Afghan Lessons: Culture, Diplomacy, and Counterinsurgency

Foreword

ix Foreword This is a book about different worlds, different realities. The reality of everyday life in an unreal world. People that need to be looked after, jobs that need to be done, a country that needs to be restored, all from within the necessary confines of an armed camp. And this in the middle of another reality, which we do not understand, full of things forgotten under decades of war. The keys to this reality lie in the past, perhaps lost. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden. And then there is the reality of policy, and of the massive foreign military resources behind political and civilian objectives. But politics is immune to foreign influence. And foreign armies are not good at dealing with local civilians. And the reality of noble aims—on both sides: this is why they fight—meeting the lives of ordinary people whose aims in their own way are also noble, though much less grand. Mostly these realities exist in parallel, side by side, meeting only in mutual deception, or when bodies are torn apart by bombs. On the author’s bedside table lie the U.S. army counterinsurgency manual and the poems of Rumi, the thirteenth-century mystic, the two best guides to the realities of Afghanistan. As one of the Afghans in the book says: the wildflower has the luxury of blooming for no reason. This book too is written for no reason but also for its own reasons. That makes it honest. It also means you do not need to read it. But why not? Robert Cooper Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former colleague of the author 00-2423-0 fm.indd 9 6/3/13 1:48 PM 00-2423-0 fm.indd 10 6/3/13 1:48 PM ...