Thread: The lost history of Helmand...

Folks

just seen this long and detailed piece on the recent(ish) history of Helmand that I have to say I didn't know about.

It is written by Adam Curtis, who has made some, ahem controversial documentaries, but it makes for very interesting reading.

When you look at footage of the fighting in Helmand today everyone assumes it is being played out against an ancient background of villages and fields built over the centuries.

This is not true. If you look beyond the soldiers, and into the distance, what you are really seeing are the ruins of one of the biggest technological projects the United States has ever undertaken. Its aim was to use science to try and change the course of history and produce a modern utopia in Afghanistan. The city of Lashkar Gah was built by the Americans as a model planned city, and the hundreds of miles of canals that the Taliban now hide in were constructed by the same company that built the San Francisco Bay Bridge and Cape Canaveral.

It might be that I'm a numpty and everyone else knew this stuff, but I thought other ARRSErs might be interested...

I was thinking about the waterways/ditches just yesterday funnily enough. Impressed by them - uniform and very effective (not just for cover from fire but also - crazily - for agriculture) and wandering who invested in them.

well its true, the dam in the area was built by the Yanks as well in the 50's i think.

didnt know about the waterways though, i kind of assumed a desert living civilisation would figure that out a bit quicker

As it is a rainy weekend and I have already walked the hound, this thread deserves to be bumped back into view for further debate. I have watched previous Adam Curtis stuff such as The Trap and have enjoyed them immensely. This blog is similarly fascinating.

When you read through the history of the USA's previous engagement in Helmand you get a growing sense of them having long-standing unfinished business there. Rightly or wrongly, Adam Curtis gives the impression that there is more to their current involvement than the desire to defeat the Taliban or reduce the drugs trade. The sense of having to prove an ideaological and economic model, that has failed once during the Cold War, is palpable. There are probably lots of old men on the former USSR who are enjoying a tremendous sense of schadenfreude on so many levels.

Collective farming anyone?

Originally Posted by Mr_Logic

As it is a rainy weekend and I have already walked the hound, this thread deserves to be bumped back into view for further debate. I have watched previous Adam Curtis stuff such as The Trap and have enjoyed them immensely. This blog is similarly fascinating.

When you read through the history of the USA's previous engagement in Helmand you get a growing sense of them having long-standing unfinished business there. Rightly or wrongly, Adam Curtis gives the impression that there is more to their current involvement than the desire to defeat the Taliban or reduce the drugs trade. The sense of having to prove an ideaological and economic model, that has failed once during the Cold War, is palpable. There are probably lots of old men on the former USSR who are enjoying a tremendous sense of schadenfreude on so many levels.

Collective farming anyone?

It is also grey and grim here in Belfast, so I've been reading his earlier posts. Fantastic reading, including stuff straight out of Flashman . Well worth a look

The author James Mitchner wrote his novel "Caravans" while working on this project

Originally Posted by Schleswig-Holstein

Folks

just seen this long and detailed piece on the recent(ish) history of Helmand that I have to say I didn't know about.

It is written by Adam Curtis, who has made some, ahem controversial documentaries, but it makes for very interesting reading.
...
It might be that I'm a numpty and everyone else knew this stuff, but I thought other ARRSErs might be interested...

Read about the Quixotic American project of Lashkar Gah before but it's a very good piece.

...
Faced with this the engineers' doubts about the project were buried and forgotten. Massive loans poured in from America and two giant dams were built plus 300 miles of big canals.

But more problems emerged. Everything became waterlogged which led to weeds. Salt kept on suddenly appearing. And the reservoirs and the canals made the water cooler which meant that there couldn't be any vineyards and orchards any longer. In future they could only grow grain.

But again all the doubts and worries were overwhelmed because the American technocrats and politicians had become fascinated by a new idea. It was called "Modernization Theory". It said that there was a way of using science and technology not just to stop countries like Afghanistan going communist, but to actually transform them into democratic capitalist societies like America.
...
In 1969 the Afghan government and the American planners finally promised "the year of yield take-off".

But there was a drought. The Helmand river became a trickle. The main reservoir created by the project dried up completely. Wheat yields were the lowest in the world - 4 bushels to the acre - Iowa's yield was 180 bushels to the acre. This created a massive food crisis which began to destabilize the government and the King.

There were student strikes. Many of the student leaders came from the engineering department which was now full of communist and Maoist cells. Then one of the communist students defected to a new group of revolutionaries - the Islamists. He was called Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, and he became notorious for his violence. Some say he went round throwing acid in the faces of women without headscarves, but he denies this and says that if he lived in the west he would sue for libel. He was given a nickname - The Engineer.

In 1972 parliament was suspended and a year later the Prime Minister Daoud joined with the army to mount a coup that got rid of the King. It was the beginning of the chaos that would lead the country into anarchy and disaster. And the end of the dreams of the Helmand Valley Project. The Americans began to leave, abandoning a vast infrastructure that started to decay.
...

