Back to the future in Afghanistan

Wednesday, 30 September 2009 18:34

Written by John Tsitrian

John Tsitrian

This isn't déjà vu, because déjà vu is an illusion. This is repetition--real, cold and ugly. This is Afghanistan now, it was Vietnam then. I followed the news of Afghanistan's "election" last month with a hard-earned sense of trepidation, having once been in the middle of a similar situation in Quang Tri Province, the Republic of Vietnam (aka South Vietnam), in 1967. I was a nineteen-year-old U.S. Marine radioman fighting at various points along what was then rather euphemistically known as the Demilitarized Zone. I was part of a process that rings with echoes as I see the news coming out of Afghanistan,

made especially disturbing by recent reports of casualties suffered by some Rapid City-connected fighting men. I grieve for those brave guys and their families with a heart that was hardened in the valley of the Cua Viet River. I pray that history isn't repeating itself, but I fear that it is. As with Afghanistan and its ferocious antagonists, the Taliban now, the United States was desperately trying to hold off incursions and a takeover by forces known as the Viet Cong then. As with the recent attempt at elections in Afghanistan now, the Republic of Vietnam was holding national elections on September 2 and 3, 1967. As with the hopes for an incipient representative government to take shape in Afghanistan last month, there was some hope that South Vietnam would advance toward a democratically-elected government back then. And as with South Vietnam in the '60s, hopes for a free and fair election in Afghanistan last month were crushed by the realities of corruption and violent disruptions.

The scene around my sector near Dong Ha, Vietnam, was chaotic and bloody as the Viet Cong and their more well-organized and equipped allies in the North Vietnamese Army attacked villages and American military outposts in force, turning the planned elections into a sham as fearful residents stayed as far away from the polls as they could. Reports from Afghanistan last month indicate that a similarly successful wave of intimidation by violence held down turnout substantially in most of that country, save the relatively secure neighborhoods of Kabul. Probably more disturbing to those who are familiar with the fate of the South Vietnam are reports that where polling actually took place, the American-supported government of Hamid Karzai successfully rigged the vote in its favor. Why more disturbing? Because I'm convinced that a committed U.S. military presence can hold the Taliban at bay indefinitely, just as it could have done so against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese four decades ago. But to do so concurrently with propping up a regime that holds power by corruption is ultimately a fool's errand and not worthy of the sacrifice of our outstanding and dedicated troops in the field. The South Vietnamese government, lacking in democratic legitimacy and rife with corruption, couldn't sustain itself when left to its own devices after the American pullout, and became easy pickings for the crushing armed forces that swept down from the north and toppled the regime in Saigon. If the corrupt leadership in Kabul depends on its very existence and a sense of legitimacy gained by American military personnel on the ground who are fighting and dying for Karzai and his government, I fear that the end will be as nasty and futile as it was in Vietnam. A recently returned NCO (sorry, no name, no branch) who'd just spent over a year trying to teach Afghans how to use military hardware tells me that the cultural gap between our two societies is hopelessly wide, that Americans are trying to turn a country that consists of tribes living in remote villages where loyalties are locally, not nationally, oriented into something resembling a modern, centrally controlled republic. In this NCO's view, even if the political and social transition were doable, the national infrastructure interconnecting this new society is generations away from being built. Naturally this works to the advantage of the enemy Taliban, which understands the culture and the lay of the land, chillingly, much as the Viet Cong once did in the remote reaches of South Vietnam so many years ago. And, as with the enemy in those days, the Taliban has a sanctuary that appears to be off-limits to a seriously overt military incursion by the United States. Back then the sanctuaries were known as Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, the Demilitarized Zone itself. Nowadays the sanctuary is in the border regions of Pakistan. We can make the enemy run, but we can't close in for the kill. As with all my fighting comrades in Vietnam, I can tell you this is no way to fight a war. It's time to reassess the strategies of this fight, time to reevaluate the basic assumptions of our venture into Afghanistan.