WHAT
WOULD THE WORLD PEACE FORCE DO?
Disarm
All Side in Afghanistan
SYNOPSIS:
If the World Peace Force existed at any level of
strength,
its basic response to the problems in Afghanistan
would be to disarm all of
the warring factions as much as possible
and then allow whatever political process might emerge.
This would be in stark contrast to what the United
States of America
in trying to do in the first decades of the 21st century.
The United States is attempting to establish a Western-looking
democracy in Kabul.
But this externally-supported government is not popular with the
people;
and the central government has little real control over the countryside
outside of Kabul.
OUTLINE:
1.
AFGHANISTAN IS NOT A GOOD CANDIDATE
FOR BECOMING A UNIFIED NATION-STATE.
2.
WHAT WOULD THE WORLD PEACE FORCE DO
WITH A DISORGANIZED AREA RUN BY CRIMINAL
WARLORDS?
3.
THE WORLD PEACE FORCE WOULD
ROOT OUT TERRORIST TRAINING CAMPS.
4.
PRISONS TO CONTROL AND REHABILITATE FORMER TERRORISTS.
5.
HOW THE PROPOSED ACTIVITIES OF THE WORLD PEACE FORCE
DIFFER FROM THE PRESENT BEHAVIOR OF THE U.S.
MILITARY FORCES.
6.
SUMMARY: THE WORLD PEACE FORCE WOULD BRING PEACE ON EARTH.
WHAT
WOULD THE WORLD PEACE FORCE DO?
Disarm
All Side in Afghanistan
by
James Leonard Park
1. AFGHANISTAN IS NOT A
GOOD
CANDIDATE
FOR BECOMING A UNIFIED
NATION-STATE.
Because of the physical terrain and the political
history
of the land now called Afghanistan,
there is little likelihood that what will emerge out of the present
situation
that will be a recognizable modern, unified country.
Instead, the actual reality on the ground
is that
local warlords are the
government.
Sometimes they are engaged in the poppy trade
—creating
opium and its
derivatives—
which is the main cash crop of Afghanistan.
Whatever their political ideology,
the warlords of Afghanistan have to
continue to eat
and allow the people of their own areas to make a living.
This cash economy seems likely to be
heroin produced for the illegal markets of
the West.
To the extent that there is any local organized behavior in rural
Afghanistan,
it is the growing, harvesting, refining, & export of the products
of
the poppy.
The daily lives of many of the rural people
are organized around this form of
agriculture and international trade.
The central government of Afghanistan in Kabul
is opposed to the
main cash crop of the country.
So which side is going to win in that conflict?
Unless the people living in the countryside
develop some other ways of supporting themselves,
they will continue to defy
the central government
and produce what has proven to be a very successful cash crop.
If the various peoples of Afghanistan want to
continue their way of life,
they will be at odds with any Western-supported central government.
They will fight, when necessary, to preserve their economic interests.
The people in the countryside are well-armed already
—in
order to protect their way of making a living and their trade routes.
And, for the most part, they do not favor a central government,
since they rightly fear that any central government
would outlaw their
way of making a living.
How the cash economy of Afghanistan might change in
the future
is beyond the scope of our concern here.
It is uncertain what a World Peace Force would do—if
anything—
about the products of the poppy in Afghanistan.
And the political future of Afghanistan is also
uncertain.
If the weapons of war are removed from all side in Afghanistan,
after 100 years, a completely different situation will have emerged.
Afghanistan might not be a unified country,
but however the people have organized themselves
after everyone has been disarmed
will probably be better than the present situation.
It might take 100 years for the World Peace Force to
emerge.
But at least we can begin to imagine
what the world would look like
if there were no further armed conflicts.
The next generations of the peoples of Afghanistan
are not doomed to
repeat the chaos of the past.
2. WHAT WOULD THE WORLD
PEACE
FORCE DO
WITH A DISORGANIZED AREA RUN BY CRIMINAL
WARLORDS?
The founding philosophy of the World Peace Force
includes not interfering
in the internal affairs of any group of people.
It is not the role of the World Peace Force to enforce any drug laws.
Therefore, the World Peace Force would keep its hands off the drug
trade.
But the presence of the World Peace Force in
Afghanistan
would first and foremost disarm
all people who have weapons.
Wherever lethal weapons are found in the hands of the people,
such weapons will be taken away—with
force if necessary.
When the general population is disarmed,
local police forces will emerge
from whatever political structures the
people create.
