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War In Afghanistan: It Has Nothing To Do With Common Sense.

I often meet people who tell me that they have no idea what is it exactly that U.S. and British troops are doing in Afghanistan. (Nobody ever mentions the other NATO countries’ forces as they seem to be in the background all the time.) Recently one man told me that he could not understand the direction in which the whole military campaign in Afghanistan was moving. ‘So what is it exactly,’ he said, sounding rather confused and bewildered, ‘that our boys (he is British) are supposed to achieve over there? It all just makes no sense.’

I am actually quite surprised that so many people do not get it. I mean, why are they trying to put some sense into the war in Afghanistan? Did they not learn from the war in Iraq that has achieved absolutely nothing, apart from costing the lives of one million people and creating a new hotbed of instability in the Middle East, that invasions of countries can happen just because some people are poised to make a lot of money out of them or gain political capital?

Anyway, let me remind you of how the explanation for the American military presence in Afghanistan was changing over the past eight years. I say ‘American military presence’ because other countries simply followed Washington’s lead and did as they were told. Well, at least the British did.

When American troops first invaded the country in October 2001, soon after the terrorist in the U.S., the official reason for conducting operation Enduring Freedom (strange name for an invasion, isn’t it?) was given as punishment of the Taliban who were providing al-Qaeda with bases to train their fighters. But once the Taliban were ousted and replaced with a puppet regime of Hamid Karzai, the reason for the presence of U.S troops in Afghanistan had changed: the idea was put forward that it was all about building a democracy in the country. It had nothing to do with reality, of course. Afghanistan and Western democracy are as far apart as China and sensible economics. It would probably take a thousand years to get the country out of the Middle Ages where it is stuck now and no amount of Coca Cola adverts and carpet bombings would do the trick.

Very soon it became clear that the democracy scenario simply did not work. Once the democratic option failed, the U.S. government started talking about the need to ‘defeat the drug trade’ and ‘destroy the poppy crops’. For that it asked Britain to increase its military presence, as no other NATO country was prepared to send its troops to die in the south of the country where the drug lords controlled the situation. The war on drugs, if we may call that rather short lived scenario, ended in total disaster with Afghanistan becoming the biggest provider of opium in the world. The proceeds from the sale of that opium eventually allowed the Taliban, pushed out into Pakistan, to regroup and start taking back control of vast areas of Afghanistan.

The conflict finally moved to square one: the Taliban were running most of the country and were slowly progressing towards Kabul. The influence of the corrupt Karzia regime did not extend outside central Kabul. The embarrassing fact was that the presence of American, British and other NATO troops did not really prevent the advance of the mighty Taliban. There were even cases when Western commando units encountered such resistance from the Taliban that they had to retreat.

The funniest thing was that the U.S. generals were stubbornly claiming that the Taliban could achieve such success on the ground solely because the Pakistani army did not secure the border and stop the insurgents from going back and forth to conduct their operations. The fact that no army in the world can secure the Afghan-Pakistani border was unashamedly ignored. Not to mention that NATO’s total air dominance could have prevented any movement of hostile forces across the country.

The point that the U.S. and its allies were overlooking, some intentionally, was that the Afghan people did not want foreign military presence on their soil. It was as simple as that. The NATO forces were seen by most people as aggressors and occupants who were causing more problems rather than offering solutions. That was why the Taliban had never had any problems in recruiting new fighters to replace the ones who were killed or wounded.
When President Barack Obama came to power he reiterated his election promise to make Afghanistan his top priority in the War on Terror and thousands more U.S. troops were dispatched to crush the insurgents. The idea again was that American forces were trying to prevent Afghanistan from becoming one huge base for al-Qaeda fighters. And so the conflict entered a new dimension, or rather, it was the same old dimension that the Bush Administration gave it initially. Some things never change, eh?

Recently, though, the democracy factor crept back on the agenda: the wide scale operation by the U.S. and British troops in the Helmand province which was started several days ago is presented as an attempt to establish control – 8 years after the invasion! – over the southern part of Afghanistan so as to allow its people to vote in safety in the forthcoming presidential elections. It sounds more like a bad joke, of course, but that is what is being said now in Washington and repeated in London.

So here comes the explanation of what is really happening in Afghanistan: there never was any logic behind the long term presence of U.S. troops in the country. Once the Taliban were driven out and al-Qaeda bases were destroyed the U.S. troops did not really have any reason to remain in Afghanistan. But because no one in Washington had the courage to call the whole thing off, countless stupid explanations had been given for the presence of the American forces in Afghanistan since then. One sillier than the other.

Everyone now agrees that there is no military solution to Afghanistan’s problems. Apart from the people who make money out of providing the troops with ammunition and military hardware. They made a trillion dollars out of the Iraqi war and they are bent to make some more money out the conflict in Afghanistan. And who cares how many people die and what new reasons would be conjured up to explain the presence of the U.S. troops in the country.
The death merchants have their own logic. And they always win.

– End –

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