Losing in Afghanistan - three sorrowful tigers
by Alberto Cruz, Ceprid, in Rebelion, October 10th 2007
Translation by Tortilla con Sal
The Bush administration has asked for US$198bn to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan going through 2008. Not for
reconstruction , nor to promote democratic institutions, nor, as they have been saying in their Orwell-speak until now,
to strengthen security, but for war. Directly, now and without lexical subterfuge. It is a clear recognition that things
are going badly for them, very badly. But if, in Iraq, their aim in life is to stay on to ensure control of the oil, as
the construction of four super bases bear witness and as Bush confirmed in his most recent speech comparing that Arab
country with South Korea, over in Afghanistan things are not quite so clear. With the invasion there, no energy
advantages were envisaged in the medium to long term. It was mainly a geostrategic matter to worry China and weaken
Russia on its southern flank, already practically encircled by NATO's expansion to its European frontiers and with US
military bases in former Soviet Union countries like Georgia, Azerbaijan or Tajikstan. All of which served to require
NATO's participation in Afghanistan's supposed "pacification and reconstruction. And the Europeans, both Old and New, as
Rumsfeld would have said, lent themselves swiftly and surely, pursuing his gameplan in a new, pathetic display of their
lack of an independent foreign policy, one not subordinated by the interests of empire.
The following table indicates the number of countries occupying Afghanistan right now.
26 NATO Countries Approx. number of
troops in the ISAF: 39.500:11 Non-NATO countries:ItalyHungaryAustria GermanyDenmarkSweden HollandLithuaniaCroatia SpainCzech RepublicFinland FranceSloveniaAlbania RumaniaBulgariaAzerbaijan Great BritainGreeceMacedonia BelgiumEstoniaIreland NorwaySlovakiaNew Zealand USAIcelandSwitzerland PortugalLatviaAustralia TurkeyPoland CanadaLuxemburg
By asking for more money, Bush is explicitly acknowledging that he is losing in Afghanistan. A sorrowful tiger in a fix.
The same is true of NATO, which cannot increase its troops - despite pleas from the US and from the UN - and which sees
a daily climb in casualties. NATO has dressed up its presence in Afghanistan, just as in Lebanon, with bucolic language
unrelated to reality. Proportionately, it is suffering more losses than the US : of the 694 deaths of occupying troops
as of September 25th, 441 were from the United States and 253 from other countries. Apart from an Australian and two
Swedes, all these others were troops from NATO, including the last two deaths from the Spanish contingent. In the 6
years of occupation so far the number of wounded is 6710. If one makes the comparison with Iraq (4099 dead and 36943
wounded) the proportions are similar, about ten wounded for every death.
What is the reason that the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan is markedly less than in Iraq when in one country
the intervention has lasted since 2001 and in the other since 2003? Well, in the first country the occupying force is
much smaller and practically confined to urban centres. The presence in rural areas is so scarce that right now the
various forces that make up the Afghan resistance control 75% of the country.
A diverse grouping of anti-occupation forces
It is mistaken to identify the whole spectrum of Afghan anti-occuoation forces as Taliban. It is true that the Taliban
have re-organized and that they make up the greater part of the resistance, but apart from them there are other
components like the Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (whose fiefdom is the northern province of Kunduz), nationalist
resistance led by Jalalladin Hakkani, Al Qaeda militants, opium traffickers and all kinds of local fighters sick of
Western arrogance and above all of the civilian casualties the occupiers have caused. Mor and more villages and towns
are abandoning Karzai's puppet regime and going over to the insurrection. One should not forget that the collaborators'
"star program is the fight against opium production and that leads them to destroy all kinds of crops without taking
into account that the great majority of the lands belong to impoverished rural families with no other means of support.
That is just as true in the case of mercenaries belonging to Dyncorp (the US corporation that is supposed to do the same
work in Colombia) as it is of occupation forces directed by Great Britain and of collaborationist troops. These last
have an impressive record of robbery, rape, extortion, torture and murder, all with impunity. Repressing anti-occupation
demonstrations is the order of the day. The collaborationist army is made up mostly of people of Tajik ethnic
background, which makes the reaction of the Pathans (or Pashtuns, if one uses Anglo-Saxon etymology) completely normal.
The Tajik militias were the main support of the US in its overthrow of the Taliban who are Pathans, the most numerous
ethnic group in Afghanistan.
