Afghan War – where is the end?
By Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque PhD

With Philip Shaw M.Sc.

Afghanistan is again in the discussion on world politics.  The crisis in Afghanistan dates back to 1978 when president Daoud Khan was killed by a military coup and a new communist government took control of Kabul.  At the time, I was a young student attending the first year of university studies.  Today, I am nearly 50 and the problem is still there.  The history of Afghanistan since this time is quite eventful.  Shortly after the communist takeover the Soviets sent armed forces to protect the new government.  Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and United States started supporting a led by the Mujaheedin that eventually won a decisive victory in 1989.  So after nearly 10 years of the civil war a new government was installed in Kabul.  The Soviets left Kabul with humiliation, which resulted in a demoralized nation and led to the final collapse of the Soviet regime.

However, the internal conflict between rival leaders within the new government, which was supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and United States, continued and in 1996, the Taliban government took control of Kabul led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.   However,  Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Masood and Uzbek leader Dustam continued to control the northern parts of Afghanistan.  The civil war continued. The Taliban received support from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, while the Northern Alliances (meaning the Uzbek and Tajik leaders) were supported by Russia and Iran.   Clearly, the Taliban was supported from behind by the western powers!  The Taliban also provided the safe haven to Al-Qaeda, a Saudi group led by Osama bin Laden.  In 1997, the Taliban defeated Uzbek leader, Dustam and he fled to Uzbekistan.  On September 9, 2001, two days before the 9/11, the Tajik leader Masood was killed.  The Taliban virtually gained control of the whole country.

Two days later, 9/11 happened and the situation changed completely.   Instead of supporting the Taliban, the US and the NATO alliance began supporting the rival “Northern Alliance”.  On October 7, 2001, the US military with the help of the UK army began its “Operation Enduring Freedom” and finally defeated the Taliban.  The official purpose of the operation was to capture Osama bin Laden.  The intervention gained UN approval and nearly 41 countries lent support to the invasion.  In 2004, the NATO alliance installed the Hamid Karzai government but till today the alliance has not able to catch Osama bin Laden!  The alliance now has nearly 55,000 troops in the ground and President Obama has pledged to add another 17000 troops for Afghanistan.

So how about the achievements of NATO interventions?  During 2001 and 2009, the NATO forces could not establish a credible government in Kabul, could not bring back the safety and security of the people, could not control the bulk of the country, could not stop poppy growers, could not succeed in blocking the drug smuggling route, could not create a dependable armed forces, and could not stop insurgencies.  They could not apprehend Osama bin Laden but killed nearly half a million civilians.  The official casualty figure of the NATO forces stands above 1000 soldiers and the number is exponentially rising since 2006.  The Taliban are back in full gear, Karzai is weak and burdened with corruption charges, supply routes to Kabul from Pakistan is under constant attacks, and the supply route from Uzbekistan are at the mercy of the Russians. Anger against the NATO forces is up.  Can this be solved with the help of additional 17000 troops?  I guess not.  Let us not forget that the Afghans have never accepted a foreign ruler in their history since the seventh century.

Afghanistan: No End In Sight, But For the West It Will Come

By Philip Shaw M.Sc

I have listen intently and debated Enamul on Afghanistan, at least since 2001.  However, he was on to this much farther back than this.  When we studied together between 1986 and 1991, it seemed he was always railing against Western support of the Afghan mujahedin.  He was always consistent.  He always said the Americans would eventually pay for supporting these radicals versus the Soviet Union.

At the time I learned a lot, but I really didn’t care.  Nobody in the west did.  There is an old axiom in this world, the enemy of your enemy is your friend.  I had grown up in Canada 12 miles from the United States.  We knew one thing.  The Soviets were bad because we lived under the guise of mutually assured destruction all the time.  So the more we could do against them the better.  President Reagan’s idea to fund the Afghan mujahedin against the hated Soviets seems such a good idea.  If a bunch of crazy Islamic nut bars wanted to go up against the mighty Soviet Union, that was a very cheap and good thing.

So in my very small way I did pay heed to some of what Enamul was saying at the time.  I didn’t know who the Afghan mujahedin were.  With Enamul spewing his vitriol, even I started to understand.  However, in the heated atmosphere of the late 1980’s it didn’t matter.  I told Enamul numerous times the Soviets were the bad guys, much worse than anybody hiding out in a rag tag fashion in some Afghanistan mountains.

Little did I know then how the world would change.  The Soviet Union voluntarily imploded on itself.  They withdrew from Afghanistan and I would take four trips to Asia in the last 16 years.  However, the big event that brought it all back was 9/11.  As I’ve told Enamul and East West readers many times, that changed everything.  North America was always immune from foreign fights and jealousies.  The day those planes hit those buildings, it was a whole new ball game.

So that takes us to 2009.  We’ve got a new American President who has announced he is sending 17,000 more troops into Afghanistan.  At the same time our Canadian Prime Minister has said the following in a recent CNN interview.

“My own judgment … quite frankly is we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency. My reading of Afghan history is that it’s probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind,” “What has to happen in Afghanistan is we have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency and improving its own governance.”
“If President Obama wants anybody to do more, I would ask very hard questions about what is the strategy for success and for an eventual departure.  “The issue in Canada … is, I don’t think, whether we stay or whether we go. The issue that Canadians ask is are we being successful?” “Right now we have made gains. Those gains are not irreversible, so the success has been modest.” (Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Mar 1, 2009)

I believe the time has come for Canada to get out of Afghanistan.  In fact, I think it was a big mistake for Canada and NATO to have ever gotten involved in that country.  Needless to say, I didn’t always feel this way.  Still even President Obama has said that “we” cannot allow Afghanistan to become a launching pad for terrorist strikes against North American targets.  There lies the problem.  On this side of the world, that political reality still trumps everything.

Still there is no end game.  If you ask many people in the west about Afghanistan they’ll say something about how the Taliban treat women and how young girls cannot go to school.  However, there are just as bad or worse things happening in other parts of the world, but the west yawns.  Simply put, its all still about those airplanes hitting those twin towers.  It might be an example of how Enamul portrays a western policy which came back to bite us, but it is what it is.  In the west, it will always serve as a flashpoint for tyranny.

Enamul asks can this be solved by the addition of 17,000 troops?  Of course the answer is no.  The long-term solution is to shower Afghanistan with education.  However, that road isn’t even on the radar.  Afghanistan is simply troubling, no easy way out, no easy answer.  The challenge ahead is to get it right, Afghan style,  whatever that may be.