12 December 2011. A World to Win News Service. After a decade of occupation and war by the US-led coalition, the people are looking back to assess the results.
But the reactionary forces on an international scale have prepared themselves for that too. By organizing various international and internal conferences and meetings, they have sought to impose their own conclusions and prepare public opinion for the continuation of their reactionary plans in Afghanistan and the region for at least another decade.
In fact US policy on Afghanistan is entering a new phase. The US is pretending that its mission in Afghanistan is almost over and that stability and prosperity there is within reach, with some minor shortcomings of course. Consequently they have started to draw down their soldiers and gradually hand over security responsibilities to the Afghan government. By the end of 2014 only a small number of foreign troops will remain to "protect the country" against its neighbours because the Afghanistan army is not strong enough to defend itself.
Just as the story told by the US and its allies when they invaded Afghanistan was a lie, so is this one.
Among the meetings recently held on Afghanistan have been the October Istanbul conference involving the Nato countries and Afghanistan's neighbours, and the traditional grand Loya Jirga with participation of 2,000 members called by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in mid-November to discuss two important issues, the long-term strategic accord with the US and negotiations with the Taliban.
The most decisive conference for the imperialists was held in Bonn, Germany on 5 December, a follow-up on the first Bonn conference 10 years ago. The first Bonn conference, held two months after the invasion started and the Taliban were ousted from power, established the framework for imperialist plans for Afghanistan over the last decade. In that conference Karzai was appointed head of the provisional government and the cabinet was given to his allies and other Islamic fundamentalists known as Jihadis who opposed the Taliban.
The second Bonn conference on Afghanistan was tasked with approving the framework for the imperialists' plans for Afghanistan for the next decade or so. Unlike the guardedly optimistic impression that the imperialists want to give, the real picture is gloomy. The majority of Afghanistan's people have been increasingly disappointed with the situation and the broken promises, and many are joining the reactionary opposition forces. Moreover the occupiers are acting with severe brutality against the population.
Air strikes and bombardment continue to victimize civilians who have nothing to do with the Taliban. A recent incident highlights the pattern of Nato and US bombardments. On 23 November an airstrike in Zhare district in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan killed seven civilians, including six children belonging to two families. "Mohammad Rahim, 50, had his two sons and three daughters with him. They were between 4 and 12 years old and all were killed, except an 8-year-old daughter who was badly wounded."
While Nato and government forces repeated their stereotyped story that they were chasing a group of insurgents who in this case were "planting a mine", the uncle of the killed children challenged this account, saying,
"There were no Taliban in the field; this is a baseless allegation that the Taliban were planting mines… I have been to the scene and haven't found a single bit of evidence of bombs or any other weapons. The Americans did a serious crime against innocent children, they will never ever be forgiven." (CBS News, 24 November 2011)
The occupiers' night raids meant to terrorize the Afghani people have become so widely and deeply hated that Karzai has had to address this issue. In his speech in the opening of the Loya Jirga he said, "Afghanistan believes that the war on terrorism is not in the people's houses, their nest is somewhere else. The corruption in offices is incredible. There is still government harassment of the people, people's houses are still not immune, both governmental institutions and foreigners can harass the people. So what should we do about these problems?" (BBC Persian website, 16 November 2011)
Women continue to be the victims of fundamentalism, both by the Nato-installed Karzai government and the opposition. There are numerous reports indicating intense and painful discrimination against women. The story of a young woman named Golnaz who was raped by a relative is particularly shocking. Golnaz, who became pregnant, was arrested and convicted of sex outside of marriage (Zina). She was given three years in prison. When she appealed, a higher court increased her sentence to 12 years imprisonment. After her story found its way to the world's media, Karzai ordered her released on the condition that she marry her rapist, though she did not want to. This is the supposed liberation of women under the occupation. There is no need to mention that there are thousands of Golnaz in Afghanistan.
No aspect of the country's reconstruction has been seriously pursued except for building up its armed forces and bureaucratic apparatus. The cultivation and production of drugs continues to rise and shape the economic structure of the country. Corruption, poverty and suffering have engulfed the people. The US and Nato forces are hated. These are some of the reasons why people who despised the Taliban are increasingly drawn to their side.