In this panorama of the resistance one should include a small left-wing faction, identified with Maoist thinking, which
argues the possibility of armed struggle in its publications. This group, which also opposed the Soviet occupation, has
kept itself going within the political struggle, albeit not militarily, but at the moment is warning that it is "in a
preparatory stage for a people's war against the imperialist occupation. That change in the war would be qualitative and
make the defeat of the occupiers, led by NATO, complete. No longer would they be facing a religion-driven (Taliban)
insurrection but a political and economic one changing the balance of the war, leaving the occupiers with no case to
argue.
The US, NATO and the UN are three sorry-looking tigers, losing it in Afghanistan (along with Karzai's tutored
semi-colonial government). At the moment, the military capacity of the diverse Afghan resistance organizations has grown
four-fold since the September 2001 invasion. The Senlis Council, the organization most worried about the situation in
Afghanistan, quite uncritical of the occupiers, has published a report in which the graphic reproduced below appears,
showing the expansion of anti-occupation forces and how this has extended to 75% of the country, as pointed out earlier,
with varying intensity but significant presence (1).
The UN does not say it so clearly, but the last Security Council Resolution (2) expresses concern over the "increase in
violent and terrorist activites of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, illegally armed groups and those who participate in drugs
trading. Ban Ki-moon, the multinational organization's Secretary General is clearer still in his most recent report (3)
: "acts of violence perpetrated by insurgents and terrorists have increased at least 20% comapred with 2006: an average
of 548 incidents a month were reported in 2007 compared with a monthly average of 425 in 2006.
At the start of 2007 the guerillas controlled just 20 districts in three provinces, Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan. So
one has to attribute the rapid growth and extension of the anti-occupation forces to various causes, but mainly two. On
the one hand, many functionaries of Karzai's semi-colonial government support the guerrillas. On the other, continued
repeated bombardments by NATO against whole villages (as happened this summer) has turned the Afghan population against
the occupation.
The Afghanistan Radical Left said in a communiqué last July (4) that NATO is plunging Afghanistan into a bloodbath with
the bombing of villages and massacres of civilians. In more moderate language, the Italian Foreign Affairs Minister
showed a trace of honesty, rare among his colleagues, when he said "(civilian deaths) are not acceptable morally and are
a disaster politically. UN responsibility in the massacres is not trivial given that it gives legal cover to the US and
to NATO. Thus the cited resolution expresses its "concern for the civilian victims and calls on the International
Security and Assistance Force (namely, NATO) and other international forces to "minimize the risk of civilian casualties
and to adopt "all possible measures to guarantee the lives of the civilian population, respect for international
humanitarian law and human rights norms(sic). A clear confession on the UN's part of its pitiful state, having lost all
credibility as guarantor of world security.
Anonymous massacres
Political opinion in Europe is anaesthetised, allowing NATO spokespersons to state shamelessly that ISAF and NATO forces
behave differently to those of the United States, advising with 24 hours notice that they are going to bomb a village,
so that if the inhabitants fail to evacuate then no responsibility for any deaths attaches to the "Atlantic Alliance.
The dead person is responsible for their death for having stayed in their own home, on their own land. Given that the
only testimonies on these pre-announced bombings, from Afghans, are always thrown into doubt by Western defenders of
press freedom one has to have faith in the account of some Canadians after an incursion of their troops into a village :
"of course the people evacuate the village but the troops don't enter the buildings (which still stand) for fear of
booby traps, for which reason they destroy the building, the barns and the wells and then tell people they can return
(5). Winning hearts and minds as in Vietnam or in Iraq. Then they turn up with a small indemnity (US$2000, about â‚1430)
for "collateral damage if any deaths have occurred. But it turns out that only four countries do this consistently and
neither the US, Great Britain, France nor Spain is among them.
Perhaps on account of testimonies such as these, or because Canada has more dead soldiers than any other except the
United States, the opposition there wants to withdraw the troops. Only the Conservative Party with its small but
inadequate parliamentary majority wants to hang on "until the job is done. While similar debates go on in other
countries with troops in Iraq, as regards those occupying Afghanistan, only Canada has taken the first step.
Just as in Iraq, there are no figures for the number of civilians killed by the occupation. Marc W. Herold, an economist
in the University of New Hampshire has carried out a study showing 4643 dead civilians from September 2001 to October
2006. As is logical, this figure has increased considerably because since then NATO has increase bombing of civilian
areas. The UN talks timidly of 1000 deaths between January 1st and August 1st of this year (6) covering itself by saying
"in many cases security considerations limiting the Mission's access to combat zones and the fact that one is dealing
with a delicate political situation render difficult the collection of sufficient data to draw up a full report of
incidents. So one should hardly be surprised therefore that the growth of nationalist, anti US and anti-Western
sentiment in general is swelling the ranks of the anti-occupation forces. The anti-occupation forces, generically
identified as Taliban (so the term interiorizes itself in the collective sub-conscious as a synonym for uncivilized,
while foreign troops are bringing progress) are accused of hiding among the civilian population, as if in an
asymmetrical guerrilla war the guerrillas might say "Yoo-hoo! Here I am! - Come and bomb me out here in the open....!
