January 26, 2019
An ancient Hindu prayer says, ‘Lord Shiva, save us from the claw of the tiger, the fang of the cobra, and the vengeance of the Afghan.’
The United States, champion of freedom and self-determination, is now in its 18th year of colonial war in Afghanistan. This miserable, stalemated conflict is America’s longest and most shameful war. So far it has cost over $1 trillion and killed no one knows how many Afghans.
This conflict began in 2001 on a lie: namely that Afghanistan was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US. These attacks were planned in Europe and the US, not Afghanistan, and apparently conducted (official version) by anti-American Saudi extremists. This writer remains unconvinced by the official versions.
We still don’t know if Osama bin Laden instigated the attacks. He was murdered rather than brought to trial. Dead men tell no tales. However, Mullah Omar, leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, told my late friend journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave that bin Laden was not involved in 9/11. Who benefited? Certainly not the Afghans. They have been at war for the past 40 years.
As I wrote in my first book, ‘War at the Top of the World,’ Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribal majority were fierce fighters and were incredibly brave. Their Taliban movement was a tribal-nationalist-Islamist force devoted to fighting communism, drug dealing and foreign influence. Taliban stamped out the Afghan opium trade and had just about crushed the drug-dealing Russian-backed Tajik northern alliance – until the US invaded in 2001. The Afghan drug lords quickly became US allies and remain so today.
Taliban was not a ‘terrorist movement,’ as western war propaganda falsely claimed. Twenty years earlier their fathers were hailed ‘freedom fighters’ by President Ronald Reagan when they were fighting Soviet occupation. Taliban’s Pashtun warriors wanted all foreigners out of their nation and the right to run their own affairs according to Islamic principles.
The US has savaged Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries. US B-52 and B-1 heavy bombers are razing tribal villages, predator killer drones attack most road movement, US-paid Afghan puppet forces, many former Communists, routinely torture and murder. All this while the US-installed yes-man regime in Kabul does nothing to halt massive drug dealing and human rights abuses.
In fact, dealing in opium and morphine is the primary business of Afghanistan. This cash crop could not be exported to Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia without the connivance of the Kabul regime and its US military protectors. When the full truth about the war is finally written, the US will be in the deepest shame over involvement in the drug trade.
Washington, which has done as much as the former Soviet invaders to ravage Afghanistan, has no clear idea what to do next. President Trump announced withdrawal of some of the 14,000 US troops (and large numbers of mercenaries) from Afghanistan. But then the pro-war neocons at State and the Pentagon sought to veto the president’s statement. Meanwhile, desultory talks are droning on in Doha, Qatar, between the US and Taliban, led by the US ‘special envoy’ (read proconsul) Zalmay Khalilzad, a neocon who played an important role in promoting the invasion of Iraq.
Why is the US still at war in Afghanistan after 18 years? First, because the politicians and generals involved won’t accept responsibility for a defeat and its huge cost. There is nothing more wasteful than a lost war. Second, because imperial-minded circles want to keep bases in Afghanistan to menace China, Iran and Pakistan. There are huge profits to be made from this endless war with its $400 per gallon gasoline trucked in from Karachi and 24-hour on call air support. Plus the bases and fleet that support the war and promotion for the senior officers involved.
To keep this useless war against lightly armed Pashtun tribesmen going, the US must massively bribe Pakistan to maintain the military’s supply routes into that isolated nation. The absurd waste of US money in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been fully documented by the US government’s audit agencies.
President Trump is right to talk about ending this ignoble conflict. But the neocon fifth column he has foolishly helped install keeps thwarting his aspirations.
Trump should order the fighting ended and all US troops out of Afghanistan within 90 days. End US involvement in the drug trade. Tell India to butt out of Afghanistan. That would be statesmanship. Afghanistan must be allowed to return to its former obscurity.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2019
This post is in: Afghanistan
In December 1998, Former US Defence Secretary Ash Carter, US Undersecretary of Defence John Deutch and Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, colluded to write this in Foreign Affairs Journal,
A successful attack with weapons of mass destruction could certainly take thousands, or tens of thousands, of lives. If the device that exploded in 1993 under the World Trade Center had been nuclear, or had effectively dispersed a deadly pathogen, the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it.
Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949.
Like Pearl Harbour, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either further terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks.
I find it curious it happened just like that 3 years later, and one of the Authors was able to control what information the 9/11 Commission was able to see?
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1998-11-01/catastrophic-terrorism-tackling-new-danger
Other than the American Civil War, the US has never had a war on its own soil. They may not be so fortunate with the next one.
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Dik
“Colonial war”? How is this a colonial war?
Tell India to butt out of Afghanistan? What about China’s collusion with Pakistan? How about Pakistan butting out of Afghanistan?
As Eric suggests, the main reason that the US continues to fight the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban is to help prop up America’s vast military-industrial complex. Not only are there “…huge profits to be made from this endless war…”, but it also helps to support full employment in the US; that’s something consistent with Trump’s political and economic agenda. Remember that then VP Dick Cheney told George Bush’s Treasury Secretary that “deficits don’t matter”? Well, they don’t seem to matter much to Trump’s administration either – as otherwise, it would move strongly to end US involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, or else reverse the big tax cuts that were enacted in 2017.
“The United States, champion of freedom and self-determination…” This is how the Americans would like to see themselves; the reality is quite different. Even their involvement in WWII was largely opportunistic.
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“We still don’t know if Osama bin Laden instigated the attacks.” You are being too kind. It’s my understanding that at the time of bin Laden’s death, the FBI did not consider him a perp. He was, however, likely quite pleased with the outcome. “Mullah Omar…told my late friend journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave that bin Laden was not involved in 9/11” This is consistent with the FBI information.
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Everyone seems to ‘gloss over’ the fact that bin Laden did incredible good work helping Muslims with agriculture and seeing that they were fed and looked after.
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“He was murdered rather than brought to trial.” I consider this extra judicial execution no different than the execution of Khashoggi. He was executed by a country in league with the Americans. Americans still have dealings with MBS; their perception of themselves is different than my reality.
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“Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribal majority were fierce fighters and were incredibly brave.” The term honourable seems to have been missed. Bin Laden was a guest and, as such, the Afghans refused to turn him over to the Americans. They were, however, prepared to send him to a neutral country where he might receive a fair tribunal. This seems to have been forgotten.
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“The Taliban…stamped out the Afghan opium trade…until the US invaded in 2001. The Afghan drug lords quickly became US allies and remain so today.” Different sides of the capitalist coin.
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“Taliban’s Pashtun warriors wanted all foreigners out of their nation and the right to run their own affairs…” I think the Russians slowly got that message; it took them a few years.
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“the US-installed [a] yes-man regime in Kabul” that will quickly be removed once the Americans withdraw. “When the full truth about the war is finally written, the US will be in the deepest shame over involvement in the drug trade.” The American human rights abuses and atrocities will be somewhere near the top of their ‘shame list’.
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“Washington, which has done as much as the former Soviet invaders to ravage Afghanistan…”. Under the Russian influence, one of the ‘sticking points’ was that the Russians were allowing the Afghan women to be more Western and to provide education and jobs for them.
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“President Trump announced withdrawal of some of the 14,000 US troops…from Afghanistan.” This and the proposed withdrawal from Syria were the only two actions, by this dotard, that I agreed with. The trifecta was when Iraq stated that they wanted the Americans to leave. Lindsay Graham’s flying over to ‘massage’ things, a day or so later, to put them on the ‘right’ track was prescient. I wonder who is playing the role of ‘Kubernetes’.
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“There is nothing more wasteful than a lost war.” You’d have thought the Americans learned that lesson from Viet Nam. The Afghan war also gives them a presence in the area and allows the Americans to annoy countries in the area, Pakistan comes to mind. I thought when Trump was going to cut off financial assistance to Pakistan that they would cut off road access, and, the Chinese and Russians would be supplying Pakistan with drones and surface to air missiles. This hasn’t happened, yet.
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They say that ‘History is the winner’s side’; I’m not sure how this will be written since not many Afghanis can read or write.
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“Afghanistan must be allowed to return to its former obscurity.” Amen