We Have Failed Afghanistan Again and Again
By Sonali Kolhatkar
July 30, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"Truthdig"
- The 2013
death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, confirmed this
week, should have marked the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. But
the fates of the two main leaders identified as responsible for the
9/11 attacks—Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar—are only milestones.
Thanks to the destructive nature of the U.S. war, many newer and
more formidable enemies have emerged.
America’s first post-9/11 war, launched in
Afghanistan in October 2001, is a grand symbol of our foreign policy
failure. Fourteen years ago, Afghans were caught between two brutal
and fundamentalist factions: the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.
Today they are caught between four: the Taliban, government warlords
who morphed from the Northern Alliance, U.S. forces and Islamic
State.
But just a few months ago, Afghanistan’s first
transition of power within an ostensibly democratic system took
place, offering the promise of a better future under the
U.S.-educated President Ashraf Ghani. The U.S. was to withdraw its
forces and NATO nations had already begun doing so.
Government-sponsored peace talks with the Taliban were meant to
herald a stable future for the war-weary nation. But that future
never came and what appeared as progress was only a facade.
A motorcycle carrying a suicide bomber tore
through a crowded marketplace in the northwestern province of Faryab
on July 22,
killing at least 25 people and wounding dozens. The attack bore
the hallmarks of a Taliban operation and is part of a violent trend.
It comes just weeks after a
brazen Taliban attack in the capital, Kabul, aimed at the
government’s intelligence agency, in which one person was killed and
several injured. Overall, Taliban violence has
risen sharply this year.
But the group is supposedly engaging the
government in peace talks that began in July (which Mullah Omar was
reported to have
lauded earlier this month, despite having died two years ago). A
second round of negotiations, sponsored by neighboring Pakistan, is
about to launch. Details of the discussions have been kept secret,
although there are
reports that Taliban leaders want travel restrictions on them
lifted and the establishment of an official headquarters in a Gulf
state. Throwing a bone to feminists, there is apparently a single
female delegate who is expected to take her place at a table
dominated by misogynist fundamentalists.
The Afghan government, whose forces are under
enormous pressure, plans to ask the Taliban to agree to a cease-fire
during the negotiations. President Ghani boasted in an
interview in March that “Not a single province has fallen; not a
single battalion has deserted; not a single army corps has refused
to fight. They secured the election; they have borne the casualties,
and they’ve moved from defensive to offensive.” But soldiers of the
Afghan National Army and local police forces have suffered
tremendous casualties. So far this year, more than 4,000 Afghan
troops have been
killed, mostly by the Taliban. Some are so desperate to save
their lives that they are reportedly maiming themselves to obtain a
discharge. At an Afghan army base in Badakhshan province, 100 police
officers
surrendered to Taliban forces. But it’s not just the
Taliban—soldiers and police officers are also being killed by U.S.
forces. A July 20 strike by U.S. helicopters in the eastern province
of Logar
killed eight Afghan soldiers.
Citing the losing battle that the U.S.-backed
government in Kabul is fighting, Ghani is turning to old warlords
for help. The New York Times rightly
called the plan a “strategy fraught with risk.” The very same
warlords—who were armed and trained by the U.S., who plunged the
country into a bloody civil war in the early 1990s, and who were
never held accountable for their crimes—were able to whitewash
themselves with government positions. Now, they are expected to
unleash their informal power again. They are perhaps best
represented by Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is
leading the recapture of Faryab province from Taliban forces
with the backing of local militias. Dostum has been
implicated in numerous atrocities and mass killings. It appears
that a repeat of the same internal war the U.S. stepped into in 2001
is starting to play out, as criminal elements fight one another.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has
dramatically upped the pace of its airstrikes, with no prospect
of drawing down the war. Airstrikes were reportedly twice as
numerous in June as in previous months. It was one such airstrike
that killed the eight Afghan soldiers previously mentioned. Another
strike
killed a top Al Qaeda leader, Abu Khalil al-Sudani, in Paktika
province. In response, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter boasted
that the U.S. “continue[s] to counter violent extremism in the
region and around the world.”
The U.S. also took credit in early July for
killing Hafiz Saeed in the eastern province of Nangarhar. Saeed
was considered a senior Taliban leader before defecting to the
Islamic State. Three other Islamic State leaders were also
apparently killed by U.S. drone strikes. With little formal
acknowledgement, the U.S. has seemingly acquired a new enemy in
Afghanistan—just as it was meant to be withdrawing.
The emergence of Islamic State has opened a
terrifying new chapter in Afghanistan. The group burst onto the
scene last September when its members fought alongside the Taliban
in Ghazni, killing 100 people and engaging in its
signature beheadings. But despite sharing a Sunni Muslim
identity with the Taliban, Islamic State is now unwelcome in
Afghanistan. In an
open letter in June, the Taliban warned Islamic State leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi that his “meddling” would “cause ... bloodshed.”
Clearly, the Obama administration miscalculated
the effect of its policies in Afghanistan. Somehow, U.S. strategists
imagined that after spending more than a decade provoking violence
and backing undemocratic figures in Afghanistan (for which the Bush
administration is equally responsible), the U.S. could simply walk
away, leaving some sort of tolerable peace and stability. In March,
President Obama
announced a delay in the U.S. troop withdrawal, saying that
9,800 soldiers would remain in the country through the end of this
year. Today the situation has devolved into such chaos that the U.S,
departure will foment just as much violence as its continued
presence.
In the 14 years it has occupied Afghanistan,
America’s longest war has achieved mostly bloodshed. Despite
spending billions of dollars—the U.S. offered its
largest share of foreign aid to Afghans last year—there is
little to show for it. Nearly $10 billion was spent on arming and
training Afghan forces. But as the dismal state of the Afghan
National Army shows, that money may as well have been poured down
the drain. Investigative journalists with
ProPublica found that the U.S. has spent tens of millions of
dollars building sophisticated warehouses that no one has used: “[A]
familiar pattern emerged with the military’s construction projects:
They were routinely over budget, past deadline and often never
used.” In fact, “[It’s unclear whether the Afghans want or have the
money to make use of” a newly built $14.7 million warehouse complex
in Kandahar.
Ordinary Afghans, whose well-being has always been
left out of the calculus of war, continue to suffer as they have for
decades. Announcing the troop withdrawal delay, Obama
said, “America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over but
our commitment to the Afghan people, that will endure.” But all that
has endured has been Afghan misery. The site of the renowned,
ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan that captured the world’s
attention (and disgust) in 2001 when the Taliban
destroyed them, now
host an impoverished population of homeless Hazara Afghans.
Those who have the means are
fleeing poverty and violence, forming a large portion of the
migrants who wind up on boats in the Mediterranean seeking refuge in
Europe. Afghan women, who were promised relief from the Taliban’s
strict edicts, now live in fear of falling victim to mob violence of
the kind that killed a Kabul woman named
Farkhunda or being imprisoned for so-called
moral crimes.
Time and again we have failed in Afghanistan. By
continuing to repeat the policies that created the failures in the
first place, the U.S. has little chance of leaving Afghanistan in
better condition than when the war began.
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