But what is happening in Afghanistan is more and more a guerrilla war, perhaps even a most advanced phase. a war of
movement.
The barbarism of the occupation is cooking up a brew of ever greater resistance although one that is a long way from
being a left wing or progressive nationalist movement. Just as in Iraq, the right of the Afghan people to their
sovereignty, self-determination and dignity is beyond doubt however much the occupying troops drape themselves in blue
UN colours. The US, just as much as NATO or the UN, keep insisting that any withdrawal by the occupying troops in
Afghanistan will leave a vacuum that will be filled by "extremists. With anti-occupation forces in direct or indirect
control of 75% of the country, this is no more than yet another Western fallacy. As happened in September 2006 when the
Canadians and British congratulated themselves on having caused 500 casualties to the Taliban in Panjwai and in Zahri
after two weeks of air attacks and repeating again and again they had those villages under control. But it turned out
they could not show a single one of the alleged 500 casulaties simply because the anti-occuaption fighters (whether they
were Taliban or not) had disappeared. So they changed their story and said, "We forced the Taliban to flee. These are
the fairy tales Western public opinion listens to...until the deaths of their own troops or the kidnapping of their
nationals returns them to reality.
That reality includes the UN which states that Afghanistan "liberated from Taliban brutality produces 92% of the heroin
consumed globally. A partial recognition that does not exempt it from responsibility or from defeat. The United Nations
Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC) states that Afghanistan is on the verge of turning into a "narco-State although
at the same time it acknowledges that "opium production is the main source of employment in Afghanistan (7). The
anti-occupation forces say the same. The UNODC reckoned that 165,000 hectares were dedicated to opium production in
2006, mostly in areas controlled by Karzai's semi-colonial government and in areas with occupied military presence. So
the opium is in the hands of the pro-Western elite and forms part of the counterinsurgency campaign. With the
territorial expansion of the guerrillas and the control they have in these areas, opium is turning into an almost
essential part of the anti-occupation war.
The US and its allies will not win the war in Afghanistan. Their strategy is a complete fiasco. The number of deaths
will increase as the governing regime collapses, barely in control of the capital and a few provinces left to the whims
of warlord allies. The US, NATO, the UN and the puppet Karzai are obviously on the defensive, facing a large majority of
the Afghan population who reject them. The ever docile Ban Ki-moon says it with clarity, "In the degree to which
pressure on the transition process in Afghanistan by the insurgency increases, with deficiencies in governance and the
drugs-based economy, then the country's government with help from the international community will have to show
political will to take the energetic measures necessary to again create initiatives on each one of these issues and
recover people's confidence in a tangible way. If the government does not show firmer leadership, with greater coherence
from the donors (including closer coordination between international civil and military participants in Afghanistan) and
a firm commitment from neighbouring countries, many of the advances in security matters, institution building and
development made since the Bonn Conference could remain stymied or even suffer a reverse. (8).
Notes
(1) "Política de los talibanes y agravios legítimos afganos", junio de 2007.
(2) Resolución 1776 (2007),19 de septiembre de 2007.
(3) La situación en el Afganistán y sus consecuencias para la paz y la seguridad internacionales. Informe del secretario
general. A/62/345?S/2007/555, apartado 7.
(4) "¿Hace la OTAN una misión de paz o bárbara en Afganistán?", 29 de julio de 2007.
(5) "Desde Afganistán Ocupado: notas de una misión exploratoria", Globalresearch, 18 de septiembre de 2007.
(6) La situación en el Afganistán y sus consecuencias para la paz y la seguridad internacionales. Informe del secretario
general. A/62/345?S/2007/555, apartado 54.
(7) Servicio de Noticias de la ONU, 28 de junio de 2007.
(8) La situación en el Afganistán y sus consecuencias para la paz y la seguridad internacionales. Informe del secretario
general. A/62/345?S/2007/555, apartado 74.
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Alberto Cruz is a writer, journalist and political analyst specializing in International Relations.
albercruz (arroba) eresmas.com
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Translation copyleft, tortilla con sal