Afghanistan: Confounding Western Powers Again.
By Philip Shaw M.Sc.
For Canadians and many westerners this is very hard to get used to. That is the on going war on terrorism in Afghanistan. This is what a good friend of mine emailed me the other day.
“When we go back to the polls, I will vote NDP if that is the only way to send a message that our boys (and girls) should come home from Afghanistan. You would have more success uniting the Hatfields and McCoys than you would effect permanent change in Muslim states with people viewed as outsiders. Underlying the ignorance surrounding Arab culture that is the root of so much loss of life is a disrespect of their way of life, a certain arrogance that everyone who had the choice would choose to live the way we live. I am not saying everything is perfect over there, but the motivation for lasting change must always come from with in.”
So there you have it. What’s up with Arab culture in Afghanistan? Some of you in Asia, the Middle East and parts of Europe must be flummoxed with that statement but it’s a North American thing. Our media shows every stone thrown in the Middle East. Thinking the Pashtun people of Afghanistan are Arab wouldn’t even cause a ripple in North America. The backcountry of South Asia is just too far away.
Say what you want, Afghanistan has a tough history. In 1893 the Durand line was drawn which fixed the border of Afghanistan with British India. Unfortunately, that arbitrary decision left half of the Pashtun Afghans in what is now Pakistan. Needless to say Afghanistan has been a wasteland for many invaders. Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Young British Soldier” has always symbolized the troubles western powers have had in Afghanistan. The last stanza says this.
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier”
That’s awful. However if you look at the history of Afghanistan they hardly have had time to breathe. Western powers in Afghanistan in 2006 all look the same. NATO has put up Provincial Reconstruction Teams all over the country. It is what it is. Foreign troops on Afghan soil come from a world away, speak a strange language and drive around in armoured vehicles and enjoy life, which Afghans could never imagine.
What you say? Enamul would be interested to know that one of his favourites is opening up shop in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Tim Horton’s coffee, a Canadian favourite is setting up shop in Kandahar. Your favourite habit of drinking Canadian coffee with me just got closer to Bangladesh. What are the Afghans suppose to think?
I don’t know. I have a hard time justifying this based on my past writings. Aren’t the people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo just as precious as those folks in Afghanistan? Four million of them have been killed over the last eight years. Oh right, in the west it’s all about “strategic interest”. After 9/11 Afghanistan matters.
Rewind to April 5th, 2006. I was in Ottawa speaking to 10,000 people at the National Solidarity Farm Rally. Who do I run into but Lt-General Romeo Dalliare, Canadian Senator and former commander of a UN force in Rwanda. After Dallier’s UN force was withdrawn from Rwanda 1 million Rwandans lay dead after 100 days.
Dalliare now is saying that Canada should go to Darfur in the Sudan. He said the federal government should also send 1,500 troops into Darfur, or at least contribute 500 soldiers to a UN rapid-reaction brigade already operating in Sudan supporting the African Union. Is Dalliare right? Is Darfur second fiddle to Afghanistan? Is it second fiddle for the west in general? Or like Dalliare once said after Rwanda, “are all humans human or are some more human than others?”
It would seem so. Clearly there are many more problems in Africa than Afghanistan but the west yawns at anything outside of the Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan Middle East part of the world. General Dalliare might be right about Darfur, but for the immediate future Afghanistan is going to get NATO’s greatest attention.
So how long will the west have a pre-occupation with Afghanistan? With the Taliban influence increasing across the country will this western presence grow weary? Will the NATO powers be here for five to ten years? Will the American half-life in Iraq have an influence? Or will Afghans rise up and decide this for themselves just like they have all threw their history?
It all seems so out there. Many in western circles look at Afghanistan as a voracious black hole of problems. However, leaving it alone gave warlords like Osama bin Laden a laboratory to attack the west. That fact alone seems to be the glue that keeps western eyes firmly fixed on Afghanistan. The challenge for the west is to do the right thing. Unfortunately, nobody throughout history has ever determined what that really is.
Peace is impossible in Kabul
A.K. Enamul Haque, PhD.
