Letter from Pashmul

My roommate Graeme Wood had an article about Afghanistan in last week's New Yorker. In it, he offers a snapshot of one of NATO's most controversial counterinsurgency tactics, the use of ethnic-minority Hazara police units to patrol Pashtun areas. Graeme writes:

"Alessandro Monsutti, an anthropologist who has studied the Hazaras, fears that the short-term gain of the Hazara units’ efficacy may be outweighed by long-term harm. “They’re very efficient for narrow, military targets,” he told me. “But what about rebuilding the country?” Donnelly, too, acknowledges that the use of ethnic militias could lead to explosive retribution when NATO leaves Afghanistan. (European use of privileged local minorities in colonial Africa contributed to the continent’s most destructive post-colonial wars, including the Rwandan genocide.) The Hazaras have not, historically, fared well in combat with the Pashtuns, although the policemen at Pashmul seem eager to try their luck. When Vollick asked them where he could get more police like them, they replied that they could raise a militia of a thousand men in their homeland, in Daykundi Province."

As the Obama team pursues what is expected to be a renewed US engagement with Afghanistan and pressures NATO allies to do the same, we will be watching for any shift in these and other tactics. Congratulations Graeme and looking forward to more.