No real success in fighting the Taliban but seeking to make peace with them
While the people have suffered most from the occupation, the occupiers are now trying to make peace with the Taliban who were supposedly their target. As previously mentioned, this has been a core issue at most of the recent international and local meetings.
The government and the US are doing everything they can to draw the Taliban to the negotiating table. They have been compromising on many issues, especially women's rights. The Karzai regime's increasing application of Sharia (Koranic law) is meant to win over Taliban supporters. They have offered immunity to many Taliban leaders and suggested that the organization open an office in Doha (Qatar) or Turkey to facilitate negotiations.
Whether most or some of the Taliban forces would go to the negotiating table is another question, one that depends on their own assessment of the situation. The point is that the occupiers and the Karzai government are working hard to get the Taliban to accept some sort of power-sharing arrangement.
All this shows that the US and other imperialists did not invade Afghanistan to liberate the people or women. They did not invade Afghanistan to fight terrorists or to bring peace and reconstruct the country. Contrary to these claims, they invaded Afghanistan for their global and strategic interests. In this sense, the US-led invasion is little different than the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet social-imperialism (the imperialist USSR before its fake socialism was dropped). The difference is that the Soviets allied with the local revisionist forces who called themselves democrats or communists, while the US and other Western imperialists have allied mainly with Islamic forces and various sections of Islamic fundamentalism.
The long-term strategic treaty between Afghanistan and the US
The US and its allies still will continue to pursue their global interests in Afghanistan no matter what changes they might bring to their policies there. In fact, the new policies on the agenda, including drawing down their forces, negotiations with the Taliban and the long-term strategic accord, all are in the service of those imperialist interests.
There have been many meetings between the US and Afghanistan governments to complete the drafting of this accord. It seems the latest round of bilateral talks took place September 2011 in Washington. The draft document is said to cover military, economic, political, cultural and educational relations between the two countries.
Many observers have suggested that the most important issue under discussion over the last couple of years has been the proposed building of US military bases to facilitate the permanent or at least long-term presence of tens of thousands of US soldiers in Afghanistan. Despite initial denials by Afghan and US officials, Karzai confirmed this in his speech at the recent Loya Jirga, which was to discuss the accord, whose details remain secret. Even the Loya Jirga were not informed of the full contents of the US demands and conditions.
In his opening speech Karzai argued that Afghanistan would benefit from such military bases.
"The US wants military bases that would have some effects on us and on the region and on our neighbours. We can use this to our benefit. But we have our conditions: the US must stop the night raids. And stop the parallel offices in Afghanistan [American financial and political structures meant to substitute or oversee Afghan government organs]. While we and the US and the West, are friends, we are also friends with Russia, China and our neighbours. We would give them [our neighbours] our word that no matter what the price we will not allow any country to be attacked from our soil.
"These are our conditions. Afghanistan is prepared to sign the long-term treaty and this is in our interest. Their money comes to Afghanistan, they train our soldiers and our police force, and they ensure the general stability of the region." (BBC Persian website, 16 November 2011)
This is all that has been revealed about the contents of the proposed strategic treaty. Even some of the Loya Jirga members protested that they were not aware of what they were going to approve. Later, Safia Sedighi, the speaker for the Loya Jirga, told reporters,"The Americans have demanded that their conditions remain secret."
While it has not been confirmed, some sources believe that the US intends to maintain permanent military bases in at least five locations (Shinden in Herat near the Iranian border, Shoor Abak, Kandahar, Khost and Bagram).
Even as the American and Afghan governments have been trying to create public opinion to justify long-term foreign military bases in Afghanistan they have also been trying to cover up the US's real neo-colonial intentions in the country and the region.
For example, whenever the issue of ending the war has come up, Washington adds that "this time" they will not leave Afghanistan "alone", as if the mess that Afghanistan fell into during the 1990s was because the Western powers "neglected" Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets. They argue that if the US leaves completely the mess would re-emerge. They talk as if it was not imperialist interference that led to the civil war of the 1990s and as if Afghanistan were not a total mess today – a mess they created.