Perhaps the first police forces will follow the lines of tribal loyalty:
The kinship structures of any given locality
will form the background
of law-and-order.
At first, these local centers of authority and order
might be very small
compared to the whole map of Afghanistan.
There might be hundreds
of local centers of power and order.
And there would be no attempt by the World Peace Force
to force local governments to cooperate with one another.
When localities see that the advantages of
cooperation
outweigh the problems,
they will find it in their best interests
to organize structures for
the common good.
Because the means of mass communication already exist,
such cooperation is likely to emerge
much more quickly than in
Medieval Europe.
At first, commerce might be their priority:
They cannot continue their business
of raising and selling the products
of the poppy
unless they have an organized system of getting their products
to the ultimate market, which pays them in cash.
As criminal gangs in the West are part of the
distribution system,
so the originators of the products will have to cooperate with one
another
in order to get their products to the ultimate consumers.
The role of the World Peace Force in all of this
is merely to make sure that
people do not kill one another.
The internal authorities that emerge in Afghanistan
will have to make the ultimate decisions about growing poppies.
If other ways of making a living in that harsh land emerge,
then the local forces of law-and-order
might support such new ways of
life.
It would not be the role of the World Peace Force to
establish democracy.
Nor would the WPF work to root out corruption.
Political and economic corruption will exist
wherever there is a
power-structure.
Warlords rule in their own self-interest
and in the interest of their
favored family members.
Whenever large sums of money pass thru government hands,
some of that money will stick to the hands
of some of the bureaucrats
in charge.
And whenever bureaucrats can require payment for their services,
the people who want anything from the government will pay.
And even some relatively peaceful countries
like Saudi Arabia
are controlled by a ruling class
that has no other claim to rule than
the accident of birth.
Some people are born to rule and other are born to serve.
And the World Peace Force would not attempt
to change such monarchies,
for example.
But wherever the ruling
class keeps itself in power
by force of arms,
then universal disarmament will change that dynamic.
The forms of government might be changed
if there is no longer any
military class supporting one group or
another.
The women of any country, such as Afghanistan,
might see that fewer of
their children die
as the result of better systems of public order.
Peaceful cooperation might replace armed strife among tribes,
especially if the World Peace Force succeeds
in taking away all of the weapons of war.
3. THE WORLD PEACE FORCE
WOULD
ROOT OUT TERRORIST TRAINING CAMPS.
One of the basic reasons that the U.S. military
forces
took over Afghanistan in 2001
was the fact that al Qaeda did its basic training in wild areas of
Afghanistan.
Thousands of 'Muslim' boys and men were trained to kill Westerners.
Afghanistan was then under the control of the Taliban,
a radical, political form of narrow-minded 'Islam'.
There are still thousands of members of the Taliban
fighting in Afghanistan.
In fact, they control more ground
than the central government in Kabul.
We should remember that the Taliban controlled the whole country in
2001.
But now there are other centers of economic, political, & military
power
—some
closely allied with the central government and some more distant.
If and when there is a World Peace Force,
one of its major responsibilities will be prevent terrorism like
9-11-2001.
Whatever 'governments' control the land of
Afghanistan,
the World Peace Force will be there looking for terrorists.
Large numbers of people cannot be hidden indefinitely.
They all need food, water, and other supplies.
So following the pathways of supply will lead to any militant training
camps.
The peace-loving people of Afghanistan will help the
World Peace Force
find and destroy all forms of military training.
The only forms of military force then permitted on the Earth
will be the men and women of the World Peace Force itself.
Even the central government of Afghanistan—if
there is one—
will NOT be permitted to have any military forces.
Governments will only be permitted to have local police forces,
which will not be equipped or trained
to leave their localities to
fight
in any wars.
For example, local police have no need for tanks, ships, or planes.
Local police have no need for any weapons of mass death.
And if the World Peace Force
needs to be very strong
in Afghanistan
for many years,
then large numbers of soldiers from other countries
will be recruited by the World Peace Force
to keep all of the peoples of Afghanistan from killing one another.
(And Afghanis who want to be soldiers
can work for the World Peace Force in other countries.)
If Afghanistan presents a particularly difficult
case for disarmament,
then hundreds of thousands of the soldiers of the World Peace Force
can be deployed in Afghanistan
until they have investigated every corner
of that land.
And good on-going detective work
(with the
cooperation of all peace-loving people)
will prevent any
new militant camps from being created.
