Losing
Afghanistan: Firepower
Doesn’t Always Win Wars
By Ramzy Baroud
10 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
In
a statement made available through the country’s Foreign Office,
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri chastised
the “international community” for the “abandonment”
of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. In
his estimation, it was this attitude that created the conditions which
eventually culminated in the rise of the Taliban, the hosts of al-Qaeda.
The statement was reportedly
made at the G-8 Foreign Ministers’ recent conference in Potsdam,
Germany, according to Pakistan’s Daily Times. Kasuri was, expectedly,
packaging his critique within a context specific to Pakistan’s
own concerns: namely the 2.4 million Afghani refugees - according to
UNHCR figures – and who have crossed the border into Pakistan
seeking shelter and relative safety. Moreover, Pakistan, under consistent
censure for allegedly failing to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaeda militants
operating around its Western border, deployed 90,000 soldiers into those
regions; border skirmishes, sporadic gun battles but increasingly sustained
bombardment campaigns of tribal areas – suspected of being safe
haven for al-Qaeda militants – have left thousands dead and wounded
since the American war on Afghanistan in October 2001.
The tension created by Pakistan’s
somewhat proxy role in reining in US foes is complicating the government’s
mission in asserting itself as an independent entity whose main concern
is the welfare of its own people. But tension in Pakistan, which runs
through tribal and political lines, is hardly comparable to the simmering
situation in Afghanistan itself, where anger directed at the Kabul government
and its Coalition benefactors is boiling to the point that another violent
upsurge is imminent.
Hamid Karazi, crown president
of Afghanistan in charade elections to rule over a disjointed country
and discontented population is still incapable of exercising his power
beyond the municipal borders of the capital; but even that level of
control is gradually more difficult to maintain as a spate of suicide
bombers is promising to turn Kabul into another Baghdad. But since his
ascent to power in October 2004, Karzai has little to show for, save
endless pledges of financial support he solicited, 40 billion USD to
be exact, out of which little arrived, and the money that was made available
is hardly improving people’s lives – corruption in Afghanistan
is, unsurprisingly, rife. Billions have been spent in Afghanistan nonetheless,
by NATO/US forces on military equipment, whose firepower effectiveness
is anything but debatable among Afghani civilians.
The BBC’s Alastair
Leithead reported on May 31, “Afghans’ Anger over US Bombing”
merely details one of many such incidents in which scores of innocent
civilians are killed; such reports are ever more rare since they are
simply not newsworthy – the worth of a news story from Afghanistan
is measured by whether Coalition forces incurred causalities or not.
The recent killings in the village of Shindand in the Zerkoh Valley,
Western Afghanistan was harrowing by any standards. 57 were reportedly
killed by American bombardment; half of the dead were women and children,
according to Leithead; the bombardment also destroyed 100 homes, humble
dwellings that are unlikely to be rebuilt soon.
"The bombardments were
going on day and night. Those who tried to get out somewhere safe were
being bombed. They didn't care if it was women, children or old men,"
said one of the survivors. But who would believe Mohammad Zarif Achakzai,
who fled his mud house with his family under the relentless bombardment?
Brig Gen Joseph Votel has simply dismissed the reports of civilian causalities.
“We have no reports that confirm to us that non-combatants were
injured or killed out in Shindand,” he said. And that is that.
Shindand is not under Taliban
control, at least not yet. Much of the country, mostly in the south
but increasingly elsewhere is falling under the control of Taliban extremists.
The Taliban offers job security to the men and an opportunity for revenge
and even martyrdom; in many parts of Afghanistan, such offers are exceedingly
appealing.
Fearless British journalist
Chris Sands of the Independent, one of very few journalists reporting
from Taliban controlled areas, tells me that it’s only a matter
of time before Afghanistan turns into an Iraq-like inferno. Indeed,
Taliban’s regrouping efforts have been astonishingly successful
as of late. Taliban militants have managed to ambush and kill 16 government
police officers just hours after killing seven Coalition soldiers –
including five Americans – by shooting down their chopper over
the Helmand province on May 30. These confirmed numbers are often balanced
out with unconfirmed government report of many Taliban’s militants
killed by government forces; it’s often the case that these reports
overlook the much higher number of civilian casualties.
Foreign powers are clearly failing in Afghanistan; they neither won
hearts and minds nor contributed to the stability and rebuilding of
the country in any meaningful way – 60 percent of the country’s
economy is now dependent on narcotics exports. In fact, Afghanistan
represents a perfect case of the proverbial “cut and run”
that President George Bush avows not to commit in Iraq. Needless to
say, the only assignment that the US and its allies seem seriously committed
to is that of maintaining its military regime, predicated on the utter
reliance of firepower regardless of the outcome.
Afghanistan’s two foreign
military missions: Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf),
with its 37,000 troops and the US-led Coalition: Operation Enduring
Freedom are affectively losing their pseudo control over the country.
Taliban is gaining strength and is regenerating, not because of their
remarkable theological alternative to democracy, but precisely because
all of the rosy promises made late 2001 and early 2002 yielded a most
repressive regime, marred with corruption, insecurity, warlords, and
incessant Coalition attacks on civilian localities throughout the country.
When Afghans turn back into supporting the Taliban, one can only imagine
how desperate they’ve become.
Pakistan’s Foreign
Minister Kasuri is obviously right, though his intentions might be self-serving;
“abandonment” is a befitting term to describe the so-called
international community’s attitude towards Afghanistan; that abandonment
brought the Taliban to power following the chaos resulting from the
ousting of the Soviets and their puppet regime in 1989 – subsequent
civil war in Afghanistan then killed more than 50,000 people in Kabul
alone – is shaping a bizarrely similar scenario that is giving
rise to the same loathed grouping; The Taliban could soon find itself
in a strong bargaining position, that even the Americans themselves
cannot ignore; the Taliban’s “Spring Offensive” might’ve
been delayed, but the balance is clearly tipping in favor of the Taliban,
in a war that promises more of the same sorrows.
Ramzy Baroud
is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second
Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto
Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com
and can be contacted at [email protected]
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