SQUARE PEGS

POST-WAR PATTERNS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ (Matthew Riemer, 8/14/03, EurasiaNet)

Though the wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq were tactically dissimilar and of varying levels of intensity, the post-war social, cultural, and political factors at play are very similar. The most relevant and foundational similarity between the two countries is their creation: each was cobbled together from amongst a plethora of local, autonomous/tribal regions into reluctant wholes in the form of what the conquering country felt to be a modern nation-state. And for both, since their involuntary birth, this fact has hampered their development, as well as posing a deep, historical puzzle for, first, Great Britain and, now, the United States, in their efforts at "nation building."

This predicament - if only in the name of thoroughness - must eventually elicit a series of important questions from the concerned observer, some of which might be:

-What are the inherent weaknesses of the "nation-state" model?

-When Washington uses the phrase "nation building," what does this really imply?

-Is the so-called "nation-state" a viable model for Afghanistan and Iraq?

The United States may be uncovering a troublesome truth in its latest global endeavors: the fact that the nation-state is not a universal model for all regions and peoples of the world, and, in some cases, it may even obstruct the development of the very stability and select economic development the United States is seeking through its operations - especially in areas with a concentration of ethnic diversity like in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and much of Central Asia where state-sized regions more readily stabilize under a sub-network of autonomous zones defined by some obvious feature, whether it be ethnic, linguistic or geographical. The dominant US polity has always assumed that the keys to American success are the keys to global success, that what works for them will work for others. This belief has led many in the US leadership to think that concepts like democracy and free market capitalism can be smoothly exported to other regions and environments and have the same effect that they had in 18th and 19th century America. This widely held belief is shared by the Bush administration and has been explicitly stated in its 2002 National Security Strategy.

It's hard to believe that anything even approaching a coherent state can emerge in Afghanistan, unless it is some kind of embattled Pashtunistan, but Iraq should be easily divisible into a Kurdistan and a Shi'ite state--the sooner the better. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 18, 2003 8:58 PM