United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates had confirmed that the US is engaged in preliminary talks with Taleban fighters in an attempt to find a political solution to the conflict prior to a planned American troop drawdown. This is good news but as Washington’s objective was to hunt down Bin Laden and eradicate his Taleban hosts, it is also an admission of failure. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan and the Taleban’s hold on the country is stronger than ever.
By some estimates, tens of thousands have been killed as a result of the 10-year-long foreign occupation. They include Afghan civilians, Afghan, US and NATO troops, foreign contractors and journalists. Unfortunately, the numbers cannot be precise because the Pentagon doesn’t bother calculating Afghan casualties.
US taxpayers alone have had to fork out up to $500 billion since the war’s inception in 2001—money that many believe could have been better spent at home at a time of economic woe. It seems to me that George W. Bush and his slick-talking successor might as well have sent those billions to the shredder when every single aim hasn’t been achieved.
Getting Osama Bin Laden believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks was, of course, the invasion’s prime casus belli. At the time I wrote numerous opinion columns suggesting human intelligence and Special Forces were far more suited to the task than guns and bombs—a thesis which didn’t go down very well with gung-ho American readers. As it turned out, Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora on horseback only to be tracked down 10 years later in Pakistan by US intelligence services.
Dismantling the Taleban was a ridiculous ambition as they are sons of the soil, not a group of foreign terrorists and, in any case, not only did they have nothing to do with 9/11 not a single Afghan was among the 19 hijackers. Their only “crime” was giving hospitality to Bin Laden which was quite natural when he and his “Afghan Arabs” had fought to liberate the country from the Soviets. Yes, their ideology was antiquated, authoritarian and repressive but the opposition’s was little better—and it must be said that under the Taleban crime was low and Afghan heroin wasn’t flooding Western capitals in the way it is today.
Emancipating Afghan women was an objective espoused by President Bush, his wife Laura and Cherie Blair who launched a campaign without understanding the country’s conservative nature. They promised Afghan women that they could throw off the burqa and start wearing nail polish again. That didn’t happen. Outside the capital Kabul, suicide rates among women and girls are rising, self-immolation is common, females are denied education, forced into marriage or bartered and they worry about leaving their homes for fear of being abducted or raped. A new global survey shows that Afghanistan is the most dangerous place in the world to be born female. Some 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, one in three suffer violence and their average life expectancy is 44 years. It appears that Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Blair were only concerned about their plight when the Taleban was in power. There hasn’t been a peep out of those “caring” ladies since.
There have been many other broken promises on the part of Bush and Co. For instance, according to an auditor for Afghan reconstruction, billions of dollars have gone missing due to fraud and waste and there are now fears that the well might dry up because foreign investors, donor countries and the IMF are scandalized over the plundering of Kabul Bank by managers and shareholders when that bank is being propped-up by foreign aid. With many projects on hold and warnings that the government could become insolvent, there is little chance of Afghanistan resembling Swaziland, let alone Switzerland anytime soon, if ever. Only 10 percent of Afghans have electricity and power outrages leave even residents of Kabul dependent on kerosene lamps.
What about bringing democracy to the Afghan people? That has become little more than a hackneyed phrase with the discovery of widespread fraud during the last election and allegations of corruption within government. Moreover, from the perspective of the White House, President Hamid Karzai isn’t quite the “puppet” leader Western powers no doubt wanted.
Karzai has been biting his lip for years but in recent times he has loudly objected to US and NATO’s bombing of civilians. In 2010, he railed saying if it didn’t end “I swear that I am going to join the Taleban.” Last week, he blasted the West for polluting his country with toxic weapons and said foreign soldiers who cause civilian casualties risk being perceived as occupiers. The US ambassador to Kabul called his comments hurtful and inappropriate, described them as offensive to the war dead and couched his message with a threat to pull the plug on aid.
Someone should tell the ambassador that the true insult to the war dead is the useless war itself that achieved nothing but death, destruction and yet more anti-Western hatred both within Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan where people are fed up with indiscriminate US attacks and infringements on Pakistan’s sovereignty. So much misery just to assassinate one man who wasn’t even there! If anything, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have stood as a far greater recruiting advert for terrorists than anything a confined white-haired man without Internet connection could have devised.
It has taken the White House ten years to opt for a political solution; the irony is that Karzai had planned to include the Taleban in the new Afghanistan from day one. He wanted to institute talks but did a swift U-turn when he was slapped on the wrist by Donald Rumsfeld. He knew that the Taleban weren’t the kind of people just to fade away; he knew that bloodshed could be saved if they were included in the rebuilding process but the West’s head honchos weren’t listening.
