May 12, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - The U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was
criminal. It was criminal because of the
immense force used to demolish Afghanistan’s
physical infrastructure and to break open
its social bonds.
On October 11, 2001, journalist Anatol
Lieven interviewed the Afghan leader Abdul
Haq in Peshawar, Pakistan. Haq, who led part
of the resistance against the Taliban, was
getting ready to return to Afghanistan under
the cover of the U.S. aerial bombardments.
He was, however, not pleased with the way
the United States had decided to prosecute
the war. “Military action by itself in the
present circumstances is only making things
more difficult—especially if this war goes
on a long time and many civilians are
killed,” Abdul Haq
told Lieven. The war would go on for 20
years, and at least 71,344
civilians would lose their lives during
this period.
Abdul Haq told Lieven that “the best
thing would be for the U.S. to work for a
united political solution involving all the
Afghan groups. Otherwise, there will be an
encouragement of deep divisions between
different groups, backed by different
countries and badly affecting the whole
region.” These are prescient words, but Haq
knew no one was listening to him.
“Probably,” he told Lieven, “the U.S. has
already made up its mind what to do, and any
recommendations by me will be too late.”
After 20 years of the incredible
destruction caused by this war, and after
inflaming animosity between “all the Afghan
groups,” the United States has returned to
the exact policy prescription of Abdul Haq:
political dialogue.
Abdul Haq returned to Afghanistan and was
killed by the Taliban on October 26, 2001.
His advice is now out-of-date. In September
2001, the various protagonists in
Afghanistan—including the Taliban—were ready
to talk. They did so partly because they
feared that the looming U.S. warplanes would
open the doors to hell for Afghanistan. Now,
20 years later, the gulf between the Taliban
and the others has widened. Appetite for
negotiations simply does not exist any
longer.
Civil War
On April 14, 2021, the speaker of
Afghanistan’s parliament—Mir Rahman Rahmani—warned
that his country is on the brink of a “civil
war.” Kabul’s political circles have been
bristling with conversations about a civil
war when the United States withdraws by
September 11. This is why on April 15,
during a press conference held in the U.S.
Embassy in Kabul, Sharif Amiry of TOLOnews
asked U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken about the possibility of a civil
war. Blinken answered, “I don’t think that
it is in anyone’s interest, to say the
least, for Afghanistan to descend into a
civil war, into a long war. And even the
Taliban, as we hear it, has said it has no
interest in that.”
In fact, Afghanistan has been in a civil
war for half a century, at least since the
creation of the mujahideen—including Abdul
Haq—to battle the People’s Democratic Party
of Afghanistan government (1978-1992). This
civil war was intensified by the U.S.
support of Afghanistan’s most conservative
and extreme right-wing elements, groups that
would become part of Al Qaeda, the Taliban,
and other Islamist factions. Never once has
the United States offered a path to peace
during this period; instead, it has always
shown an eagerness at each turn to use the
immensity of the U.S. force to control the
outcome in Kabul.
Withdrawal?
Even this withdrawal, which was announced
in late April 2021 and began on May 1, is
not as clear-cut as it seems. “It’s time for
American troops to come home,”
announced U.S. President Joe Biden on
April 14, 2021. On the same day, the U.S.
Department of Defense
clarified that 2,500 troops would leave
Afghanistan by September 11. In a March 14
article, meanwhile, the New York Times had
noted that the U.S. has 3,500 troops in
Afghanistan even though “[p]ublicly, 2,500
U.S. troops are said to be in the country.”
The undercount by the Pentagon is
obscurantism. A report by the Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Sustainment, furthermore,
noted that the United States has about
16,000 contractors on the ground in
Afghanistan. They provide a variety of
services, which most likely include military
support. None of these contractors—or the
additional
undisclosed 1,000 U.S. troops—are slated
for withdrawal, nor will aerial
bombardment—including drone strikes—end, and
there will be no end to special forces
missions either.
On April 21, Blinken
said that the United States would
provide nearly $300 million to the
Afghanistan government of Ashraf Ghani.
Ghani, who—like his predecessor Hamid
Karzai—often appears to be more of a mayor
of Kabul than the president of Afghanistan,
is being outflanked by his rivals. Kabul is
buzzing with talk of post-withdrawal
governments, including a
proposal by Hezb-e-Islami leader
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to form a government
that he would lead and that would not
include the Taliban. The U.S., meanwhile,
has consented to the idea that the Taliban
should have a role in the government; it is
now being
said openly that the Biden
administration believes the Taliban would
“govern less harshly” than it did from 1996
to 2001.
The United States, it appears, is willing
to allow the Taliban to return to power with
two caveats: first, that the U.S. presence
remains, and second, that the main rivals of
the United States—namely China and
Russia—have no role in Kabul. In 2011, U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
spoke in Chennai, India, where she
proposed the creation of a New Silk Road
Initiative that linked Central Asia through
Afghanistan and via the ports of India; the
purpose of this initiative was to cut off
Russia from its links in Central Asia and to
prevent the establishment of the Chinese
Belt and Road Initiative, which now runs all
the way to Turkey.
Stability is not in the cards for
Afghanistan. In January, Vladimir Norov,
former foreign minister of Uzbekistan and
the current secretary-general of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO),
addressed a
webinar organized by the Islamabad
Policy Research Institute. Norov said that
Daesh or ISIS has been shifting its fighters
from Syria to northern Afghanistan. This
movement of extremist fighters is of concern
not only to Afghanistan but also to Central
Asia and to China. In 2020, the Washington
Post
revealed that the U.S. military had been
providing aerial support for the Taliban as
it made gains against ISIS fighters. Even if
there is a peace deal with the Taliban, ISIS
will destabilize it.
Forgotten Possibilities
Forgotten are the words of concern for
Afghan women, words that provided legitimacy
for the U.S. invasion in October 2001. Rasil
Basu, a United Nations official, served as a
senior adviser on women’s development to the
Afghan government from 1986 to 1988. The
Afghan Constitution of 1987 provided women
with equal rights, which allowed women’s
groups to struggle against patriarchal norms
and fight for equality at work and at home.
Because large numbers of men had died in the
war, Basu told us, women went into several
occupations. There were substantial gains
for women’s rights, including a rise in
literacy rates. All this has been largely
erased during the U.S. war over these past
two decades.
Even before the USSR withdrew from
Afghanistan in 1988-89, men who are now
jockeying for power—such as Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar—said that they would undo these
gains. Basu remembered the shabanamas,
notices that circulated to women and warned
them to obey patriarchal norms (she
submitted an opinion piece warning of
this catastrophe to the New York Times, to
the Washington Post, and to Ms. Magazine,
all of whom rejected it).
Afghanistan’s last communist head of
government—Mohammed Najibullah
(1987-1992)—submitted a National
Reconciliation Policy, in which he put
women’s rights at the top of the agenda. It
was rejected by the U.S.-backed Islamists,
many of whom remain in positions of
authority today.
No lessons have been learned from this
history. The U.S. will “withdraw,” but will
also leave behind its assets to checkmate
China and Russia. These geopolitical
considerations eclipse any concern for the
Afghan people.
This article was produced by
Globetrotter.
Noam
Chomsky is a legendary linguist,
philosopher, and political activist. He is
the laureate professor of linguistics at the
University of Arizona. His most recent book
is Climate
Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The
Political Economy of Saving the Planet.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian,
editor and journalist. He is a writing
fellow and chief correspondent at
Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord
Books and the director of Tricontinental:
Institute for Social Research. He is a
senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang
Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin
University of China. He has written more
than 20 books, including The
Darker Nations and The
Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington
Bullets, with an introduction by Evo
Morales Ayma.