First of all, the imperialists have never left Afghanistan people alone to get on with their life. In fact the mess created in Afghanistan has been the result of decades of meddling in Afghan affairs, especially by the imperialists and their regional allies. The Jihadis came to power as a result of more than a decade of military, financial, political and propaganda support from the West. Later, in fact, it was Pakistan, with US approval, that brought in the Taliban. Pakistan was then the main American ally in the region. It is important to emphasize that during that period Pakistan and US had strong common interests in the region and were mainly united on achieving them.
As a recent New York Times opinion piece recalled, "during the Clinton administration, Mr Putin proposed United States-Russian cooperation against the Taliban; Washington turned down the offer for political reasons." (Dov S. Zakheim and Paul J. Saunders, 1 December 2011) What were those political reasons? When we know that the US was one of the Taliban's main financial supporters and that the countries that recognized the Taliban regime were the main US clients in the region, the political reasons start to become clearer: the US was – and still is – seeking regional hegemony as part of hanging on to its global domination.
The US's part in turning Afghanistan into a mess is such common knowledge that even those who want to justify the present and future US occupation have to take that into account. They argue that this history is why the US must continue to run Afghanistan. "The political, moral and partly legal responsibilities of the US for helping Afghanistan is one of the expectations of the bilateral strategic relations. The US has had an obvious role in creating the present problems of Afghanistan, including provoking the ex-Soviet Union to interfere militarily, supporting the extremist groups during the [Soviet] occupation, handing over the key to Kabul to Islamabad after that occupation and entrusting Pakistan with Afghanistan after 2001,” writes Davoud Moradian, currently teaching in American University in Kabul. He concludes that "US support for Afghanistan is not only what Kabul is requesting but also Afghanistan's right and the responsibility of the US and other Western countries." (BBC Persian service, 14 October 2011)
The US wants continued control of Afghanistan for the same reasons why the USSR occupied the country and wanted to stay there – and the same reasons why the British wanted Afghanistan in the nineteenth century. In fact Afghanistan was coveted by a long list of empires, including Mongols, Persians and Indians.
Because of its strategic importance Afghanistan has long been a battlefield of contention between powerful countries. However, the recent occupations have taken place in a new era in which capitalism has developed into imperialism and military and economic global control has become qualitatively more important. And to force their way in and prolong their stay these imperialists have become more brutal, with an effect on the life of the people that has been disastrous in many dimensions.
This is what the strategic accord between the US and Afghanistan and the second Bonn Conference on Afghanistan was all about – the contention between powers.
In arguing for a continued US presence, Senator John Kerry, a former Democrat US presidential candidate and currently chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote an article expressing some of the concerns of the US imperialists about what would happen if they left Afghanistan:
"Russia, for example, is looking to reassert its authority in the region and could use our departure as a pretext to redeploy Russian troops on the Tajik-Afghan border. The Chinese are expanding their economic footprint but have chosen not to engage politically or militarily, in part because they’re fearful of stirring separatist sentiments in the volatile Xinjiang region bordering Afghanistan. Iran, too, has strengthened economic and trade cooperation with Kabul, building on its cultural ties to reassert its role in the region. And the Indians recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan, cementing their long-term ties." (The New York Times, 1 December 2011)
The gateway to Central Asia from the north, to the Indian peninsula from the south and east and to Iran and Middle East in the west, and also close to two powerful countries like Russia and China, Afghanistan's location makes it strategically extremely important when regional and even global contention is taken into account.
US occupation: a regional and global danger
The US occupation of Afghanistan and its plan to stay for decades to come are not in the interests of Afghanistan’s people and do not serve that country's security nor the region's stability. On the contrary this occupation is a source of insecurity for Afghanistan and the region and a provocation for contention.
It is bitterly ironic that when Karzai stated that the US must have military bases in the country to protect Afghanistan's interests, he gave his word that no neighbour will be threatened or attacked from Afghan soil. Shortly after, that is exactly what happened.
