How the imperialists sum up their decade-long war in Afghanistan

21 May, 2012. A World to Win News Service. "Sorry, but nothing good can be built on a soil so rich with lies on our side and so rich with sectarianism, tribalism and oil-fuelled fundamentalism on their side." (The New York Times, 24 March 2012) This article by Thomas Friedman, a so-called critic of the war, expresses his own views and those of a whole school of the prominent American commentators and politicians whose concern is whether or not that war is serving what they consider "American interests", the interests of empire. This is not the only view in such circles, where many people are busy summing up the more than 10 years of the Afghanistan war. But most of them are trying to justify the war, or at least the "good intentions" of those who launched it, though they concede that there have been mistakes in the conduct of the occupation, and that it has not produced the desired results. Friedman argues that the occupiers wanted to change the features of Afghanistan, that they really wanted to import democracy and reconstruct the country, but were frustrated in their good intentions by the backwardness of the people of Afghanistan and the peoples of the Middle East in general. If the US has failed to accomplish anything positive in these countries and especially Afghanistan, that is because any change "has got to start with them wanting it." The problem is not that the US and other powers invade, target or otherwise dominate these countries, but that the natives are not receptive to "democracy" or grateful to those trying to manfully shoulder what a bard of the British empire called "the white man's burden". Friedman, a prominent liberal, quotes from another piece, by historian Victor Hanson in the National Review, a conservative policy publication. Hanson refers to the various approaches the US has taken towards different countries in the Middle East such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., and concludes, "What have we learned? Tribalism, oil, and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leaves Americans sick and tired of the Middle East – both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it." There is a striking unity of views between these men who represent the allegedly opposite ends of the American mainstream political spectrum. This idea was repeated by US Congressman Walter Jones, a Republican, who has come to a similar conclusion that Afghanistan can never change: "We can declare victory now. But there's one thing we cannot do, and that is change history, because Afghanistan has never changed since they've been existing." Jones said this at a 20 March session where members of the US House Armed Services Committee questioned General John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan. In this case, this was not just an apology but an argument for what the US should do, despite the different nuances of opinion expressed in that hearing. The Congressman was advising the US ruling class that they should declare victory and not attempt to solve the problems of Afghanistan. Because "Attempting to find a true military and political answer to the problems in Afghanistan would take decades. Would drain our nation of precious resources, with the most precious being our sons and daughters. Simply put, the United States cannot solve the Afghan problem, no matter how brave and determined our troops are." This from a congressman "so gung ho about W.'s attempts to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan that, after the French opposed invading Iraq in 2003, he helped lead the effort to rename French fries 'freedom fries' and French toast 'freedom toast' in the House cafeteria." (NYT, 20 March 2012) The frustration with the resistance to the US-led invasion and its notorious lack of success, the occupiers' inability to secure the control of the country, a frustration with the growing cost of this war at a time of economic crisis, and the increasing number of people in the West who oppose the war in Afghanistan, have all helped give rise to many questions, including within the ruling classes of the invading powers. There are somewhat different views. Some say that the US had overly ambitious goals that could not possibly be realized in such a "short" time. Others say that they underestimated the Taliban's influence, which implies that they should have not excluded the Taliban as an organisation from the power structure. These differences are intertwined with attempts by each of the two dominant American political parties to blame the other for "losing Afghanistan". People like Freedman argue that the Iraq invasion diverted US attention and resources from Afghanistan. Framing the situation in purely military terms, some people claim that until the surge of forces during Obama's presidency, there was a lack of a concrete strategy. Zalmi Khalilzad, Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, says that there was a strategy but it was not successful. He blames the failure on official corruption in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (BBC Persian service Website, 14 October 2011) He doesn't mention that he was, as much as anyone, a father of those failed polices. He played a key role in putting the Karzai regime in place when the US occupation needed an Afghan face. The US picked Karzai for the job exactly because of Karzai's commitment to the interests of a network of feudals, warlords and his own and allied family clans. And when Khalilzad cites the Pakistani regime's "corruption" and "meddling" in Afghanistan, he doesn't mention that the US encouraged the Pakistani military's 1977 coup against a civilian government that the US found troublesome, financed the Islamization of the Pakistani army and backed their meddling in Afghanistan for several decades, including bringing the Taliban to