By Matthew P Hoh, Senior Civilian Representative, Zabul Province,
Afghanistan, September 10, 2009
Dear Ambassador Powell,
It is with great regret and disappointment I submit my resignation from my
appointment as a Political Officer in the Foreign Service and my post as
the Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul
Province. I have served six of the previous ten years in service to our
country overseas, to include deployment as a U.S. Marine officer and
Department of Defense civilian in the Euphrates and Tigris River Valleys of
Iraq in 2004-2005 and 2006-2007. I did not enter into this position lightly
or with any undue expectations nor did I believe my assignment would be
without sacrifice hardship or difficulty. However, in the course of my five
months of service in Afghanistan, in both Regional Commands East and South,
I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of
the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. I have doubts and
reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my
resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to
what end. To put simply: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued
U.S. casualties or expenditures or resources in support of the Afghan
government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.
This fall will mark the eighth year of U.S. combat, governance and
development operations within Afghanistan. Next fall, the United States’
occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union’s own physical
involvement in Afghanistan. Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and
bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of
government unknown and unwanted by its people.
If the history or Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is
no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy
that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against
one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah’s reign, has
violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modem of
Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is
this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency. The
Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite,
local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a
continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land,
culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S.
and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well
as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun
soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the
insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that
the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban,
but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an
unrepresentative government in Kabul.
The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to
the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like
manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues
to distance the government from the people. The Afghan government’s
failings, particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives
and dollars, appear legion and metastatic:
• Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
• A President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and
war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics
efforts;
• A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power
brokers, opportunists and strongmen allied to the United States solely for,
and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own
political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or
genuine attempts at reconciliation; and
• The recent election process dominated by fraud and discredited by low
voter turnout, which has created an enormous victory for our enemy who now
claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our
government’s military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and
illegitimate Afghan government.
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