Ten years in Afghanistan without victory
Published On Tue Jun 21 2011
Its beyond satire. U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, telling the New York Times what he had learned during his tenure under Presidents Bush and Obama, explained: I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice. Gosh, Bob, does that mean you wouldnt invade Iraq next time?
Afghanistan, by contrast, was a war of necessity in Gatess terms: Official Washington believed that further bad things like 9/11 might happen to the United States if U.S. troops didnt go to Afghanistan to root out the Al Qaeda terrorists (mostly Arabs) who had been given bases there by the countrys Taliban leadership. It wasnt a very subtle strategy, but it was certainly driven by perceived U.S. national interest.
Which was the point being made by President Hamid Karzai, the man whom the United States put in power after the 2001 invasion: (The Americans) are here for their own purposes, for their own goals, and theyre using our soil for that.
Well, of course. The only other possible explanation would be that Washington had sent half a million young Americans to Afghanistan over the past 10 years in some quixotic quest to raise the Afghan standard of living and the status of Afghan women. Thats ridiculous. Obviously, the motive was perceived U.S. national interest.
So how to explain the emotional response of Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan? Speaking at Herat University, he raged: When Americans . . . hear themselves described as occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest . . . they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here.
So why have American troops been in Afghanistan for almost 10 years? To keep the Taliban from power, they say, but its unlikely that the Taliban leadership ever knew about Al Qaedas plans for 9/11. Why would they support an action that was bound to provoke a U.S. invasion and drive them from power? Why would Osama bin Laden risk letting them know about the attack in advance? The U.S. has probably been barking up the wrong tree for a long time.
Now the Taliban are back in force, and the war is all but lost. The U.S. may think it is about terrorism and Al Qaeda, but for Afghans it is just a continuation of the civil war that had already been raging for almost a decade before the U.S. invasion. The Taliban, almost entirely drawn from the Pashtun ethnic group, captured Kabul in 1996, but they never managed to conquer the other, smaller ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan.
The United States stumbled into this civil war under the delusion that it was fighting Islamist terrorists, but in fact it has simply ended up on the side of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Thats who mans the Afghan National Army that the Western powers have been trying to build up with so little success: only 3 per cent of its soldiers are Pashtuns, although Pashtuns account for 42 per cent of the population.
So long as the U.S. forces remain, the Taliban can plausibly claim that they are fighting a jihad against the infidels, but once the Americans leave the war will probably return to its basic ethnic character. That means that the Pashtuns are just as unlikely to conquer the north after the U.S. departure as they were before the invasion.
In the end, some deal that shares out the spoils among the various ethnic groups will be done: that is the Afghan political style. The Taliban will get a big share, but they wont sweep the board. The American interlude will gradually fade from Afghan consciousness, and the Afghan experience will vanish from American memory a good deal faster.
But in the meantime, President Barack Obama has promised to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan next month, and that will be very tricky. Few Americans know much about Afghan realities, and they have been fed a steady diet of patriotic misinformation about the place for a decade.
If the U.S. ambassador to Kabul can get so emotional about a plain statement of fact, imagine how the folks at home will respond when U.S. troops leave Afghanistan without a victory. Obama will be lucky to pull this off without a serious backlash.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based commentator on international affairs and author of The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq.
I think, before departure, US should pay bills on victims' blood and war expenses for his 'new friend' Talibans.
Published On Tue Jun 21 2011
Its beyond satire. U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, telling the New York Times what he had learned during his tenure under Presidents Bush and Obama, explained: I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice. Gosh, Bob, does that mean you wouldnt invade Iraq next time?
Afghanistan, by contrast, was a war of necessity in Gatess terms: Official Washington believed that further bad things like 9/11 might happen to the United States if U.S. troops didnt go to Afghanistan to root out the Al Qaeda terrorists (mostly Arabs) who had been given bases there by the countrys Taliban leadership. It wasnt a very subtle strategy, but it was certainly driven by perceived U.S. national interest.
Which was the point being made by President Hamid Karzai, the man whom the United States put in power after the 2001 invasion: (The Americans) are here for their own purposes, for their own goals, and theyre using our soil for that.
Well, of course. The only other possible explanation would be that Washington had sent half a million young Americans to Afghanistan over the past 10 years in some quixotic quest to raise the Afghan standard of living and the status of Afghan women. Thats ridiculous. Obviously, the motive was perceived U.S. national interest.
So how to explain the emotional response of Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan? Speaking at Herat University, he raged: When Americans . . . hear themselves described as occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest . . . they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here.
So why have American troops been in Afghanistan for almost 10 years? To keep the Taliban from power, they say, but its unlikely that the Taliban leadership ever knew about Al Qaedas plans for 9/11. Why would they support an action that was bound to provoke a U.S. invasion and drive them from power? Why would Osama bin Laden risk letting them know about the attack in advance? The U.S. has probably been barking up the wrong tree for a long time.
Now the Taliban are back in force, and the war is all but lost. The U.S. may think it is about terrorism and Al Qaeda, but for Afghans it is just a continuation of the civil war that had already been raging for almost a decade before the U.S. invasion. The Taliban, almost entirely drawn from the Pashtun ethnic group, captured Kabul in 1996, but they never managed to conquer the other, smaller ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan.
The United States stumbled into this civil war under the delusion that it was fighting Islamist terrorists, but in fact it has simply ended up on the side of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Thats who mans the Afghan National Army that the Western powers have been trying to build up with so little success: only 3 per cent of its soldiers are Pashtuns, although Pashtuns account for 42 per cent of the population.
So long as the U.S. forces remain, the Taliban can plausibly claim that they are fighting a jihad against the infidels, but once the Americans leave the war will probably return to its basic ethnic character. That means that the Pashtuns are just as unlikely to conquer the north after the U.S. departure as they were before the invasion.
In the end, some deal that shares out the spoils among the various ethnic groups will be done: that is the Afghan political style. The Taliban will get a big share, but they wont sweep the board. The American interlude will gradually fade from Afghan consciousness, and the Afghan experience will vanish from American memory a good deal faster.
But in the meantime, President Barack Obama has promised to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan next month, and that will be very tricky. Few Americans know much about Afghan realities, and they have been fed a steady diet of patriotic misinformation about the place for a decade.
If the U.S. ambassador to Kabul can get so emotional about a plain statement of fact, imagine how the folks at home will respond when U.S. troops leave Afghanistan without a victory. Obama will be lucky to pull this off without a serious backlash.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based commentator on international affairs and author of The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq.
I think, before departure, US should pay bills on victims' blood and war expenses for his 'new friend' Talibans.
