Afghanistan – the illusion of doing something

The first post in a new category of subjects, international affairs.

How could the Taliban win so easily? We just needed a few more months! We just needed a few more years! We’re abandoning the Afghan people! We’ve been inundated by these plaintive voices in recent days, many, genuinely well intentioned but many not so, although the media wouldn’t have given you that impression. These questions arise from a complete failure to understand what has been happening and realise we were never there for the Afghan people. Their concerns have always been irrelevant to U.S. planners, whose web of deceit was sewn over the public perception from the beginning.

Judging by many of the headlines, you’d think that this all started twenty years ago with the intervention to oust the Taliban but that distracts us from the real evil behind the story, that surpasses anything the Taliban may have done. That story goes back to 1978.

The communist government at the time was backed by the Russians, who were reluctant to intervene on the ground, probably having watched the disaster in Vietnam. However, the US and UK, feeling it wasn’t fair that the Soviets were missing out on their own Vietnam experience, covertly backed an Islamist insurgency, known as the mujahedeen, to destabilise the government with the help of the Pakistanis, Egyptians and the Saudis, which soon had the desired effect of negating wiser voices in Moscow.  There were good reasons to criticise the government as well as some positive aspects to them, but that was irrelevant to the intervention.

With help from the CIA, the young, wealthy Osama bin Laden came to add his support to the cause in 1980, eventually joined by Islamic extremists from around the Arab world, fired up with the intolerant, Saudi form of Islam know as Wahabism. Brutal Afghan warlords and their troops formed the bulk of the forces, who the CIA and friends gladly provided with weaponry.

To cut a long story short: the Soviets succumbed to the inevitable retreat in 1989; the communist government fell three years later, with thousands massacred in the process; after a few years of brutality and chaos, the Taliban, formed out of the mujahedeen we’d been backing for years, brought brutality and stability of sorts to the country and our friend Osama got together with his mates we’d been backing for years and formed Al Qaeda.

It hardly needs elaborating the problems Al Qaeda led to, not the least of which was the formation of ISIS, again helped by disastrous US actions in Iraq. All of which fed into the wars in Libya, Syria and beyond, including back into Afghanistan. That’s not to say that other factors weren’t involved but it was certainty pivotal. Even if the Taliban had retired at that point to form a knitting circle and sell tea and biscuits at the school fair, our intervention in 1979 ought to go down in history as one of the most diabolical, foreign policy, blow back disasters of all time. Not only has it remained little more than a historical footnote, everyone responsible continued to have successful careers and their opinions still regarded as words of wisdom for the next major disaster, Iraq and every subsequent death fest. Can you not ponder for a moment on the enormity of the evil perpetuated by this obscene folly? Do you not wonder why our media sold us every preposterous lie about these events that led to millions of deaths and untold suffering?

Alas the Taliban didn’t go onto a career based on woollen goods and light refreshments. They preferred the American tradition of inflicting misery upon innocents, guided by the vicious, religious dogma of our mutual buddies the Saudis while being backed by our allies the Pakistanis. Unsurprisingly, the Americans didn’t have much problem with that and maintained relations with the Taliban almost up to the next intervention in 2001. Much of this was due to the wish to build the TAPI pipeline to export Turkmenistan gas, bypassing the Russians. Obviously much more important than Afghan human rights. The US even complimented the Taliban for almost eradicating opium production in 2001. Rather ironic since the large-scale production of the drug was a direct result of the mujahedeen needing to raise funds in their US backed war and US allies, the Northern Alliance, were making millions producing opium. Poor Afghan farmers were quite persuaded by the Taliban’s religiously motivated arguments to stop production or we’ll skin you alive. Understandably the Taliban were a bit upset that all their noble efforts to do what the West wanted and destroy the opium poppy fields were rewarded with an invasion. Hence the religious values went out the window and they felt justified in using the trade to fund their efforts at defence. Given the CIA’s well documented history of drug running, there is good reason to assume they were also using heroin production to fund other operations off the official balance sheet.

What got them even more upset was the US refusal to accept their perfectly reasonable offer of handing over Osama bin Laden, if they could produce at least a smidgen of evidence of his guilt to warrant a trial. The US picked the invade option, firstly because they didn’t have that smidgen of evidence, never having subsequently produced any anyway, and secondly, they’d already drawn up plans to invade months before 9/11 even happened. And you wonder why there are 9/11 conspiracies!

What motivated the US invasion clearly had nothing to do with terrorism (apart from their own) or the suffering of the Afghans. One explanation is always too simplistic but back in the days of the Carter administration, Zbiginew Brzezinski had seen the strategic importance of the region and so was the prime mover behind the first debacle or raging success as he preferred to think of it. A foothold in the region would provide a means of influence, a base for military and covert operations as well as loads of unexploited raw materials and our old favourites, oil and gas.

Cue the next war. After a load of B52s rearranged Afghan villages with some carpet bombing, the brutal warlords of the opium dealing Northern Alliance marched into Kabul, killed some more people and declared themselves politicians. Soon gaining a bit of western legitimacy by including corrupt oil executives like Hamid Karzai, some corrupt civilians and a few women to disguise the fact that most of them wouldn’t recognise a liberal if it stuck it’s tongue down their throat and caressed their scrotum. The Taliban prudently melted back into the ungoverned countryside to regroup and fight another day.