The World Peace Force will already have conducted
such sweeps of other countries,
where sometimes small groups of men (mostly men)
are arming and
training themselves
for real and imagined conflicts in the future.
In the most civilized countries of the world,
such as the United States
of American,
the local police will cooperate with the World Peace Force
to root out para-military groups of any ideological bent.
Para-military groups will be
outlawed everywhere on Earth.
4. PRISONS TO CONTROL AND
REHABILITATE FORMER TERRORISTS.
When people are arrested for violating the peace of
the world,
they will be put into safe prisons,
where they will stay for the rest of their lives
—or
until they can prove that they have recovered
from the original belief system
that got them involved with
militant movements.
They will prove their conversion to peaceful persons
by giving useful information about their former comrades in arms,
which will permit even more militants and terrorists to be taken into
custody.
Since failed states are the most likely places for
terrorists to hide,
such states will be given special attention by the World Peace Force,
looking especially carefully for training facilities for terrorists
and any
other military operations.
No country in the world will be permitted to have armed forces.
No private armies will be able to train for warfare
—or
any other form
of violence.
The World Peace Force would begin to address the
problems in Afghanistan
by establishing large prisons or prison camps,
which could house all violent people when they are captured.
Prisons would be prepared for thousands
of men.
Some of these prisons would be in Afghanistan and some in Pakistan.
The World Peace Force would not have to ask permission to cross borders.
Beginning with the best estimates of the number of warriors to be
disarmed,
the prisons would be created
before the capture-operations begin.
And the prisons would be expanded
if a larger-than-expected number of former militants are captured.
When capture
is preferred over death,
and when the conditions in the prison camps are known to all,
at least some former
warriors would surrender voluntarily
rather than risk death in the capture-operations of the World Peace
Force.
The less-committed soldiers would give up without a fight.
They would prefer their lives in prison camps to their lives as
wandering warriors.
The World Peace Force would use
peace-keepers who speak the local languages.
And because their only role would be to prevent killing,
they would be welcomed by all peace-loving people in Afghanistan.
The officers of the World Peace Force
would never be regarded as
foreign killers
or as supporters of any particular form of government.
The World Peace Force would not be controlled by any country on Earth.
And the WPF would not enforce any preconceived order or politics.
And when former militants are put into prisons,
there is some possibility that they might be rehabilitated
so that they can re-join whatever peaceful Afghan society emerges.
Peace-loving relatives might help former fighters to become peaceful.
And any fighters originally from other countries
would (once rehabilitated) be allowed to return to their homelands.
And when fighters know that prison rather
than death
is
their destiny when they are caught,
some of them will more readily give up the fight.
Thus by means of prisons instead of instant death,
the total number of armed militants will be steadily reduced
rather than increased
as a result of work of the World Peace Force.
Some of the men fighting for the Taliban do so only
because they are paid.
Surrendering to the World Peace Force for a safe place in prison,
which would include rehabilitation to re-join Afghan society,
might be a good alternative to risking their lives for pay.
Another cyber-sermon
explores the possibility of
religious
prisons for violent 'Muslims'.
All military
forces formerly employed by the central government of Afghanistan
would also be disarmed and demobilized.
Some of these could become officers of local police forces.
But most would return to civilian life.
And some will be rehabilitated in prison camps
until they are prepared to pursue some non-violent way of life.
5. HOW THE PROPOSED
ACTIVITIES
OF THE WORLD PEACE FORCE
DIFFER FROM THE PRESENT BEHAVIOR OF THE U.S.
MILITARY FORCES.
Disarming all sides in Afghanistan
differs sharply from the military methods pursued by the United States
in 2009-2011.
What is wrong with the following picture?
The President of the United
States of American
can single-handedly order
thousands of U.S. soldiers
to go to Afghanistan to fight
on the side of the central government.
Soldiers have been trained to kill 'the enemy'.
And if 'the enemy' cannot be located to be killed,
at least the military occupation of the country
will force 'the enemy' to move
to still-more-remote parts of the countryside.
If and when that becomes impossible,
the people being hunted by the U.S. soldiers
will move to other places on the Earth,
especially neighboring Pakistan.
Some intelligent people in Afghanistan
say that their country has two
enemies at once:
The Taliban, who want
to return Afghanistan
to their form of
law-and-order,
and the American occupiers,
who have a nebulous mission
and who are mainly killed by road-side bombs
simply because many people in Afghanistan
do not want foreign troops on their soil.
How would we American feel
if we had Afghan soldiers patrolling our streets and countryside?