Not long after he made this pledge a Nato airstrike against two Pakistani military outposts along the north-western border with Afghanistan killed at least 25 Pakistani soldiers. This act created so much outrage that the Pakistani government had to respond by ordering the CIA to cease the drone operations it runs from the Shamsi Air Base in western Pakistan, and closing the two main NATO supply routes into Afghanistan. Pakistan also boycotted the Bonn Conference in protest. Predictably US and Nato officials are investigating to see what went "wrong".
Pakistan has been an important ally of the US for years, but its strategic importance has diminished and contradictions with US regional interests have come more to the fore. This US "mistake" could have been meant to put pressure on Pakistan to accept a new US approach to the region in which Pakistan's role would be dramatically curtailed while India's role in Afghanistan and the region would increase.
Not long after that, a CIA drone that had taken off from Afghanistan was brought down deep inside Iran near the city of Kashmar, about 140 kilometres from the border. This brought attention to the covert operations inside Iran being launched from US facilities in Afghanistan.
These incidents show that the US wants to stay in Afghanistan not to protect it from its neighbours but to threaten its neighbours.
Obviously Karzai's words are worth nothing – they are only a justification for a continued betrayal of the people of Afghanistan and the region. In the same light, the US is lying to try and conceal its goals and deceive the people.
The statement that the US is leaving Afghanistan is a lie. The statement that the US is building military bases to secure the stability of the region is also a vicious lie. In fact, the US's efforts in this region may hold even more dangerous consequences on a world scale unless they are disrupted by the struggle of the people not only in Afghanistan but also in the region and globally.
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Montag, 19. Dezember 2011
Mittwoch, 27. Juli 2011
On the US "drawdown" in Afghanistan
11 July 2011. A World to Win News Service. The US has announced it will start withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan this month and hand over the country's security to the Afghan government by the end of 2014. What is the real nature of this "drawdown"? Does it reflect success or failure for the decade-long US-led occupation of Afghanistan? In order to understand this we have to examine the American plan and the situation of the war as a whole.
President Barack Obama announced a more detailed plan for the withdrawal on 22 June. He said that 5,000 US soldiers will be pulled out by the end of this summer, when this year's "fighting season" comes to end, and another 5,000 by the end of 2011. An additional 23,000 US forces are to leave in 2012.
The US has about 110,000 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, including those assigned to Nato (which has about 50,000 soldiers in addition to those under the US flag). Withdrawing 33,000 of them by the end of 2012 will still leave almost 80,000. There are also tens of thousands of employees of private security companies in Afghanistan that are not included in this plan.
Some other Nato countries such as France and the UK have followed the US in announcing the reduction of their own forces in Afghanistan. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that the UK will withdraw all its troops by 2015. However, when the details were released, it seems that the UK plans to pull out no more than 500 soldiers by the end of 2012, none of them combat forces. With 9,000 troops, the UK is the second-largest occupier after the US. Similarly, France, the third, says it will withdraw a quarter of its 4,000 soldiers by the end of 2012, but this actually postpones a planned earlier pullout.
The cost of the war that started 10 years ago has been a real burden on the imperialists, especially the US, which has recently been spending more than two billion dollars a week on the Afghan war. This will amounts to nearly 110 billion dollars a year. This has had negative effect on an economy that was already in trouble.
The Afghan war has gone through ebb and flows in the last decade. Despite their huge military advantages, the imperialists have suffered humiliating set-backs, first when their inability to deal with the situation as they had originally planned compelled the US to more than triple its forces to today's levels, and now in the increasingly public admissions from Washington and elsewhere that military victory is impossible unless the Taliban can be brought to negotiate.
Even if the invaders stick to their plan for the next year and a half, they will simply be withdrawing the forces that Obama ordered to Afghanistan in 2009. The withdrawals announced for the next 18 months would still leave the US with more than twice as many troops occupying the country as when Obama took office. The announcement that security control of Afghanistan will supposedly be handed over to Afghan forces doesn’t mean that the US will all leave Afghanistan. Although rarely mentioned, there have been well-informed reports that the US hopes "to keep upward of 25,000 American forces in Afghanistan” indefinitely, even after 2014. (The New York Times, 22 June)
This is not far from the number of invaders that first occupied all of Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban in 2001. According to this source, the US plans to keep permanent, strategic military bases in Afghanistan. They would be tasked with securing American global interests in the region, including by threatening Pakistan and if need be carrying out military action in that country.
