- In addition to a bumper opium harvest, the US is reaping
the whirlwind in Afghanistan...
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- According to Gideon Polya, based on UNESCO data, the
US invasion of Afghanistan has led to as many as 6.6 million unnecessary
deaths. According to Washburn University law professor Liaquat Ali Khan,
the "crime of genocide applies to the intentional killings that NATO
troops commit on a weekly basis in the poor villages and mute mountains
of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban." The occupation forces, which
ironically include former Axis powers Germany and Japan, have created the
New Auschwitz.
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- During a recent visit to Kabul by US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Afghan President Hamid Karzai defended his rule, saying
the economy and education systems had improved and there was more democratic
freedom under the new constitution. "It is not right that Afghanistan
was forgotten," he said. Meaning, in diplo-speak, of course, it was,
except by the drug-crazed bomber pilots, who made a record-breaking 3,572
bombing raids last year, 20 times the level two years earlier. But it has
popped back into the news recently with a string of gloomy reports, a series
of terrifying shoot-outs in Kabul, and a high-profile NATO meeting where
words were had, and not pretty ones.
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- The invasion - well into its seventh year and approaching
the 1979-88 Soviet nine-year occupation record - is increasingly being
compared to the ill-fated British 19th century invasions, intended to undermine
Russian influence in the so-called Great Game. Ironically, the current
fiasco was similarly inspired by a Western desire to undermine Russian
influence, and, taking a different and as it turned out extremely risky
tack, began in 1979 to massively fund Osama bin Laden and other Muslim
terrorists, something the 19th century Brits were not so foolhardy as to
do. The result, of course, was the 2001 invasion and occupation, at first
hailed as a new chapter for the hapless Afghans, but now seen as doomed,
according to that pesky string of reports.
- Paddy Ashdown, the US choice as United Nations "proconsul",
"superenvoy", whatever in Kabul, declared: "We are losing
in Afghanistan." Quelle surprise, his appointment was vetoed by Karzai,
who is desperately trying to portray himself as an independent leader of
a country that has "turned the corner", despite the six million
plus and the recent tiff over British military policy in the south, which
Karzai claims led to the return of the Taliban. He complains that he was
forced by the British to remove the governor of Helmand with disastrous
consequences, and was furious that at the same time, Britain was secretly
negotiating with the Taliban to set up "retirement camps" there
for possible rebel defectors.
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- But then what should he expect? A US citizen and UNOCAL
oil executive, he was parachuted into Afghanistan when the Americans invaded
in 2001 and confirmed in US-orchestrated elections three years later. Widely
regarded as a US-British stooge, the "mayor of Kabul" surely
remembers the fate of his pre-Taliban predecessor, Mohamed Najibullah,
who spent four years in a UN basement in Kabul until liberated - castrated
and hung from a lamp-post by the Taliban in 1996.
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- Armed resistance to foreign occupation is growing and
spreading. NATO figures show that attacks on Western and Afghan troops
were up by almost a third last year, to more than 9,000 "significant
actions", the highest level since the invasion. Seventy per cent of
incidents took place in the southern Taliban heartland of Helmand, though
the Senlis Council estimates that the Taliban now has a permanent presence
in 54 per cent of Afghanistan, arguing that "the question now appears
to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when." Watch out,
Mr Karzai.
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- In addition to the 3,572 bombing raids in 2007, suicide
bombings climbed to a record 140, compared to five between 2001 and 2005.
The Taliban's base is increasingly the umbrella for a revived Pashtun nationalism
on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, as well as for jihadists
and others committed to fighting foreign occupation. The UN estimates the
Taliban have just 3,000 active fighters and about 7,000 part-timers, in
contrast with more than 50,000 US and NATO troops. Their command structure
is diffuse and when it comes to guerrilla tactics - suicide attacks, roadside
bombs, kidnapping and assassination - the militants have become frighteningly
proficient.
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- "Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,"
said a report issued 30 January by the Atlantic Council of the United States,
chaired by retired General James Jones, who until 2006 served as the supreme
allied commander of NATO in Afghanistan. "It remains a failing state.
It could become a failed state," warned the report, which called for
"urgent action" to overhaul NATO strategy in coming weeks before
an anticipated new offensive by Taliban insurgents in the spring.
