{"id":102,"date":"2010-06-03T05:15:29","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T09:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/?p=102"},"modified":"2010-06-16T05:10:25","modified_gmt":"2010-06-16T09:10:25","slug":"seth-jones-on-tribes-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/03\/seth-jones-on-tribes-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Seth Jones on Tribes in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Foreign  Affairs<\/em><\/p>\n<hr size=\"3\" \/>May\/June 2010<\/p>\n<p>REVIEW ESSAY<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/66350\/seth-g-jones\/it-takes-the-villages\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/66350\/seth-g-jones\/it-takes-the-villages<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h1>It Takes the Villages<\/h1>\n<p>Bringing Change From Below in Afghanistan<\/p>\n<p>Seth G. Jones<br \/>\n<em>SETH G. JONES is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and the author of In the  Graveyard of Empires: America&#8217;s War in Afghanistan. In 2009, he served as a Plans  Officer and Adviser to the Commanding General of U.S. Special Operations Forces  in Afghanistan. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>I met Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, twice in 2009  and was quickly drawn to his unassuming demeanor and erudition. His  jet-black beard and round spectacles gave him the aura of a soft-spoken professor, not a battle-hardened guerrilla fighter who had first tasted war at the age of  15. Zaeef told me about his childhood in southern Afghanistan, the Soviet  invasion, his life with the Taliban, and the three years he spent in prison in  Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Bay, Cuba. What was particularly striking was his contempt for the  United States and what he regarded as its myopic understanding of Afghanistan. &#8220;How long has America been in Afghanistan?&#8221; Zaeef asked rhetorically. &#8220;And how much do Americans know about Afghanistan and its people? Do  they understand its culture, its tribes, and its population? I am afraid they  know very little.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zaeef is largely correct. In fact, U.S. Major General Michael Flynn, deputy  chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan, echoed this point in early 2010: &#8220;Eight years into the war in Afghanistan,&#8221; Flynn wrote in a poignant unclassified paper, &#8220;the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied  forces operate and the people they seek to persuade.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->MORE:\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/66350\/seth-g-jones\/it-takes-the-villages\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/66350\/seth-g-jones\/it-takes-the-villages<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foreign Affairs May\/June 2010 REVIEW ESSAY http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/66350\/seth-g-jones\/it-takes-the-villages It Takes the Villages Bringing Change From Below in Afghanistan Seth G. Jones SETH G. JONES is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and the author of In the Graveyard of Empires: America&#8217;s War in Afghanistan. In 2009, he served as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/03\/seth-jones-on-tribes-in-afghanistan\/\" class=\"btn btn-link continue-link\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-counterterrorism","category-terrorist-groups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}