Why the US has decided to reduce its forces at this point
The drawdown seems to represent a recognition of necessity by US imperialism, even though there are some differences within the American ruling class about the pace. The US is trying to change its war strategy and tactics in Afghanistan in order to make them more efficient and better correspond with the US's overall present situation in the region and world.
A war that was meant to increase and consolidate the global superiority of US imperialism could have the opposite effect and even has the potential to endanger America's present position if continued in the same way.
One aspect of this is the economic burden, although this doesn't seem to be the main aspect. As Obama confessed in his speech, "Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war at a time of rising debt and hard economic times."
Opposition to the war in Afghanistan is growing all over the world as well as in the US. At the same time and more importantly for US imperialism, there is a growing frustration within the American ruling class regarding the lack of success in Afghanistan.
A fear of being bogged down in Afghanistan for a long time and with little positive result for the empire is growing within the ruling class. While the spectre of Vietnam war still is most present in the minds of the US ruling class, it also cannot ignore the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
Concentrating such a massive force in one place, with the expenses associated with that, could reduce the manoeuvrability of the US in an especially turbulent world. That is something that the US cannot afford at the present time.
Not only did the US totally fail to keep any of the promises of liberation that it made to the Afghan people at the time of the invasion, it even failed to meet its own declared war aims. It was unable to build a solid state, or reconstruct the economy of Afghanistan in accordance with its own needs and interests.
In another words, the US clearly failed in "reconstructing" a country that it had totally destroyed over the previous four decades, starting when the US backed jihadi forces in the war against the Soviet occupation, continuing with the civil war between warlords after the Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban's coming to power with US approval, and then the 2001 bombardment and invasion and the installation of the government led by Hamid Karzai, whom the US and its allies had picked out as their man to lead a motley mix of pro-US jihadist forces.
The occupiers have come up with a state, government and president that some observers believe will collapse as soon as the US and Nato forces pull out.
As the International Crisis Group report of 20 November 2010 said, "Nearly a decade after the U.S. engagement began, Afghanistan operates as a complex system of multi-layered fiefdoms in which insurgents control parallel justice and security organs in many if not most rural areas, while Kabul’s kleptocratic elites control the engines of graft and international contracts countrywide. The inflow of billions in international funds has cemented the linkages between corrupt members of the Afghan government and violent local commanders – insurgent and criminal, alike."
The "reconstruction" of Afghanistan's economy comprises little more than the destructive "aid" from the imperialist countries through government agencies and NGOs, on the one hand, and on the other the opium cultivation and drug production that procures foreign currency for the country's domestic rulers.
"Nearly a decade after the US-led military intervention began, little has been done to challenge the perverse incentives of continued conflict in Afghanistan. Insecurity and the inflow of billions of dollars in international assistance has failed to significantly strengthen the state's capacity to provide security or basic services and has instead, by progressively fusing the interests of political gatekeepers and insurgent commanders, provided new opportunities for criminals and insurgents to expand their influence inside the government. The economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen." (ICG, Asia Report No. 207, 27 June 2011)
Another ICG report on Afghanistan shows that despite their emphasis on building an Afghan army, the US and Nato have not been successful. They might have an army of 300,000 men by the end of this year, its quality reflects the mess that the invaders have created in Afghanistan. As this ICG report put it:
"Persistent structural flaws meanwhile have undermined the military's ability to operate independently. Ethnic frictions and political factionalism among high-level players in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the general staff have also stunted the army's growth. As a result, the army is a fragmented force, serving disparate interests, and far from attaining the unified national character needed to confront numerous security threats.
"The lack of consensus between Kabul, Washington and Brussels has hobbled the Afghan military's capacity to respond effectively to threats confronting the state. Failure to develop a sustainable, comprehensive long-term defence posture could risk the army's disintegration after the withdrawal of international forces.” (ICG report no. 190, 12 May 2010)
All this shows that the US has realized that it cannot meet the goals that it had set at the time of the invasion, for the creation of an Afghan puppet state and economic and social reform of the kind that could make American domination sustainable in the long run. Now Obama has publicly dropped some of those goals.
