Morality Play

I love Michael Yon in a strictly platonic sort of way.  I mean, I don’t know if he’s a sloppy kisser, if that’s what you’re thinking.

But even if I love the lug I’ve got to tell you that he’s driving me crazy.  He persists in pestering me with nonsense, and I think he’s doing it on purpose.

In describing his stellar photo essay yesterday, he made another goofy reference to the unfolding terror assaults in Kabul:  “The attacks meant practically nothing from a military perspective but they garnered much press. We’ve seen this unfold many times in many places. Another case of little bang, big media.”

I’m going to keep saying it until Mike gets the point:  Quit splitting the “military” from the “psychological,” as if there’s a difference between the two when it comes to Taliban strategies.

Instead, think of the audiences — both inside Kabul and, thanks to a global media,  worldwide — as centers of gravity to be seized, much as an army would take a capital or other vital strategic terrain.

In this case, the various Taliban are taking psychological turf through the use of  daring propaganda of the deed events that now culminate during three-week cycles of violence.

This will continue to be the case so long as the large underground militias (often roped together under the title of “Taliban,” although they can become fratricidal in close quarters) continue to compete for control of certain things:   The capital’s financial services, slices of the fat economic development pie in a rapidly overheating marketplace, corrupt officials and the drug trade, a fetid nexus that continues to drive much of the violence in and near Kabul.

As I often like to tell reporters who (inexplicably) call me for advice about covering violence:  Think like a terrorist.

This goes for Mike, too.

So let’s do it.

*****

I was driving to DC to waste an afternoon at Iraq’s embassy when I heard the initial descriptions of the Kabul raid on the BBC.  From what I could gather from the radio and other outlets, it sounded like a highly coordinated series of assaults that attacked, in turn, the Abdul Haq roundabout, several western consulates in the Shashdarak and Wazir Akbar Khan districts and the offices of the Afghan Border Police and National Police along the Deh Mazang and Darulaman roads in the western slice of the city.

I’m sure that description has been better articulated today, but I immediately suspected the Haqqani Network as the most likely candidate for what really should be viewed as a morality play scripted through tracers, RPGs and IEDs across the city, which we should see as a stage.

“Carl,” you say, “What do you mean by a ‘morality play?’”

You should view propaganda of the deed events expertly unleashed by terrorists in order to electrify an entire city as you would any other dramatic narrative.  There are actors and directors; twists in plot and special effects; the melodrama of rocket blasts, explosions and rifle cracks; even a live audience that heard the gunplay continue throughout the evening.

This sort of live dramatic presentation can best be compared to a play in general and specifically the allegorical presentation that teaches through its very method of entertainment.

In other words, the morality play, a drama that features broad characters symbolizing human vices and virtues and forces an audience to mull stark choices between possible futures, tailoring their thinking and conduct accordingly.

The staging for yesterday’s particularly bloody morality play was quite elaborate, having required Taliban commando teams to blueprint a lethal caper across much of the city; finance their cells and pay off corrupt security and political officials; stockpile arms and ammunition; rehearse the assaults; infiltrate Kabul’s absurdly-titled “Ring of Steel” checkpoint system; and then hold off Afghan and NATO forces for many hours.

But the message really wasn’t complex and can be summed up in a sentence:  Martyrs attack foreign occupiers and puppet government who couldn’t stop this assault and won’t halt the next.

Which is pretty much how the Quetta Shura’s media outreach framed it in two press releases that were broadly true even if several fibs arrived inside them, which is typical for the Taliban media department (even if honesty also doesn’t really matter).

*****

In reading the copy filed by Kabul’s ink-stained wretches yesterday, I’m not sure they fully quoted CNAS terrorism analyst, beard aficionado and Lego collector Andrew Exum.

Exum, in those reports, found the latest attack “unprecedented.”

Just my opinion — and one Andrew probably shares — but there have been plenty of precedents for all the elements of yesterday’s staged drama.  That’s sort of what the Afghan Analysts Network was getting at when it entitled an initial report on the Sept. 13 terrorism “Another Longest Day” — to the point that the brief  noted the attacks not only were precedented but could’ve been predicted.

Unlike Andrew, I’d argue that yesterday’s morality play actually proved less dramatic than the Intercontinental Hotel raid, an attack that could be seen throughout the city and which was made more spectacular by NATO helicopters strafing the rooftop with tracers.

The only thing that seemed all that different was the duration of yesterday’s drama — 20 hours to kill 27 people (these numbers continue to change).  And I suspect that the reason it dragged out so long this time was because NATO commandos and choppers did less  to quickly end the mayhem, forcing the Afghan security forces to deal with the problem themselves.

And, well, that took some time.  Had the Afghan security forces proved more competent the raid would’ve been less interesting because it would’ve been a mere interlude, not an all day affair.  But you already know that.  I wouldn’t doubt if the Haqqanis (or whomever) counted on the lackluster performance of the ANA and ANP to prolong the drama, a plot twist that they might have ensured by bombing near the police buildings, too.

The reason why I felt the Haqqanis and not Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e Islami pulled it off is because they’ve established some precedents for that sort of urban melodrama that some seem to now think is unprecedented.

In fact, I’d say that the attacks are becoming routine and we should expect one about every month, which seems to be the time the insurgents need to gather volunteers, finance and plan the project and then rehearse it.

These dramas also are likely to continue evolving in complexity, if not lethality.  That they’re unfurling without warnings from our spies tells me that the insurgents have plenty of time, money and connections in the capital to not only plan the attacks but also to do so without seriously fretting that they’ll ever be compromised.

So I can’t share Andrew’s wishy-washy take in today’s FP, even if I think he was about 95 percent right overall.

Exum seemed to broadly hint that the Taliban (take your pick) might be in the death throes of organized resistance, following military reversals in the south before then suggesting that the opposite also could be true.

First, I’m a bit hesitant to declare that several major insurgencies spanning two nations and a decade of constant combat with the U.S. and Afghan forces are likely to disappear anytime soon.

Rather, I would suggest that one might more profitably discuss how these militias are changing, and why.

Instead of being stopped in the south, one might say that the various Taliban have expanded to the nation’s heartland.

The major Taliban militias have come to Kabul not because they’re necessarily defeated elsewhere but because they’ve found softer resistance in the central districts surrounding the capital – where they’ve erected shadow governments preserved by a highly effective assassination program against the regime.

The gangs simply want to exploit what the city has to offer:  Corrupt officials who will collude with them, a drug hub that ships opiates worldwide and a financial center that seems to spout an unending fountain of development dollars.

The Kabul bombings yesterday feed off all of that.  They’re the blood-soaked version of Afghan infomercials, telling the people to prepare for the day when NATO leaves and someone will be the top dog in the oligarchy’s pack of narco-criminals, semi-legit businessmen and politicos capable of shaking down international institutions and NGOs.

Hamid Karzai and ISAF exit stage right?  Well, I’m not a wagering man and I harbor no special powers of necromancy that might predict the future post 2013.

All I know is that like all plays, this one might not have a happy ending.

Tags: Andrew Exum, Kabul, Michael Yon, terrorist attacks