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Afghan soldiers have shot and killed at least 135 of the American servicemen who were training them over the past five years, including three more on Saturday.
But the United States Agency for International Development interviewed large numbers of Afghan young people last year and found them generally to be “disenfranchised, unskilled, uneducated, neglected.” These people, it adds, “are most susceptible to joining the insurgency.”
Actually, however, multiple medical studies over the past nine years indicate that these disaffected young people are less likely to volunteer for the insurgency than they are to join the tens of millions of Afghans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression, perpetual deep anxiety and other debilitating trauma-related mental illnesses that are rife in the country. And these mental illnesses can lead to irrational, violent acts — like killing your trainers.
By some measures Afghans may be the most traumatized people in the world — a development that is thoroughly undercutting the strategies the United States and its allies are using in Afghanistan, even as Western forces are leaving. But to this day, the American military and policymaking community does not seem even to be aware of the problem, and so they’re doing little, if anything, to compensate for it.
Afghans have been at war nearly nonstop for almost 35 years, since the Soviet invasion in 1979. One result of that: The country stands at the very top of the Political Terror Scale, meaning “terror has expanded to the whole population,” the State Department and Amnesty International said in their most recent, joint terror-scale report. And Afghanistan is three spaces shy of top placement on the State Fragility Index, published by the Center for Systemic Peace.
A Journal of the American Medical Association study of nations where wars or insurgencies are under way noted that PTSD results from “an ongoing threat of insecurity” and/or “political terror.” Numerous academic and professional studies note that it’s worse when warfare is ongoing. The studies call this “perpetual war.” That, of course, is Afghanistan.
“What has struck me many times is how few people there can actually remember a time of peace at all,” said Seth Jones, a Rand Corp. associate director who spent years working in Afghanistan for the Defense Department. “There’s a significant number of village leaders who have to deal with depression among village constituents.”
While stationed in Afghanistan, Air Force Col. Erik Goepner said he learned that these environmental factors can lead to severe mental illness — even though to this day, American servicemen receive no training on psychological issues before leaving for Afghanistan. But these mental factors help explain why the war has for so long seemed to be faring so poorly.
“As an American military commander, you want to win,” Goepner noted in an interview. To him, it was clear that even after a decade of warfare, there was to be no “decisive win. And so you look back and ask: Why isn’t it going the way I want it to?”
In part to help find the answer, Goepner began working “with a lot of Afghans” and came away with “the idea that something was going on in the mental head space.”
Psychology was certainly not among his areas of expertise, but over time, he read a number of psychology studies and learned that more than half of Afghans suffer from clinical PTSD. And in some studies, the number afflicted with severe anxiety and clinical depression exceeded 70 percent.
That shouldn’t be surprising given the large number of American soldiers who come home with PTSD after serving there for a year or less. Some experts have likened the 132 so-called green on blue killings to the road rage that some PTSD-stricken American soldiers exhibit, though Jones and others believe Taliban infiltrators are responsible for most of those attacks.
The American Psychiatric Association notes that PTSD and related depression are strongly correlated with situations “where the person experienced, witnessed or was confronted with an event where there was the threat of or actual death or serious injury.” That, too, is Afghanistan.
But American political and military leaders never talk about this as a part of the challenges they face in Afghanistan. In fact, said Paul Pillar, who was the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia for several years, “I do not have any recollection of that; I do not recall seeing any reports on that.”
Since it wasn’t on the Pentagon or CIA agenda — or that of most anyone else in government, for that matter — Goepner said he decided to begin researching it. Why does widespread mental illness undercut America’s goals? American counterinsurgency strategy positively demands that Western forces win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
Read more: Many young Afghans suffering mental illness with nonstop war - Joel Brinkley - POLITICO.com
But the United States Agency for International Development interviewed large numbers of Afghan young people last year and found them generally to be “disenfranchised, unskilled, uneducated, neglected.” These people, it adds, “are most susceptible to joining the insurgency.”
Actually, however, multiple medical studies over the past nine years indicate that these disaffected young people are less likely to volunteer for the insurgency than they are to join the tens of millions of Afghans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression, perpetual deep anxiety and other debilitating trauma-related mental illnesses that are rife in the country. And these mental illnesses can lead to irrational, violent acts — like killing your trainers.
By some measures Afghans may be the most traumatized people in the world — a development that is thoroughly undercutting the strategies the United States and its allies are using in Afghanistan, even as Western forces are leaving. But to this day, the American military and policymaking community does not seem even to be aware of the problem, and so they’re doing little, if anything, to compensate for it.
Afghans have been at war nearly nonstop for almost 35 years, since the Soviet invasion in 1979. One result of that: The country stands at the very top of the Political Terror Scale, meaning “terror has expanded to the whole population,” the State Department and Amnesty International said in their most recent, joint terror-scale report. And Afghanistan is three spaces shy of top placement on the State Fragility Index, published by the Center for Systemic Peace.
A Journal of the American Medical Association study of nations where wars or insurgencies are under way noted that PTSD results from “an ongoing threat of insecurity” and/or “political terror.” Numerous academic and professional studies note that it’s worse when warfare is ongoing. The studies call this “perpetual war.” That, of course, is Afghanistan.
“What has struck me many times is how few people there can actually remember a time of peace at all,” said Seth Jones, a Rand Corp. associate director who spent years working in Afghanistan for the Defense Department. “There’s a significant number of village leaders who have to deal with depression among village constituents.”
While stationed in Afghanistan, Air Force Col. Erik Goepner said he learned that these environmental factors can lead to severe mental illness — even though to this day, American servicemen receive no training on psychological issues before leaving for Afghanistan. But these mental factors help explain why the war has for so long seemed to be faring so poorly.
“As an American military commander, you want to win,” Goepner noted in an interview. To him, it was clear that even after a decade of warfare, there was to be no “decisive win. And so you look back and ask: Why isn’t it going the way I want it to?”
In part to help find the answer, Goepner began working “with a lot of Afghans” and came away with “the idea that something was going on in the mental head space.”
Psychology was certainly not among his areas of expertise, but over time, he read a number of psychology studies and learned that more than half of Afghans suffer from clinical PTSD. And in some studies, the number afflicted with severe anxiety and clinical depression exceeded 70 percent.
That shouldn’t be surprising given the large number of American soldiers who come home with PTSD after serving there for a year or less. Some experts have likened the 132 so-called green on blue killings to the road rage that some PTSD-stricken American soldiers exhibit, though Jones and others believe Taliban infiltrators are responsible for most of those attacks.
The American Psychiatric Association notes that PTSD and related depression are strongly correlated with situations “where the person experienced, witnessed or was confronted with an event where there was the threat of or actual death or serious injury.” That, too, is Afghanistan.
But American political and military leaders never talk about this as a part of the challenges they face in Afghanistan. In fact, said Paul Pillar, who was the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia for several years, “I do not have any recollection of that; I do not recall seeing any reports on that.”
Since it wasn’t on the Pentagon or CIA agenda — or that of most anyone else in government, for that matter — Goepner said he decided to begin researching it. Why does widespread mental illness undercut America’s goals? American counterinsurgency strategy positively demands that Western forces win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
Read more: Many young Afghans suffering mental illness with nonstop war - Joel Brinkley - POLITICO.com
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