Obama's Afghan Spaghetti Western

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KC28Df01.html

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Calling Sergio Leone

To sum it all up, the whole picture looks like nothing less than an Afghan version of a Sergio Leone-directed, Ennio Morricone-scored The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Move over, Spaghetti Western, and call it a deadly Spaghetti Eastern.

There are three military bases ("camps" in Pentagon terminology) in western Afghanistan. One is American. The other one is Afghan (these two are basically forts in the middle of nowhere, manned by no more than 100 soldiers). And the most important - the regional command of NATO/International Security Assistant Force (ISAF) troops - is Italian.

Only in the first two months of 2009, "hostile acts" against Westerners - chiefly car bombs and improvised explosive devices - in this "Italian" zone around Herat were up by 50%. General Paolo Serra commands a multinational force of only 3,000 men (half of them Italian) who are charged to control an area the size of northern Italy.

Only 600 of these - Italian and Spanish - are actually soldiers. Total forces in the area number 10,000 men - including American and Afghan soldiers and 1,000 Afghan policemen. Everyone familiar with the war theater remembers that during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad the Soviets had 10 times more men - with subsequent well-known results.

The best roads in Afghanistan are in the Herat region - because of Iranian investment; after all this used to be a very important satrapy of the Persian empire. The border at Eslam Qal'eh is only a 40-minute drive from Herat. The whole region is absolutely strategic for Iran. It straddles a New Silk Road. Iran wants Central Asian trade and commerce - from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - flowing to Iranian ports instead of Pakistani ports.

And then there's the all-encompassing Pipelineistan angle. Iran - as well as Russia - has no interest whatsoever in seeing the construction of the perennially troubled, US-backed, $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline that would cross western Afghanistan east of Herat and advance south through Taliban-controlled territory towards Pakistani Balochistan province.

So no wonder the Iranian secret service is absolutely ubiquitous. And its best ally in the region is none other than legendary anti-Soviet mujahid warlord Ishmail Khan - with whom President Hamid Karzai in Kabul has been clashing virtually non-stop since 2002.

For the Italians, the black - not olive - oil in the pizza is not Iran, but the "Taliban", a true portmanteau word. In an ultra-remote base in Bala Murghah, a village very close to the Turkmenistan border in what is now Taliban-controlled territory, the Italians' security perimeter varies from a mere 500 meters to 1.5 kilometers. If they stay inside, they are protected by the village, controlled by - who else - a former mujahid. If they venture outside, they are at the mercy of the "lions" - a joke referring to the Colosseum days of the Roman Empire.

Any "Taliban" foot soldier is worth $5 a day. Anybody can assemble a private army. Anybody with good tribal connections can make the very profitable career move from tribal chief to drug warlord.

And that brings us to Qulum Yahya Sia Shoon.

The Italians are virtually encircled. There's a very small base in Farah, in the homonymous province, south of Herat. South of Farah, Taliban groups fleeing American air power are encroaching. North of Herat the region is infested with pro-Taliban smugglers. And in Guzara - halfway between Herat and the Iranian border - is a new Western public enemy number one, the flamboyant Qulum Yahya Sia Shoon, the former, anti-inflation mayor of Herat who, after losing a political battle, did an about-face and became - what else? - a crime boss.

He's not with the Taliban - whom he used to fight - but he's not with the doomed Karzai's people in Kabul either. He used to be an Ishmail Khan faithful - until he turned against his master. So this means he's his own man, with his own private agenda (and militia), who wants no interference from foreigners. Virtually everyone in the region knows where he's hiding. But he always eludes capture - a source of endless puzzlement for General Paolo Serra.

So in this enormous expanse, Westerners are confronted with vast no-government zones; villages totally controlled by tribal clans; the web of the tribes themselves; the various shura (tribal councils) composed by a web of cross-marriages; a web of enemies; and chiefly local warlords enjoying very good relations with the Taliban. This Mafia-style controlled territory with Godfathers aplenty is not too dissimilar from Sicily or the region around Naples controlled by the Camorra.

"Local economy" means opium and heroin produced in Helmand and Nimruz provinces that have to go through Herat before crossing to Iran and Turkmenistan and then to Europe. Hence a phenomenal cast of local characters including opium smugglers, human traffickers, kidnappers, mercenaries working for the Taliban and even a few, very fanatic, hardcore Sunni Islamists. Being "for" or "against" Kabul under these circumstances is a mere detail. Pragmatism trumps ideology. After all, the Afghan war in its various incarnations has been raging for 30 years virtually non-stop.

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here's to praying for divine intervention.