It’s been about a year since I read, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” Khaled Hosseini’s second novel about life in Afghanistan. It followed his best-selling book, “The Kite Runner,” which has since been made into a movie.
But my mind went straight to that book when I read Deb Saul’s column a couple weeks ago about the war in Afghanistan, followed a few days later by news of Army Pfc. Eric Hario of Monroe County dying in a shootout with Taliban insurgents.
Deb, in her usual thoughtful and eloquent way, pointed out the folly of the U.S. thinking it could succeed in Afghanistan where two other superpowers (of their day) failed – Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
If you haven’t read “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” I highly recommend it, just for the power of the writing and the timeless messages of personal courage and resilience.
But beyond that, Hosseini’s second look at life in his homeland made an indelible impression on me for its insight into the socio/political landscape of Afghanistan.
I remember the heavy feeling in my heart as I put down the book, then thought about the U.S. soldiers dying there in a war that can’t be won.
The point that comes through the book with resounding clarity is that Afghanistan is a nation split down the middle, and both sides are willing to fight to the death for what they believe in.
Roughly half the country wants a democratic, secular government – the kind we’re trying to help them get, where religion and government are separated. And roughly half the country believes passionately that any secular government is evil, and that they have a religious duty to fight it.
The point is, whichever side is in power, the other side is going to fight. No matter how strong we make the Afghan government and its army, they’re going to keep fighting. And the harder we try – the more innocent people we kill in the process – it will only drive more people to the other side.
The only solution to this is for foreign governments to get out of Afghanistan and let them figure it out on their own.
I know, I know, we can’t do that, for two reasons.
One, we can’t let it return to being an incubator for terrorism worldwide.
And two, after pouring billions of dollars and thousands of lives into Afghanistan for eight years, we have a moral obligation to help with the solution.
But as President Obama and his military leaders mull over what to do next, we can only pray that they’ll figure out that a military solution isn’t the solution. We can’t kill half the Afghans.
Rather, we have to turn all our attention to ending the fighting and starting the talking – the search for a political compromise that will hold the fighting to a minimum and will get foreign soldiers out of Afghanistan.
A “surge,” which seemed to work in Iraq by improving security enough to give the government time to start working, isn’t likely to have the same effect in Afghanistan.
The more we “surge,” the more we’ll turn the countryside against us. And this is a countryside that knows little except how to fight.