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This is one great Matthew Yglesias post.
To move beyond merely rhetorical question-asking, who is the highest-ranking American official who speaks the languages they use in Afghanistan? Moving quickly down the list, it seems that neither the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, nor the Secretary of State makes the cut. Nothing in the background of Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake or Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Colin Kahl (oddly, State and DOD slice up the world differently) suggests that they do. Nor does Richard Holbrooke or Ambassador Karl Eikenberry or General McChrystal (or, for that matter, General Petraeus).
As it happens, I’m writing on some structural changes for Doing This Stuff Better, and I get all excited about that — particularly from the I’m-breaking-news perspective — and then I read one of these great chrystalizations and think, Well, we’re just probably fucked, aren’t we. I don’t know. You don’t have to speak French to craft a good U.S. France policy. But it helps! Language here is a way into the subtleties of how these policies are lived on the ground, which make them or break them.
Now I need to find a Rosetta Stone course in Pashto. It’s not like this lesson doesn’t apply to journalists, too.
Update: My friend Justin Logan chides me for using a shitty analogy — he’s right — and remarks: “But the problem is that we don’t have a normal diplomatic relationship with Afghanistan — we’re trying to transform the entire society.” I think he goes a little far there. We’re not trying to make Afghanistan into an urban country. We’re not even trying to make it into a democracy anymore. Our most direct aims there are now about protecting the population from insurgents; training a bigger and more capable security apparatus; and mitigating the governance and development consequences of corruption. That’s still an ambitious agenda! And Justin makes a good point. He’s more right than wrong. But, y’know, if people are going to take issue with my half-thought-out analogies…
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It also applies to soldiers. What percentage of our military speaks Pashto? Of that group, how many are in Afghanistan. Of those, how many are on patrol most of the time. Isn’t one of the points of COIN that the Corporals are making policy, at least on the local level? What kind of policy can they make if they don’t speak the language?
Alternatively, the US could award a huge KBR contract, subbed to Rosetta Stone, to teach everyone in Afghanistan English. That’s more neo-colonial and paternalistic, don’t you think?
Frees up our military and diplomats for more pressing tasks, too — like deciding where next to begin yet another Excellent Adventure.
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I assume in part what you are getting at is that, as any anthropologist, historian or literature professor would argue, knowing another people’s language goes a long way towards knowing that people’s culture. Language contains entire philosophies and views of the world in its grammar, syntax, vocabulary and idiomatic and metaphorical expressions. Thus the desperate efforts of groups like UNESCO to stop the extinction of languages.
Knowing Pashto, Afghani Persian, and the various Turkic languages would probably help in the ‘winning hearts’ side of things, though it is probably setting a pretty high standard to expect the leadership to know what are, in the scale of things, obscure languages. It would be helpful though if they had some advisers around them who did, however.
On an unrelated note, but a question I was pondering about an article I’d like to see written in the US press: I know that he is a TERRORIST(tm) but what would the implications be for the peace process if Marwan Barghouti were released from Israeli prison and allowed to run for the presidency of the PNA? Why isn’t the US pushing for his release as a strategic counterbalance to increasing support for Hamas?
wh-wh-where do I sign up!
My guess is that Barghouti ticks every box necessary to make peace with Israel, liberate Palestine and marginalize Hamas: got the militant street cred & widespread popularity that cuts Hamas’ legs out from under it, wants two states, etc. I don’t know why Israel doesn’t just fucking let him out of jail. Many many many Israeli commentators for years have predicted that such a move is imminent but it never actually happens.