As we’re talking about women, it’s worth asking why the subject of women’s rights in the country hadn’t exercised many journalist’s keyboards up till 9/11 but, “think of the women”, became the battle cry immediately after. Remember, the invasion plans were ready to go and the public weren’t exactly enthralled about more war, so we had to be convinced and the dutiful media trotted out the stories of the poor Afghan women oppressed by the Taliban. The same media has expressed almost no interest in the rights of Syrian women ruled by the extremist groups we’ve been actively supporting to overthrow the Assad government.  No one is going to pretend of course that it was a whole bundle of joy being a woman in Afghanistan but if you imagine that the architects of war regard them as any more than a convenient tool, then I’ve got a Nigerian prince right here that only needs your bank details for a fabulous money making scheme.

Post invasion, there were indeed some improvements for women but this ignores some vital issues. For the three quarters of the population that live in rural areas, any such developments were largely irrelevant, life carried on as it always had done. Society here was always governed by extremely conservative, religious and tribal values, that twenty years of occupation since 2001 has done little to change. Many women don’t need any pressure from the Taliban to wear a burqa. The idea that every woman or even a majority will embrace western feminist ideals is an orientalist fantasy but one that looks almost rational compared to thinking that Afghan men will dump an eternity of patriarchal control after a quick chat about women’s rights over a nice cup of tea. Only 15 percent of Afghan men think women should be allowed to work outside of their home after marriage, and two thirds of men complain Afghan women now have too many rights. Even without Taliban involvement in government, once western forces had left, some regression of the rights recently gained was almost inevitable. Some women even expressed support for the Taliban, because unlike the corrupt, ineffectual police force, they dealt swiftly with offenses like sexual assaults and robberies. This article provides a good overview of the situation I’ve described.

Also, war is not a great respecter of women’s rights, it creates insecurity, emboldens rapists and bombs tend not to enquire about your sex before turning you to mush. Afghans on the whole have never been too enthused with invaders, as history has demonstrated quite conclusively. The Taliban were always going to fight back, as they’d have the support of a large part of the population while armed foreigners remained, especially given the endemic corruption in government. The invasion guaranteed war, which guarantees instability, which prevents development, which keeps everyone, not just women poor. When not knowing where your next meal is coming from or if a stray bullet might cripple or kill you, the freedom to wear lipstick is not high on your list of priorities. If these things are ever going to change they will only come with stability.

Time and time again, civilians were killed by air strikes and shot by western soldiers, including outright murder. As ever, US soldiers acted with all the cultural sensitivity of a rutting rhino with a crystal meth problem and just enflamed local opinion even more. When a gun ship blasted a MSF hospital to in Kunduz to pieces along with 42 occupants they denied responsibility and stalled any attempt at an independent investigation. With the traditional culture of blood feuds, any death has to be avenged as a matter of honour. Every death created more enemies than was ever going to be outweighed by killing a few Taliban, who could always play the long game as they were fighting on home territory. Over the twenty years, the death toll amounted to 241,000, to which we need to add the incalculable toll created by sustained poverty and instability with a mental health crisis from the incessant trauma.

The promises of development were often illusory: it’s reckoned that at least 80% of US money that went into the country went to western military and contractors. By the time corrupt politicians and local officials had creamed off their portion, not much of it benefited local people. As we have seen, the billions invested in the Afghan security forces was simply pissed up the wall and evaporated in just over a week. To many Afghans they were both corrupt and brutal, guilty of numerous war crimes. As the Afghanistan Papers revealed, everyone knew the project was a dead loss: Biden, Trump, Obama and the Generals all knew but lied to the public to maintain the farce.

So, what do we have? The 2001 invasion falsely justified by the outcome of the previous intervention that had created the new enemy; an unwinnable war, who’s very existence was the action preventing the development we claimed to be there to provide; a country and population we completely failed to understand; funding that mostly went to people only interested in enriching themselves or were even exacerbating the problems; a interchangeable cast of characters, friends became enemies, became friends again or were both simultaneously, where every side has been supported by the CIA at one point or another; the whole affair maintained by lies and propaganda.

Whatever leaving date you picked, whether months or years, either side of now, we’d have left a government largely determined by the will of the Taliban and others of equally questionable conduct. The opportunity to forge a deal with the Taliban that limited their influence in a power sharing government, as demanded by most Afghans, was lost a long time ago due to government and US intransigence, and may never have been possible in any event. President Ghani had refused to step down, despite being an obvious precondition to a deal. High tailing it out of the country with $169 million stuffed into bulging sacks, to a luxury residence in the United Arab Emirates, confirmed everything the average Afghan had ever assumed about their corrupt elite.

The calls to do something, if well intentioned, have no basis in reality to achieve a credible outcome, except when it’s to protect those who worked for us and to have humane refugee policies.  Other pleas for action are no more than a demand to fill the already bulging bank accounts of arms manufacturers, who’ve only profited handsomely from decades of dismal failure.

Left devoid of hope, what Afghans have wanted above all else is peace and most would have accepted the price of Taliban rule to achieve that and most definitely if the previous extremes could be moderated, which, at least for the moment looks likely, even if much remains to be confirmed in detail. What matters above all else is stability, whoever seeks to upset that only consigns the country to more suffering.