477 دولارا)، سوريا (600 دولار)، وجزر مارشال (1122 دولارا). من الواضح إذن أن تقليص المساعدات كان اختيارا وليس ضرورة واضحة.

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Dec 29, 2021

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NM Wander Dec 29, 2021

The Failure of US Foreign Policy in Afghanistan is the Failure of the long standing, unchanged, un-adaptable US World View......unchanged since the implementation of the National Defense Act of 1947(circa?)......
This giant heavy piece of legislation basicly codified the Cold War Era.......creating the US Air Force, NASA, CIA, NSA, the US Highway System, the US Public Education System,
EVERYTHING............and we still live by its precepts to this day,,,,,unwaveringly.
....
The Reagan Admin made its attempts to update and change these Policies....but Bureaucratic Inertia and refusal to change stopped that from truly happening.
VP Bush, long-time CIA leader, made sure of that.
During the Reagan Years, we developed a military strategy labelled....."Rapid Deployment Force"(RDF) and Joint Operations.....these were attempts to mold the military into effective fighting tactics that would adhere to the guidelines of the new
"War Powers Act"....which limited the US President to 90 days of military action without prior Congressional Approval.
Reagan was the ONLY President to abide by these legal requirements...THE ONLY....Libyan Bomb Raid after Lockerbee Terror Attack......US Peace Keeping Mission to Lebanon.....Raid on Grenada......
GHW Bush would continue lip service to the War Powers Act with his actions in Panama(why did we attack Panama? "JUst Cause" haha)....and later on pre-fabricated conditions....and all out blitzkreig on Iraq....
Then came Clinton of the DNC.......we endured long drawn out inexplicable occupations of Somolia, Haiti, air wars in Bosnia....on and on......and at least to my knowledge no reckoning of any of it with Congress.
Finally Bush, Jr invades Afghanistan with no intention of using RDF tactics...basicly "capture or kill BinLadin" then completely exit Afghanistan.........instead a return to the ill suited Occupy and "Nation Build" tactics of WW2....in complete violation of the War Powers Act......with some added details of kidnapping and torturing people percieved as "enemies".
This was follwed by yet more military invasions in Iraq.....completely ignoring the realities of the Modern Age....pretending that we are still at war with the Soviet Union and its allies.
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Christopher Lellis Nov 13, 2021

The D.C regime and the kids that sign up to be soldiers do not have even close to the courage it takes to win these wars. They rely entirely on technological superiority and that is not nearly enough. Also, there is never any actual strategy despite failure after failure, and yet there is this ridiculous hubris that we are going to walk through others and win the day. If you look at the post-war history in the 20th century and the first 20 years of this century, the U.S has a humiliating loss ratio with foreign operations and wars. There have been some notable tactical victories, such as operation desert storm and operation Iraq freedom, but the end goals are almost never achieved, so it all becomes either worthless or detrimental as time passes. From South America to the Middle East to East Asia, we have a substantial list of flagrant defeats.

The CIA and the military brass have no idea what they are doing, they do not know how to strategize and they do not know how to fight. 20 years of training Afghanis and they ended up getting run through like a hot knife through butter with the greatest of ease. That would not have happened if the U.S forces actually knew how to fight, which they clearly do not and so their training is obviously worthless. There are many reasons why Afghanistan was lost, and what I just here are a few of them, but these reasons are rarely if ever mentioned. To taboo.
- NM Wander Dec 29, 2021
  
  The Afghan "War" was fought based on obsolete concepts, based on the WW2 model.
  The US Bureaucracy has operated unchanged since WW2....simply because it was successful in its prosecution and management of that particular war.....Overwhelming industrial might, with huge financial resources, used to pulverize and decimate an enemy.....once vanquished, the enemy is then trained to be our Ally......rebuilt in America's Image.
  While successful with Germany and Japan.....this type of operation and world view is pathetically out of touch with the Modern World....which, despite all denials from our State Dept and Defense Dept bureaucrats.......does ,,,, indeed,,,, include Afghanistan.
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F Ahmed Nov 12, 2021

Sir, your diagnosis is flawed and the prescription is simplistic. It would not have delivered.