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- The Afghanistan Study Group, created by the Center for
the Study of the Presidency, which was also involved with the Iraq Study
Group, concluded, "the United States and the international community
have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces
and insufficient economic aid," and lack a clear strategy to "fill
the power vacuum outside Kabul and counter the combined challenges of reconstituted
Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a runaway opium
economy, and the stark poverty faced by most Afghans."
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- Whoa. Did it ever occur to these thinktankers that just
maybe they can never "win"? That the US invaded Afghanistan illegally,
and the Taliban, still the legitimate government there, will continue to
battle on, to wait it out, no matter how many bombs and dollars the US
et al throw at it?
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- As if these reports aren't enough for the frazzled president,
on 15 January rebels attacked Kabul's swish five-star Serena Hotel, targeting
the ex-pat elite in the most fortified site in the capital, killing seven
guests and staff. This was no straightforward suicide bombing, but an armed
attack which allowed the gunmen to carry out a shooting spree before they
were stopped, the one phenomenon security agencies have no defence against.
Kabul, relatively incident-free in the first two years after the removal
of the Taliban, now sees regular rocket attacks, shootings, kidnappings,
explosions and suicide bombings.
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- A few weeks after Serena, Kabul witnessed dozens of armed
police laying siege to the house of Uzbek warlord and Chief of Staff to
the Afghan commander-in-chief General Abdul-Rashid Dostum, in the heart
of the diplomatic district, after 50 of his followers abducted political
rival Akbar Bai and several others, beating them to a pulp. "This
is a conspiracy by the government against General Dostum," loyalist
Mohamed Alim Sayee said. "If any harm occurs to Dostum, seven to eight
provinces will turn against the government." Watch out, Mr Karzai.
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- Major cracks are appearing every day, and not only in
the statues of the Bamyan Buddha, but in impregnable fortress-NATO, the
latest triggered by America's closest ally Canada. It set off the current
crisis by threatening to withdraw all its troops this year unless other
NATO members could be conned into deploying troops in the dangerous southern
province of Kandahar, where in a brief two years, Canada lost 80 of its
2,500 troops, its highest casualty rate since native tribes were mowed
down in the 19th century by the British army. This tantrum forced an emergency
NATO meeting - in Vilnius - 7-8 February, to be followed by a summit in
- yes - Romania in April. US generals meeting deep in Eastern Europe pushing
Western Europeans to cough up troops for Central Asia. Most interesting.
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- Setting the stage the day before his junket to an obscure
country which just happens to border Russia, US Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates told the House Armed Services Committee that the alliance could split
into countries that were "willing to fight and die to protect people's
security and those who were not. You can't have some allies whose sons
and daughters die in combat and other allies who are shielded from that
kind of a sacrifice."
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- Did this blackmail work? Did Germany, Britain, Poland
et al cough up? In the UK 62 per cent want all 7,800 troops withdrawn within
a year. Similar polling results keep German Chancellor Angela Merkel from
signing on the dotted line. She said it would send around 200 combat soldiers
to north Afghanistan but no way would she bail out the Canadians. In Paris
a spokesman for President Nicolas Sarkozy did not confirm reports that
700 paratroopers could go to the south. The Polish chief of the defence
staff said the government is considering increasing their forces, despite
being elected only last October expressly on a policy of bringing its troops
home from Iraq and, presumably, Afghanistan. Only the US itself made any
real effort to mollify the Canucks, agreeing to deploy 3,200 US Marines
temporarily, but warning that the others must come through before the end
of the year. Stay tuned.
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- At the love-in in Lithuania, Gates softened his undiplomatic
language somewhat: "I don't think that there's a crisis, that there's
a risk of failure." Which, in diplo-speak of course means there is
a crisis, etc. Gates also squelched early suggestions that the US would
take over command of combat operations in southern Afghanistan. "I
don't think that's realistic any time soon," Gates said. Why bother?
At present, an American four-star general is in overall command of the
NATO mission. Americans are in command of the regional mission in eastern
Afghanistan, while a Canadian is in command of the south.
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- "I worry that for many Europeans the missions in
Iraq and Afghanistan are confused," Gates said as he flew to Munich
to deliver a speech at an international security conference 10 February.
"Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq
and project that to Afghanistan and do not understand the very different
- for them - the very different kind of threat." But wait! The US
coordinator on Iraq, David Satterfield, suggested only last month that
Iraq would turn out to be America's "good war", while Afghanistan
was going "bad". Can't these guys get their story straight? Which
is it, Mr Gates? Is good bad? Or is bad good? Just maybe bad is bad? Is
that too hard to believe?
