Book Review - The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban

The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban

Written by: Sarah Chayes,

St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 2006, 386 pp.

Reviewed by: Lieutenant Commander Glenn Kerr

The Australian Government has been committed to military involvement in Afghanistan since the aftermath of the al-Qaeda attacks on the continental United States on 11 September 2001. Despite our strong military presence, Afghanistan is a country largely unknown to most Australians, peopled by Mujahideen freedom fighters, Taliban religious zealots, and heavily veiled women. By portraying the events unfolding in Kandahar province from November 2001 to June 2005, Chayes provides insights into the post-Taliban Afghanistan and its people.

As a correspondent for America’s National Public Radio, Chayes entered Kandahar in December 2001, after its liberation from the Taliban, remaining until January 2002. In April that year she took up a position, at the urging of Aziz Karzai (uncle of President Hamid Karzai), as field director of the non-government organisation Afghans for Civil Society. This fundraising organisation was founded by members of the Karzai family in Baltimore in 1998, and Chayes was instrumental in setting up field operations in Afghanistan to utilise the accumulated funds. Kandahar was selected as the base for operations due to its symbolic value as the former capital of Afghanistan, and its key location, controlling one of two strategic roads linking Iran with India and Central Asia. Chayes remained until late 2004, taking a break for health reasons, before returning to Kandahar in May 2005 to set up a local agribusiness.

This is not a dry, scholarly history of modern Afghanistan. Chayes writes in an easy conversational style, from her personal viewpoint as a participant in events of the time, and as a confidant of powerful men in the Afghanistan national and provincial governments. She is a keen observer of life, and a great strength of the book is the sympathetic portrayal of the ordinary people of Kandahar and their daily challenges. The book is laid out in a mostly chronological fashion. In a fascinating excursus, Chayes provides a brief history of Afghanistan, from its Persian creation myth, through the invasions starting with Alexander the Great and continuing to the present day. While sometimes difficult to disentangle ethnic branches, tribes and other divisions (a glossary would have been helpful), the reader gains an insight into why Afghanistan is such an intractable problem to foreign powers.

In particular, Chayes refers to the principle of yaghestan, a Persian term referring to a land of rebellious, incorrigibly ungovernable people. From ancient times, the Afghanis have gathered into a semi-cohesive confederation, but with tribal ties to ancestral territory and clanship remaining stronger than loyalty to any national government. When invaded, the confederation dissolves and the tribal groups slip away from the enemy, engaging in yaghestan, until exhaustion eventually leads the invader to withdraw. Control of the capital, therefore, does not mean control of the nation, as the tribes pull back into the inhospitable hills to resist the invader, engaging in guerrilla warfare and various forms of banditry and extortion to generate income.

The centrality of tribalism comes through strongly in Chayes’ book, and the difficulty this poses for modern peace operations. It is vital when planning for operations to understand the difficulties inherent in this social and cultural construct, and that simplistic solutions are unlikely to be successful. It is not sufficient to topple a warlord and expect that a transplanted democratic capitalism based on a homogenous liberal society will thrive, where ancient loyalties take precedence over recent agreements by externally imposed national governments. Perceived favouritism toward one tribal group can easily undermine the entire peace effort, resulting in growing opposition to foreign forces, where at the outset local people welcomed liberation from an oppressive internal regime. Chayes also points to the need to engage the local people, rather than remaining aloof in fortified bases, to develop credibility and ground level support.

Much of the book is a panegyric to the Kandahar police chief Muhammed Akrem Khakrezwai, a professional soldier and veteran of fighting against the Soviets and the Taliban. Chayes depicts him as an honest and dedicated advocate of the rule of law; in counterpoint to the corrupt Gul Agha Shirzai who, with the purported connivance of American military and CIA representatives, pushed aside Mullah Naqib, selected by President Karzai to be the governor of Kandahar. When Shirzai took the governorship, President Karzai gave control of the province’s security to Mullah Naqib’s Alokozai tribe to preserve the balance of power, with Akrem receiving the police department. Such is her regard for Akrem that Chayes considered him the most sophisticated political thinker in Afghanistan, the only person who could unite the country, and a potential future president of Afghanistan. Akrem was killed in a Kandahar mosque bombing in 2005.

Although Chayes displays a passionate dedication to Afghanistan, the reader should exercise caution in accepting all of her claims at face value. At several points Chayes refers to the disastrous British withdrawal from Kabul in 1842 during the First Afghan War, stating that only one survivor of the retreat returned to India. While Dr Brydon was the only survivor to return directly, the majority of at least 100 other British prisoners returned after peace was declared.¹ This is not to understate the magnitude of the disaster, for 18,000 British and Indian soldiers and camp followers were killed or died of exposure, but popular British military history highlights the survival of Captain Souter of the 44th Regiment, who preserved the regimental colour following his capture, eventually returning it to the regiment. This does point to a tendency to journalistic licence and narrow research. For this reason some claims in the book, such as Pakistani fostering of border strife to destabilise Afghanistan, the assassination of Akrem by Pakistani intelligence, and Shirzai working for Pakistan, should be considered critically by the reader. Likewise, the reader might ponder whether Akrem was as righteous, or Shirzai as villainous, as Chayes claims.

The book is recommended to those wishing to gain a broader understanding of the culture and history of Afghanistan, within the limitations of a relatively narrow personal perspective and geographic focus.

Endnote

1  Twenty-two officers (including the Commander in Chief Major General Elphinstone who died in captivity), thirty-seven other ranks, nineteen wives and twenty-two children. Statistics on surviving Indian troops and families were not readily available. According to ‘Reminiscences of the 44th in 1842’ in Notes and Queries, Second Series, Vol. 4, July–December 1857, when General Pollock reached Kabul in September 1842, three officers, three sergeants, two corporals, two drummers, twenty-eight privates and two boys of the 44th Regiment were still living.