1. More economic aid without changing any of the other variables would have resulted in only more corruption.

2. Even the money that reached common Afghans through well-directed infrastructure and social programs could not reap enduring dividends because:

3. The Afghan on street saw the whole US - NATO program as essentially a humiliating foreign occupation with Afghan government and the set up as tools to validate it. Taliban and the terrorist groups killed many innocent Afghans but the quarterly UN reports to UN Security Council were also tabulating the so called collateral killings by US - NATO and Afghan government forces, which no government ever raised any objections to shamefully. Was that ever going to win any hearts and minds?

4. The vision was not Afghan identified and Afghan owned. Without national ownership, nothing takes root howsoever much the foreign aid or howsoever attractive the policy rhetoric.

5. Peace in Afghanistan hinged and continues to hinge on common people of Afghanistan in what they aspire for their country and how they advance toward it. A very complex organic process that will move at its own pace.

6. Outsiders should only assist this process and not interfere unwanted.

7. Clichéd but overlooked too often - sustainable peace and development necessitate comprehensive (effective politics, economics, human rights, justice, rule of law and security) and sustained undertaking.

7. Good that you remind us of the over $2.2 Trillion cost. The world should also know clearly how much of it was actually spent on ground in Afghanistan and how much comprised payments to arms, equipment and aid suppliers in the US and Europe and their salaries etc.

8. For all concerned observers, search the UN Secretary General’s recent video interview to Al Jazeera’s correspondent in which he admits that the whole approach on Afghanistan was wrong. Indeed no consolation to all those dead or destroyed. The same Secretary General who would passionately toe the line of this approach until a few weeks ago.
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Jonathan Engel Nov 10, 2021

The author proposes that the fundamental mistake in Afghanistan was in the allocation of aid/economic assistance. This is, of course a defensible position, but clearly still pits an Afghan Army, with or without US military backing against the Taleban, a faith based marginally educated and hyperviolent military organisation ... one way or another.

Obviously the game is over in the real world, but lessons are still to be learnt, so looking at the sources of lack of success of the US lead expeditionary force is possibly important.

I would contend that the initial analysis of the foreign powers was deeply incorrect: There was clearly the assumption that Afghanistan could be built on the basic foundations of the model of the prior existing society: Islamic, male dominated, multiple tribal structured etc etc.... Seems to me that this acceptance that little (as possible) should change was the primary error. This was not the error that the Soviet Union made, although it was pretty much exactly the error that the British Empire made during the two attempts to subdue the country during the 19th century.

Had the Coalition decided to focus on arming those who had most to lose by a Taleban victory (as has been the "standard practice" of the US in other conflict situations), there might have been a higher probability of resisting the attack against the "new" Afghanistan.

As a thought experiment, one might suggest that the "class" of people who had the most to lose by a Taleban victory would be the women of Afghanistan. Had the US built up a purely female military force, and armed, equipped and trained then to fight the Taleban, much as the Kurdish women were extremely effective fighters against the Islamic State, the outcome might have been different... Equally the conversion of Afghans under US military "cover" over the period of 20 years of the foreign presence, conversion to the prior local faith of Buddhism, could have created a cultural base for standing up to the Taleban ... whatever... what matters (or might have mattered) is to create an alignment of interests against this form of fundamentalism imported from Pakistan.
- NM Wander Dec 29, 2021
  
  Reminder.....
  On 910.......the Taliban was our ALLY. not our Enemy.
  Their fatal decision was to refuse to help USA capture BinLadin.
  OUR fatal decision was to make the Taliban the enemy....and lose track of BinLadin
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كيف خسرنا أفغانستان حقا

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