Thinking of Four Countries: Afghanistan, U.S., Poland, Ukraine

7 April 2014. We are looking forward to the results of the presidential elections in Afghanistan from last Saturday. Despite all the failures of the West’s efforts in Afghanistan, the election makes the first non-violent transition of government in decades. Poland has it's share in the development. Yet many Poles nowadays pay more attention to Ukraine.

Filip Wejman

Today is a good occasion to watch again one excellent lecture on Afghanistan. You can see the Western concepts about conflict of interest, corruption, drugs, women rights, social engineering, “duty to the country” right at work in a country that doesn’t have a history of civil society or capitalism.

The talk “U.S.–Afghanistan Policy: Prospects for Success” has been organized on 6 October 2010, and made available on-line, by the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at the Brigham Young University.

The speaker is Michael Metrinko, the former Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Cracow, Poland. An American of Lemko-Ukrainian descent, Metrinko served in Cracow between 1983 and 1986. Of his job in Poland he said: “a great assignment, and it's had more effect on my life, probably, than any of my other assignments.” See: Metrinko interview by C.S. Kennedy, p. 141. I had the priviledge of meeting Metrinko in Cracow when I was a kid (he was buying etchings from my father). We knew this was a special man, a former hostage in Iran. But in the eighties, in Poland, we had no clue about the particulars of his Tehran ordeal in 1979-1981:

“The most brazen and hard-edged of the hostages is Michael Metrinko, a street-wise former Peace Corps volunteer and Persian-speaking diplomat who declares war on the gerugangirha, the hostage-takers. Using his vast knowledge of Persian culture, psychology and slang, Mr. Metrinko fights back. Beaten repeatedly, held in solitary confinement, hooded, tied up and denied food, he never stops searching for means to annoy and emasculate his captors. At one point he tries to derail the interrogation of an Iranian friend before him by baiting his interrogators to beat him (he succeeds). Even on his last day of captivity, on the bus to the airport, Mr. Metrinko verbally lashes out at a guard’s offensive behavior by making a very Persian reference to the guard’s mother and the procreative act; he is again beaten and then thrown off the bus. (A last-minute intervention by Iranian officials gets him on the plane to Germany.)” See: M. Gerecht: Radical Islam's Eruption, The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2006.

The situation in Ukraine will demand the best mix of two elements: brave and sober. Ukraine needs guys like Metrinko. Guys who can't be beaten into submission, and look at facts, data with the hard, analytical stare. Such people do come also from this part of the world. Watch this: <iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/57wyiwnAf8Y&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;