power in 1996, when the the US deemed that in its interests. (Obama's regime continues to shun Pakistani civilian leaders and prefers dealing directly with the generals.) In the 1980s the US sought to take over from Great Britain as the dominant power in Afghanistan. Standing in the US's way was the head of the rival imperialist bloc, the Soviet Union, a social-imperialist country ("socialist" in words, a monopoly capitalist/imperialist country in facts). When Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan threatened to change the regional balance of power, the Western imperialists countered that by supporting, financing and arming reactionary Islamic fundamentalists and making Pakistan, their main client regime in the region at that time, their base of operations. Fuelled by these developments, Islamic fundamentalist groups spread all over the Middle East and some Asian and African countries. People who think like Friedman and Hanson, who know all this, are hoping that nobody else does. Their arguments are reactionary in that they view everything from the point of view of the interests of empire, and in that their "opinions" are precisely what the masters of that empire want to make everyone think, but they are also based on deceit (including, maybe, some self-deceit). For instance, when Friedman and Hanson blame "oil-fuelled fundamentalism" for the hard times faced by the empire, they "forget" that the main victims of that fundamentalism have been the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries the US, Britain and other imperialists have stomped all over. He wants everyone else to forget that for decades it was the US that organized and channelled Saudi oil funds and American "foreign aid" to Pakistan. The former Bush envoy Khalilzad, like the liberal Friedman, just can't admit that the obstacles that have made prevented the US from achieving its goals in Afghanistan are, to a large degree, the unintended result of its own policies. Despite their criticisms and even in some cases their current opposition to continuing the war, and even though some of these conclusions have been reached from different angles, these kinds of summation are trying to justify the occupation and cover up its inherently evil character, and prevent the disclosure of imperialists' hidden agenda. The argument that the "problems" in Afghanistan were produced by policy or military mistakes, or the inherent difficulty of trying to bring something wonderful to people who "don't want it", are meant to provide moral cover for imperialism and its wars of occupations. But this debate is also meant to help decide how to readjust US war policies to make more war possible, including, very likely, a continuation of the war in Afghanistan, in new and old forms. Obama has firmly announced that the US expects to be fighting in Afghanistan until 31 December, 2014, "almost three years from now", as he told the Nato summit conference in Chicago. He also reiterated that he expects US and other Nato troops to remain in Afghanistan for at least a decade beyond that date. It's hard to believe his claim that the main role planned for the occupation troops after that will be "training" the Afghan government army, since the growing number of foreign troops killed by their so-called Afghan "allies" shows that nearly everyone in Afghanistan hates the invaders. What makes reviewing this experience all the more important is that US intervention and meddling on a global scale and especially in the Middle East, continues. Since the occupation of Afghanistan the Nato countries have ganged up and invaded Libya and are paving the way to invade Syria and possibly Iran and may target other countries in the region, depending on the development of events. They are making the invasion of Libya from the air, in coordination with local gangsters, a model, or at least one possible model in contrast to the massive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. They would prefer a model that involves fewer ground forces and reduces the risk of being pinned down, and also tremendously reduces military expenses. This is what the US is trying to do with its drones and commandos in Yemen. At the same time they like to pretend they are helping the "freedom fighters" or are responding to a call for help by the people of those countries. But the only real question in debate among the imperialists and their representatives is how to install and prop up their choice of reactionary forces as the heads of governments so as to secure their global interests and prevent real revolution and a change of systems. Some truths about the Afghanistan war After 11 September 2001, a coalition of Western imperialists declared a "war on terrorism" and invaded Afghanistan. They promised to get rid of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, "free" the Afghan people and especially "liberate women" from fundamentalism, and reconstruct the country's economy, getting rid of drug production. And to "bring democracy" to Afghanistan. Now after more than 10 years even most of the generals and policy-makers in charge of this occupation and their defenders have had to admit that none of these things have been accomplished. The Afghan people have found themselves under the rule of another brand of fundamentalism, one that is friendlier to US imperialist occupation, comprised of former jihadis and "modern" fundamentalists such as President Hamid Karzai. The oppression of women is one of the political and ideological pillars of their Islamic Republic. The alternative, they argue, is social instability. In other words, their regime promotes and protects the political, economic and ideological backwardness that has allowed one power after another to dominate Afghanistan. Religious fundamentalism, male supremacy and similar ills are deeply rooted in Afghan society, as they are in the whole world