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- The original aims of the US-led invasion were the capture
of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and Osama bin Laden, along with the
destruction of Al-Qaeda. None of those aims has been achieved. Instead,
the two leaders remain free, while Al-Qaeda has spread from its Afghan
base into Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere, and Afghanistan has become the
heroin capital of the world. For the majority of Afghans, occupation has
meant the exchange of obscurantist theocrats for brutal and corrupt warlords,
rampant torture and insecurity, depleted uranium bombing and the 6.6 million
deaths - all thanks to Western altruism. Even the early limited gains for
women and girls in some urban areas are now being reversed, offset by an
explosion of rape and violence against women.
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- What we see is a classic case of blowback. With the decision
to expand NATO and use it as its proxy in illegal invasions after the collapse
of the SU - notably Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan and again Iraq - instead
of dissolving it, the West is merely reaping its whirlwind in the form
of unending war and now internal squabbles.
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- "Events in Afghanistan have become a motor for the
transformation of the alliance," said a senior NATO diplomat. In fact,
the collapse of Afghanistan is just another domino in a long line since
the "victory over Communism". "Fail" a state (remember
Bill Clinton's "grow the economy"?) and what do you get? The
resurgence of Pashtun nationalism in southern Afghanistan and northern
Pakistan, just like in the soon-to-be republics of Kosovo and Kurdistan.
Long live independent Pashtunistan!
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- Will NATO bombs soon be raining down on Islamabad, demanding
that Pakistan allow the heroic, suffering Pashtuns to unite with their
brothers in a just liberation struggle? God knows there are Pashtun guerrilla
groups who, like their Kosovan and Kurd soulmates, would eagerly accept
US/NATO arms and protection. After all, the US once generously equipped
them with Stinger missiles in their struggle to "liberate" Afghanistan.
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- ***
- Afghanistan in a nutshell
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- - Policies of the "international community"
put immediate gains and Western interests before sustainable goals. In
security, US Operation Enduring Freedom focussed solely on routing the
Taliban and Al-Qaeda, while NATO forces were confined largely to Kabul.
Not until 2004 was security for the country considered. Even now, security
operations in the country are compartmentalised into three distinct and
uncoordinated areas, resulting in confusion and controversy. The global
"war against terror" is conducted by US-led Coalition Forces;
the counter-insurgency war is waged by the NATO-led International Security
Assistance Force; the war against drugs is led by the Afghan police.
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- - The lack of troops means heavy reliance on air power
with its concomitant "collateral damage", a euphemism for killing
civilians.
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- - Instead of creating a strong national army and police
force, occupiers now endorse the rearming of communities through the "auxiliary
police", a euphemism for rearming the very warlords they spent five
years trying to disarm.
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- - Relations with the Taliban follow the pendulum principle.
All dissenters are lumped with the Taliban and policy swings between making
peace with the Taliban to deporting those who dare talk to them, as the
recent retirement camp scandal and deportation of German diplomats in December
2007 reveal.
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- - The 2004 constitution established a strong presidential
system, stoking tensions in a war-torn state with tribal divisions, putting
too much formal power in the hands of the winner, who has heavy responsibilities
but little real authority, creating a breeding ground of nepotism and corruption.
Karzai relies heavily on his Northern Alliance Tajik and Uzbek comrades,
who make up 27 and 10 per cent of the population respectively, though Karzai
is nominally Pashtun, the largest ethnic group. A more inclusive parliamentary
system of government, with a ceremonial president or king and stronger
local and regional governments, might help, though this would most likely
just accelerate the present collapse of all central government and the
return of warlord anarchy. At present, Karzai really only answers to a
fractious cluster of foreign donors.
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- - Finally there is the one flourishing industry - opium
and marijuana production. Opium production was up 34 per cent last year,
10 per cent of proceeds being tithed by the Taliban. Worse yet, it is not
at all clear whether this is good or bad from a Western point of view,
despite loud protestations about the evils of drugs. It is well documented
that many governments in the region, not to mention the CIA, are deeply
involved in both sides of the so-called war against drugs. The Taliban
actually wiped out all drug production in 2000. Some critics of US foreign
policy argue that the 2001 invasion was actually prompted by a distaste
for this successful campaign, which led to a crisis in the European drug
blackmarket.
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- ***
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- Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach
him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002/
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