The following is a quotation from an apparently unknown website which keeps track of unknown news. According to them, nearly a quarter of a million people so far are dead in Afghanistan and half a million people are seriously injured in the war. We all know that one of the most cited reasons for the US going to war against Iraq and Afghanistan was the 9/11 attacks which killed only 3000 people. So much so about the rage! I know Phil has told me many times that it is difficult for people overseas to imagine the mentality of the Americans ever since the September 11 incident. I believe it so.  Let us read the news headlines:
“Casualties in Afghanistan & Iraq – AT LEAST 245,464 KILLED,  521,750 SERIOUSLY INJURED. About 78 times as many Iraqis and 4 times as many Afghans have been killed in these wars.http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html ”
In Afghanistan alone the fatalities of western soldiers is only 378. However, it is now been clear that the Taliban are back on track. They are fighting the coalition forces regularly and without a) chemical weapons, b) nuclear weapons, c) sophisticated firepower. Here is the look at a few websites, which list only two days of war. The headlines are:
“05/31/06 AP: Afghan lawmakers ask U.S. to turn over soldiers: Afghanistan’s parliament has approved a motion calling for the government to prosecute the U.S. soldiers responsible for a deadly road crash that sparked the worst riots in Kabul in years
05/31/06 AP: Suspected Taliban Occupy District Police Station In Afghanistan: Hundreds of suspected Taliban fighters attacked a remote central Afghan town Wednesday and briefly occupied its police headquarters after driving out security forces, officials said.
05/31/06 pakistantimes: Afghan troops patrol Kabul after anti-US Riots: Afghan troops patrolled the streets of the capital of Kabul on Tuesday after the worst anti-U.S. riots since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 killed at least eight people.
05/31/06 Reuters: Taliban kill, kidnap dozens of Afghan police: Taliban fighters killed at least a dozen Afghan police and abducted up to 40 in two separate attacks in southern Afghanistan, while US-led forces launched an offensive in a nearby province
05/30/06 Xinhua: Armed men gun down 4 aid workers in Afghanistan: Unidentified armed men shot dead four employees of a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Afghanistan’s northern Jauzjan province on Tuesday, a senior local official confirmed.
05/30/06 breaking news: Brake failure caused crash that sparked Kabul riot: A road crash that sparked a deadly riot in the Afghan capital occurred because a military truck lost its brakes as it was coming down a hill and ploughed into a line of cars, the US military said today.
05/30/06 AP: Troops keep watch over Afghan capital
Hundreds of Afghan and coalition troops took up positions around the Afghan capital on Tuesday to prevent further anti-American riots a day after a deadly traffic accident set off the worst violence in the capital since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
05/30/06 AFP: Tense calm in Afghan capital after riots
Armoured vehicles and soldiers are patrolling the streets of Kabul as the Afghan capital began assessing the damage and cleaning up after a day of rioting that left at least 14 people dead.”
These stories are collected from the Internet and they only reflect what’s going on in Afghanistan in the past two days. These stories provide a signal to the US troops. There is no trust in Afghanistan, people are angry and the US backed government will soon be in trouble. The story resembles that of the time of Soviet troops when they also had a government in place that was trying hard to show the world that everything was normal. It was not. At that time, Osama bin Laden was the freedom fighter paid by the US to work for them. Western governments picked him up, provided him millions of dollars in construction and in pharmaceutical contracts to finance the war. He was successful. He did it right but then things went wrong. For some reason or other, Washington was not happy with him and eventually we know what has happened.
I will not be very surprised if I see in another 5-10 years US and NATO troops forced out if not withdrawn from Kabul and it will not be surprising to see the Russians or Chinese back.
We should weigh the events as they unfold in Kabul, in Tehran and in Baghdad. I have said many times that many people in the developing world were not happy with Saddam. His downfall was not very unfortunate but the process was unfortunate and uncivilized. Similarly, Osama was not a religious leader and so his call for Jihad is not like that of a call from Khomeini. He was nobody. His fortune and misfortune both are orchestrated by the US and Allied forces. However, the way he has been focused in the western media is also unexpected and there is a lot of lies around it. He is now seen as the fall guy and there is a lot of sympathy growing around him, which will bring him back in the limelight again. His popularity has grown and the Taliban are now given shelter in rural Afghanistan by the common people.
The West should learn a lesson from this. First, it is not right to mingle with other nations or their pride. Second, unless the people are with you, it is impossible to keep a country under occupation. It is possible but costly. Third, a military solution is no solution. It delays the process for peace only. If peace is our end then war is not the right means.