Opinion Editorials, February 2008
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By Eric Walberg
ccun.org, February 16, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
“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?
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.
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.
“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!
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.
- 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
- The lack of troops
means heavy reliance on air power with its concomitant “collateral
damage”, a euphemism for killing civilians.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
The author submitted this article for publication on February 13,
2008.
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