The Foreign Service Journal, September 2021

36 SEPTEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Arif was open to a relationship with foreigners, but at one point stated clearly that there were limits to what his people would accept, especially if the foreigners sided with the “Panjshiris”—his name for the Northern Alliance. Fighting was clearly always an early option to preserve his vision of a traditionalist Afghanistan. One evening after the Jirga deliberations, I invited Arif to an embassy photo exhibit on the 9/11 attacks at the National Gallery in Kabul, a way to raise awareness of what brought America to Afghanistan in the first place. My translator at the time provided a stark contrast in the range of Afghan society. Kanishka Bakhshi, a Tajik, spoke fluent English and had been a translator for CNN before coming to work for the embassy. Kanishka sought an Afghanistan in which his very spirited wife and young daughter would have opportunities for education and a profession. He was comfortable with foreigners and hopeful and bold about the future, and just as willing as Arif to take risks for his vision; several years later he was almost killed in a terrorist attack. As we encountered the exhibit together, I realized we Ameri- cans had inserted ourselves between two worlds: one seeking a progressive modern existence for the country and one deter- mined to impose a narrow version of tradition. And it was a com- plex struggle, not one that could be comfortably divided between regions or tribes; in many cases it was a raw fight for power. The Taliban would give military expression to the traditionalists, but they were hardly the only ones involved. As the struggle ground on for decades, it came to encompass technocrats vs. warlords, youth vs. elders, the periphery vs. the center, insular Islamist vs. pluralistic multiculturalists, militias vs. the army—and, signifi- cantly, the Taliban vs. the flawed democratic state. The contest played out initially in the Loya Jirga itself. For the first time in decades, the Afghan nation, represented by 1,700 delegates from every part of the country and every slice of society, came together with vital international support for 10 days to accuse, hope, rant, plan, commiserate and select their new government. With the immediate humanitarian crisis over, Afghans were streaming home from exile. Everyone, it seemed, had something to sell or harvest or build. Looming over these successes, though, were the seeds of the unraveling. The Taliban was not allowed representation in the Loya Jirga; the Pashtuns were frus- trated with their relative lack of power; the periphery of the country continued to function with near total autonomy; unstructured aid flows led to corruption and distor- tions in the economy; and the larger conflict between a modern vision and a traditional one was not resolved. Nation-Builders and Sheriffs: Afghanistan as Partner or Platform? These competing visions of Afghanistan, we soon learned, would be caught up in an equally fraught contest between two tribes in the United States. On the one side were the nation- builders, who concluded after diverse experiences, most recently in the Balkans, that the only way to guarantee American security interests in a country as shattered as Afghanistan was by reestablishing all the functions of the state while facilitating a process for the Afghan people to cohere around a vision for their nation. Ambassadors James Dobbins and Ryan Crocker were reflec- tive of this tribe, arguing for a robust peacekeeping mission, a rapid buildup of the security forces and a reset of the moribund economy. The nation-builders were a minority tribe that had no vote and little voice. The tribe in power was the sheriffs. Their vision was that when America is threatened, the sheriff will put on his badge, pick up his six-shooter and round up a posse. The posse will seek and find the outlaws, kill some, jail others and return home. The late Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a sheriff by disposition, as was then–Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. This tribe was bolstered politically by campaign rhetoric about not “using the military to escort little girls to school” and by eschewing any cooperation with the United Nations or even other allies. KEITHMINES A USAID-funded midwife graduation ceremony in Sheberghan, a city in Jawzjan province of Afghanistan, in December 2012.