Why does the US think it can win in
Afghanistan?
The Taliban are better trained, and – sad to say – increasingly
tolerated by the local civilian population
By Robert Fisk
20/09/08 "The
Independent' - -- Poor old Algerians. They are
being served the same old pap from their cruel government. In
1997, the Pouvoir announced a "final victory" over their vicious
Islamist enemies. On at least three occasions, I reported – not,
of course, without appropriate cynicism – that the Algerian
authorities believed their enemies were finally beaten because
the "terrorists" were so desperate that they were beheading
every man, woman and child in the villages they captured in the
mountains around Algiers and Oran.
And now they're at it again. After a ferocious resurgence of car
bombing by their newly merged "al-Qa'ida in the Maghreb"
antagonists, the decrepit old FLN government in Algiers has
announced the "terminal phase" in its battle against armed
Islamists. As the Algerian journalist Hocine Belaffoufi said
with consummate wit the other day, "According to this political
discourse ... the increase in attacks represents undeniable
proof of the defeat of terrorism. The more terrorism collapsed,
the more the attacks increased ... so the stronger (terrorism)
becomes, the fewer attacks there will be."
We, of course, have been peddling this crackpot nonsense for
years in south-west Asia. First of all, back in 2001, we won the
war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban. Then we marched
off to win the war in Iraq. Now – with at least one suicide
bombing a day and the nation carved up into mutually
antagonistic sectarian enclaves – we have won the war in Iraq
and are heading back to re-win the war in Afghanistan where the
Taliban, so thoroughly trounced by our chaps seven years ago,
have proved their moral and political bankruptcy by recapturing
half the country.
It seems an age since Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld
declared,"A government has been put in place (in Afghanistan),
and the Islamists are no more the law in Kabul. Of course, from
time to time a hand grenade, a mortar explodes – but in New York
and in San Francisco, victims also fall. As for me, I'm full of
hope." Oddly, back in the Eighties, I heard exactly the same
from a Soviet general at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan –
yes, the very same Bagram airbase where the CIA lads tortured to
death a few of the Afghans who escaped the earlier Russian
massacres. Only "terrorist remnants" remained in the Afghan
mountains, the jolly Russian general assured us. Afghan troops,
along with the limited Soviet "intervention" forces, were
restoring peace to democratic Afghanistan.
And now? After the "unimaginable" progress in Iraq – I am
quoting the fantasist who still occupies the White House – the
Americans are going to hip-hop 8,000 soldiers out of Mesopotamia
and dump another 4,700 into the hellfire of Afghanistan. Too
few, too late, too slow, as one of my French colleagues
commented acidly. It would need at least another 10,000 troops
to hope to put an end to these Taliban devils who are now
equipped with more sophisticated weapons, better trained and
increasingly – sad to say – tolerated by the local civilian
population. For Afghanistan, read Irakistan.
Back in the late 19th century, the Taliban – yes, the British
actually called their black-turbaned enemies "Talibs" – would
cut the throats of captured British soldiers. Now this unhappy
tradition is repeated – and we are surprised! Two of the
American soldiers seized when the Taliban stormed into their
mountain base on 13 July this year were executed by their
captors.
And now it turns out that four of the 10 French troops killed in
Afghanistan on 18 August surrendered to the Taliban, and were
almost immediately executed. Their interpreter had apparently
disappeared shortly before their mission began – no prizes for
what this might mean – and the two French helicopters which
might have helped to save the day were too busy guarding the
hopeless and impotent Afghan President Hamid Karzai to intervene
on behalf of their own troops. A French soldier described the
Taliban with brutal frankness. "They are good soldiers but
pitiless enemies."
The Soviet general at Bagram now has his amanuensis in General
David McKiernan, the senior US officer in Afghanistan, who
proudly announced last month that US forces had killed "between
30 and 35 Taliban" in a raid on Azizabad near Herat. "In the
light of emerging evidence pertaining (sic) to civilian
casualties in the ... counter-insurgency operation," the
luckless general now says, he feels it "prudent" – another big
sic here – to review his original investigation. The evidence
"pertaining", of course, is that the Americans probably killed
90 people in Azizabad, most of them women and children. We – let
us be frank and own up to our role in the hapless Nato alliance
in Afghanistan – have now slaughtered more than 500 Afghan
civilians this year alone. These include a Nato missile attack
on a wedding party in July when we splattered 47 of the guests
all over the village of Deh Bala.
And Obama and McCain really think they're going to win in
Afghanistan – before, I suppose, rushing their soldiers back to
Iraq when the Baghdad government collapses. What the British
couldn't do in the 19th century and what the Russians couldn't
do at the end of the 20th century, we're going to achieve at the
start of the 21 century, taking our terrible war into
nuclear-armed Pakistan just for good measure. Fantasy again.
Joseph Conrad, who understood the powerlessness of powerful
nations, would surely have made something of this. Yes, we have
lost after we won in Afghanistan and now we will lose as we try
to win again. Stuff happens.Click on
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