today (including Friedman's USA), but it has been one invader and occupier after another that has made it so hard for the Afghan people to rid themselves of these obstacles to their liberation. In terms of economic reconstruction, the only network of businesses that formed under the occupation has been those that feed on the war and especially provisioning imperialist troops. For example, businesses that produce food for Nato forces, or provide services to foreign military bases and military personnel and/or foreign "aid" workers and so on. According to a NYT article (30 March 2012), "despite the billions in reconstruction and aid money poured into Afghanistan, there still is no major manufacturing or technology base that could be a driver of future prosperity." The economy of the country has become increasingly dependent on the production of drugs. With so-called food aid and subsidized imported food overwhelming the local market, peasants found they had no choice but to resort to growing poppy. The main profit goes in the pocket of warlord jihadis connected to the power structure, people within or related to high-ranking Karzai government officials, and the Taliban too. Millions of families have been integrated into or in some way connected to the drug-based economy. Apart from harassing the poor peasants and destroying their crops and fields, the imperialists and government officials have done nothing to change the face of the economy. In fact they have helped, directly or indirectly, to make the economy more drug dependent than ever before. And this has made Afghanistan the world's number one drug producer and exporter. It is a country whose only real income comes from drugs and the foreign "aid" that keeps it dependent. What the imperialists are proud to have done is train and built an army 320,000 strong. Their military "achievements" of course also include murdering thousands of civilians, including children and elderly, with their air bombardments and other kinds of brutality. They have harassed millions with their night searches and attacks, and many thousands of crimes have been committed by their soldiers both as a group and individually. In the end, the result was that the Taliban (supposedly the target of the war), once a hated force among the people, has gained more support and is imposing itself to such a degree that imperialists feel unable to ignore or defeat it and prefer to make compromises with it. All that said, what are the imperialists doing in Afghanistan? Today it is clearer than ever that the imperialists have been pursuing their global interests. The strategic importance of Afghanistan has not been a secret to anyone. Afghanistan has long been the battlefield of "Great Games" between rival empires. The strategic importance of Afghanistan – connecting the Middle East, the main source of energy for the world, to central Asia, considered the backyard of Russia, and South Asia and the Indian subcontinent – did not diminish after the Cold War but rather has increased with the emergence of China as a powerful country in the region, including militarily and in terms of its efforts to politically influence other countries in the region. In fact, the occupation of Afghanistan was part of a US plan to secure and ensure its control and leading position over the world, including present and potential rivals, and the "war on terrorism" and Islamic fundamentalism was in the service of that goal. How much the US has been successful in achieving that goal remains to be seen. But it is clear that the US never had a serious plan to reconstruct Afghanistan. What mattered most about Afghanistan for the imperialists is and always has been its strategic importance. In fact, imperialist meddling for control of Afghanistan is what has made it a more or less permanently unstable country. The US imperialists were aware of this fact, or at least they came to this conclusion in the early stages of occupation. So when Congressman Jones says "we" can't "change history, because Afghanistan has never changed," he also may be referring to this point – that the instability of Afghanistan can never end and "we" have to live with it. Because the imperialists and the regional powers, whether they are in Afghanistan or out of it, will never and can never stop meddling in the country's affairs. Hanson, too, is dealing in deceit – in fact a double deceit – when he laments that "Americans are sick and tired of the Middle East – both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it." First, what ordinary people in the US may think has never determined American foreign policy. Second, the US ruling class has never tried to "stay out" of the Middle East, and are not planning to keep their hands off now, no matter what. While imperialist representatives and apologists lament that "nation building" is a prolonged process and the occupation of in Afghanistan hasn't gone on long enough to make that possible (as Khalilzad complains), it would be more truthful to call what the occupation has done nation-wrecking. What the US is trying to "import" into Afghanistan are political structures that would keep it under American domination, not in the interests of "nation-building" or "democracy" (which, in the U.S., is simply a form of imperialist rule), but in the interests of a global system of exploitation and imperialism that is devouring humanity and the planet. Afghanistan is the way it is, to a large degree, because its people have been trodden down by one empire after another for more than a century and a half. Imperialist occupation does nothing good for the people, it can only bring the worst for the people. There is no way out with the presence of the imperialists. The only way out is for Afghanistan and all the oppressed countries, and the world's people, to kick out the imperialists and and get rid of their system, and nothing less than that.