The greatest pity is that those Western powers involved in Afghanistan will try to bill the war as a win when their leaders should be heading to The Hague to answer questions if our world were just. Instead, you’ll find them on the lecture and cocktail circuit with the cries of widows, orphans and the maimed a world away—a dark and frightening world they helped create and will never have to answer for.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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Bowing to the inevitable
It has taken US ten years to opt for a political solution in Afghanistan
Posted on June 22, 2011 by Linda S. Heard
United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates had confirmed that the US is engaged in preliminary talks with Taleban fighters in an attempt to find a political solution to the conflict prior to a planned American troop drawdown. This is good news but as Washington’s objective was to hunt down Bin Laden and eradicate his Taleban hosts, it is also an admission of failure. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan and the Taleban’s hold on the country is stronger than ever.
By some estimates, tens of thousands have been killed as a result of the 10-year-long foreign occupation. They include Afghan civilians, Afghan, US and NATO troops, foreign contractors and journalists. Unfortunately, the numbers cannot be precise because the Pentagon doesn’t bother calculating Afghan casualties.
US taxpayers alone have had to fork out up to $500 billion since the war’s inception in 2001—money that many believe could have been better spent at home at a time of economic woe. It seems to me that George W. Bush and his slick-talking successor might as well have sent those billions to the shredder when every single aim hasn’t been achieved.
Getting Osama Bin Laden believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks was, of course, the invasion’s prime casus belli. At the time I wrote numerous opinion columns suggesting human intelligence and Special Forces were far more suited to the task than guns and bombs—a thesis which didn’t go down very well with gung-ho American readers. As it turned out, Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora on horseback only to be tracked down 10 years later in Pakistan by US intelligence services.
Dismantling the Taleban was a ridiculous ambition as they are sons of the soil, not a group of foreign terrorists and, in any case, not only did they have nothing to do with 9/11 not a single Afghan was among the 19 hijackers. Their only “crime” was giving hospitality to Bin Laden which was quite natural when he and his “Afghan Arabs” had fought to liberate the country from the Soviets. Yes, their ideology was antiquated, authoritarian and repressive but the opposition’s was little better—and it must be said that under the Taleban crime was low and Afghan heroin wasn’t flooding Western capitals in the way it is today.
Emancipating Afghan women was an objective espoused by President Bush, his wife Laura and Cherie Blair who launched a campaign without understanding the country’s conservative nature. They promised Afghan women that they could throw off the burqa and start wearing nail polish again. That didn’t happen. Outside the capital Kabul, suicide rates among women and girls are rising, self-immolation is common, females are denied education, forced into marriage or bartered and they worry about leaving their homes for fear of being abducted or raped. A new global survey shows that Afghanistan is the most dangerous place in the world to be born female. Some 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, one in three suffer violence and their average life expectancy is 44 years. It appears that Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Blair were only concerned about their plight when the Taleban was in power. There hasn’t been a peep out of those “caring” ladies since.
There have been many other broken promises on the part of Bush and Co. For instance, according to an auditor for Afghan reconstruction, billions of dollars have gone missing due to fraud and waste and there are now fears that the well might dry up because foreign investors, donor countries and the IMF are scandalized over the plundering of Kabul Bank by managers and shareholders when that bank is being propped-up by foreign aid. With many projects on hold and warnings that the government could become insolvent, there is little chance of Afghanistan resembling Swaziland, let alone Switzerland anytime soon, if ever. Only 10 percent of Afghans have electricity and power outrages leave even residents of Kabul dependent on kerosene lamps.
What about bringing democracy to the Afghan people? That has become little more than a hackneyed phrase with the discovery of widespread fraud during the last election and allegations of corruption within government. Moreover, from the perspective of the White House, President Hamid Karzai isn’t quite the “puppet” leader Western powers no doubt wanted.
Karzai has been biting his lip for years but in recent times he has loudly objected to US and NATO’s bombing of civilians. In 2010, he railed saying if it didn’t end “I swear that I am going to join the Taleban.” Last week, he blasted the West for polluting his country with toxic weapons and said foreign soldiers who cause civilian casualties risk being perceived as occupiers. The US ambassador to Kabul called his comments hurtful and inappropriate, described them as offensive to the war dead and couched his message with a threat to pull the plug on aid.
Someone should tell the ambassador that the true insult to the war dead is the useless war itself that achieved nothing but death, destruction and yet more anti-Western hatred both within Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan where people are fed up with indiscriminate US attacks and infringements on Pakistan’s sovereignty. So much misery just to assassinate one man who wasn’t even there! If anything, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have stood as a far greater recruiting advert for terrorists than anything a confined white-haired man without Internet connection could have devised.
It has taken the White House ten years to opt for a political solution; the irony is that Karzai had planned to include the Taleban in the new Afghanistan from day one. He wanted to institute talks but did a swift U-turn when he was slapped on the wrist by Donald Rumsfeld. He knew that the Taleban weren’t the kind of people just to fade away; he knew that bloodshed could be saved if they were included in the rebuilding process but the West’s head honchos weren’t listening.
The greatest pity is that those Western powers involved in Afghanistan will try to bill the war as a win when their leaders should be heading to The Hague to answer questions if our world were just. Instead, you’ll find them on the lecture and cocktail circuit with the cries of widows, orphans and the maimed a world away—a dark and frightening world they helped create and will never have to answer for.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.