Would we cooperate with soldiers who spoke broken English
and who seemed to have no reason to be present in America?
Many of us would try to kill
them just because they were here,
no matter what 'reasons' they might offer for their presence.
And how would we feel when our friends and relatives
are killed by Afghan soldiers on American soil?
Within the living memory of the oldest residents of
the Earth,
three countries thought it was their right and duty to rule the world:
Germany, Japan, & Italy fought the Second World War
hoped that they would defeat all other countries.
In the eyes of poorly-educated Afghans,
how different does this seem from what they are now experiencing
at the hands of the United States and a few allies?
Does it seem to ordinary people in Afghanistan
that the United States of American is trying to rule their country?
A few generations earlier in world history,
the most advanced nations of the world
felt it was their duty to control the less-developed nations.
So they made colonies
and protectorates of
many defenseless lands.
Can we really explain to the Afghan peoples that the USA
is not engaging in the familiar practice of colonialism or imperialism?
Whatever the political or tribal loyalties,
when any person in Afghanistan is killed by American military actions,
there are dozens of
relatives who therefore hate the foreign
occupiers.
And some of those relatives will join the opposition to the occupation.
Thus, killing Afghan people for eleven years has produced no peace.
And killing even more people
will still bring no peace.
American soldiers will continue to be killed in
Afghanistan
as long as a significant portion of the people regard them as foreign
occupiers.
How can American soldiers be the police
when many Afghans regard them as enemies?
The World Peace Force would deploy only soldier who
speak the local languages.
The peace-loving peoples of Afghanistan would welcome their presence.
Some Afghans would attempt to use the World Peace Force
to control or kill their perceived enemies.
But the World Peace Force would remain neutral
in any and all tribal, political, or personal disputes.
After a few years of occupation by the World Peace
Force,
almost everyone would agree that the order created by such forces
has been good for everyone in Afghanistan.
The various sides who were previously trying to kill one another
would agree that talking
is better than shooting.
And after peace has been established by the World
Peace Force,
then the various factions of Afghanistan would begin to think
of how to create a country where people can live in peace,
where they can conduct their economic lives as they see fit,
and where they can live with their families in a peaceful country.
Instead of trying to impose Western-style democracy
on Afghanistan,
the World Peace Force would just
allow the Afghans to create whatever political order works for them.
On December 1, 2009, U.S. President Obama announced
that he was sending 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan,
bringing the U.S. military presence to about 100,000.
Was this a costly mistake for the USA?
Military methods did not work in the past,
so why attempt to do more of the same?
On June 22, 2011, President Obama announced
that 33,000 troops would be withdrawn over the next two years,
beginning with 10,000 troops withdrawn in the second half of 2011.
23,000 more would be withdrawn by September 2012.
The Taliban are really no threat to the United
States of American.
They merely want to regain control of Afghanistan.
The World Peace Force would not join any side of a civil war.
But al Qaeda is a threat to world peace.
So all the peace-loving people of the world would agree
to put such militants into prisons when they are caught.
Military methods will probably not work against
the religious ideology of radical 'Islam'.
Killing members of
al Qaeda will only serve to swell their ranks
with new militants drawn to the cause by such 'Muslim' martyrdom.
6. SUMMARY: THE WORLD
PEACE
FORCE WOULD BRING PEACE ON EARTH.
Whenever the World Peace Force sends soldiers to any place on Earth,
the killing quickly stops.
Their purpose is not to support any side in a civil war.
They will not give arms to any fighting forces.
In fact, one of the first things the WPF would do
would be to seal the borders
and the airspace
to make sure that no foreign
arms
are delivered to any fighters anywhere in that country.
And the World Peace Force would seek out and destroy
all forms of manufacturing of weapons within the borders.
Because the World Peace Force can go anywhere,
with or without the prior permission of governments,
they can move quickly in response to new information.
And they will have the best spy-equipment available to them,
to help them discover military movements anywhere on planet Earth.
The World Peace Force will disarm the Earth,
beginning with the most obvious violators of the peace.
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent existential philosopher,
living and writing in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
His views are entirely his own
and do not represent the views of any religious or political
organizations.
Much more about him will be discovered on his website:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/
Created
August 5, 2009; Revised 8-13-2009; 10-7-2009; 11-4-2009; 11-28-2009;
12-2-2009; 12-12-2009; 12-14-2009;
8-29-2010; 3-25-2011; 6-23-2011; 6-23-2011; 10-8-2011; 5-4-2012;
8-1-2012