You could look back and think "The fools!" trying to create Mall America in Helmand as a bulwark against The Reds and leaving behind them a salty soiled desert only fit for poppy growth with the intelligentsia trending Commie and stalked by the future: creatures not predicted "Modernization Theory" Islamist goons like Gulbaddin Hekmatyar.

Then I halt and consider the whole anthropology weaponized, societal re-engineering, nation building thing and the unintended consequences of our actions in FATA...

"The craft of his engines surpasseth his dreams" seems an apt quote now, perhaps even more so than the first time round.

This article is drawing on the work of Nick Cullather. His From New Deal to New Frontier in Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State from 02 makes interesting reading, the old problem of DC's dubious alliance with Islamabad and Pashtun national asperations surfaces.

...
To the Eisenhower administration, Morrison Knudsen’s outpost in Kandahar was the
scientific frontier of American power in Central Asia, guarding the high passes between risk and
credibility. The company was “one of the chief influences which maintain Afghan connections
with the West,� Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed. “Its departure would create a
vacuum which the Soviets would be anxious to fill.�82 He wanted to preserve Afghanistan’s
buffer role, but the perennial provocations along the Durand Line conjured scenarios in
Dulles’s mind in which a Soviet-backed Afghan army attacked U.S.-allied Pakistan—another
Korea, this time beyond the reach of U.S. air and naval power. Daoud’s Pashtun extremism led
his government to welcome Soviet arms while instigating mob attacks on Pakistani consulates
and border posts. In 1955, Dulles dissuaded Pakistan from a plan to overthrow the royal
family, while his brother Allen, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, suggested using against
Daoud the same methods that had recently worked to depose Mossadeq in Iran.83 The United
States wanted to separate the dual ambitions of Pashtun nationalism, preserving Daoud’s
modernization drive while disposing of the Pashtunistan issue.
...
Official and unofficial post-mortems identified misperceptions at the root of the
project’s failures. Lloyd Baron, an economist given access to the U.S. aid mission’s records in
the 1970s, noted a “development myopia� that identified water scarcity as the sole obstacle to
agricultural abundance. Planners subordinated complex social and political problems within the
more manageable engineering problem of overcoming the water constraint.137 An official
USAID review in 1983 concluded that the project suffered from a commitment/leverage
paradox. The perception that HAVA was a “donor project� relieved the Afghan government
of ultimate responsibility and left the United States without influence to demand corrective
steps.
...
The goals and effects of the project were never viewed outside the distorting mirror of
modernization theory. Pastoralists produced the country’s primary export and most of its
foreign exchange revenue, and yet HAVA’s plan to convert them into wheat farmers was never
seriously questioned. The outcomes that were hoped for—tax earnings, political stability,
creation of a middle class, resolution of the Pashtunistan issue, national prestige—were seen as
concomitants of eventual developmental success, rather than as goals to be pursued directly.
Precautionary moves were easily brushed aside by the same assurance that time and effort
would bring improv ement. Belief in development imposes, according to Gilbert Rist, a “social
constraint� on the expression of shared doubts.142
If illusions doomed the project they also created and sustained it. HAVA’s evolutionary
advantage was an ability to take on the protective coloration of a succession of modernizing
myths. The disastrous effects of dam-building were visible in 1949 and only became more
obvious as the project grew. But camouflaged by dreams of Pashtun ascendancy and invisible
American influence, HAVA was as resilient as modernization theory itself, able to survive
repeated debunkings while shedding the blame and the memory of failure. Proponents of a
fresh nation-building venture in Afghanistan, unaware of the results of the last one, have
resurrected its imaginings. Development aid to the new Pashtun-led government in Kabul,
supporters claim, will provide a buffer against terrorism and “prevent future Osama bin Ladens
from arising.�143 The centerpiece of the modernization effort, a writer for the New York Times
suggests, should be “dams to provide water for irrigation.�

See also Damming Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State by Nick Cullather

Originally Posted by Schleswig-Holstein

Folks

just seen this long and detailed piece on the recent(ish) history of Helmand that I have to say I didn't know about.

It is written by Adam Curtis, who has made some, ahem controversial documentaries, but it makes for very interesting reading.


It might be that I'm a numpty and everyone else knew this stuff, but I thought other ARRSErs might be interested...

Truly fascinating, Schleswig. Since I'm not in the UK, I unfortunately cannot watch the embedded videos along with the blog, so it feels like I'm missing much context and colour. But it's still a very interesting piece that I had no idea about.

Originally Posted by alib

"The craft of his engines surpasseth his dreams" seems an apt quote now, perhaps even more so than the first time round.

This article is drawing on the work of Nick Cullather. His From New Deal to New Frontier in Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State from 02 makes interesting reading, the old problem of DC's dubious alliance with Islamabad and Pashtun national asperations surfaces.

Interesting stuff! I wonder inf Gordon and Tony ever got around to reading it ?

Fascinating read, especially about Lashkar Gar. I can remember looking at my map of the place in 2007 and thinking all the streets and suburbs arranged in blocks looked exactly what I imagined the map of an American city to look like. Flash to fcuking bang or what......!