But the Obama government is very clear that it will not stop waging the war against the Taliban that the US still seeks to win by a combination of military and political means. It argues that what's needed is a switch in emphasis away from the use of massive numbers of occupation troops to hold ground and instead concentrating more on what it believes have been shown to be more efficient and effective tactics: spy networks, commando operations, and drone strikes to assassinate Taliban activists and leaders who are said to have been forced to move their bases into Pakistan. Obama's authorities point to the killing of Bin Laden in a compound in Abbotabad in Pakistan, as an example of how this war could be waged.
According to a report "The official made clear that the administration's primary focus now was a much larger, and more dangerous, presence of insurgents remaining in Pakistan." (NYT, 22 June)
In his speech, Obama indicated his preference for more focused covert operations of the kind that the US is conducting in Pakistan. "When threatened, we must respond with force… But when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas."
In other words, Obama is arguing that this is a better way to continue the war and especially to maintain US domination in Afghanistan and the region, not to end it.
In line with this, the US counting on being able to integrate an important section of the Taliban and other Islamic opposition forces into the Afghan government. The US recently officially admitted that it seeks negotiations with the Taliban and has had initial talks with them. However, some Taliban elements have already been integrated into various governmental institutions. There have been innumerable official moves by the Karzai government to please the fundamentalists, in particular by denying women's rights and maintaining other backward relations. After all, what the US is looking for in Afghanistan is not a fundamentally different world than what the Taliban are seeking, so it is not impossible for a reconciliation to take place. This issue requires a separate and more thorough examination in a future article.
So considering all the problems that the US has encountered in its drive to secure control over Afghanistan and the whole region, it has had to change its strategy and especially tactics. Some of the most important aspects of this new approach can be summarised as follows:
1) Drawdown of its forces gradually over the next three years. 2) Building permanent bases in Afghanistan and keeping around 25,000 soldiers for an indefinite period after 2014. 3) Relying on Afghan soldiers in the forefront of the war to secure the interests of US imperialism in the country and region. 4) Turning more to the assassination of activists and leaders of the opposition groups and using more drone strikes in Pakistan, while still keeping lots of "boots on the ground".
This means that the US war in Afghanistan is far from over. It will continue, even if in different ways and in accord with a changing situation. Whether or not it is successful in forcing the Taliban to enter a US-backed government – and both sides are fighting more fiercely than ever to seize a military advantageous situation from which to negotiate – the US will do its best to keep the country politically, militarily and economically at the mercy of imperialism.
Not only will the war will go on, there is no sign that the US will leave the region in the near future. Instead, it will continue to pursue regional domination in pursuit of its global interests.
Nevertheless the situation has brought to the surface some of the weaknesses and frustrations facing US imperialism.
President Barack Obama announced a more detailed plan for the withdrawal on 22 June. He said that 5,000 US soldiers will be pulled out by the end of this summer, when this year's "fighting season" comes to end, and another 5,000 by the end of 2011. An additional 23,000 US forces are to leave in 2012.
The US has about 110,000 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, including those assigned to Nato (which has about 50,000 soldiers in addition to those under the US flag). Withdrawing 33,000 of them by the end of 2012 will still leave almost 80,000. There are also tens of thousands of employees of private security companies in Afghanistan that are not included in this plan.
Some other Nato countries such as France and the UK have followed the US in announcing the reduction of their own forces in Afghanistan. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that the UK will withdraw all its troops by 2015. However, when the details were released, it seems that the UK plans to pull out no more than 500 soldiers by the end of 2012, none of them combat forces. With 9,000 troops, the UK is the second-largest occupier after the US. Similarly, France, the third, says it will withdraw a quarter of its 4,000 soldiers by the end of 2012, but this actually postpones a planned earlier pullout.
The cost of the war that started 10 years ago has been a real burden on the imperialists, especially the US, which has recently been spending more than two billion dollars a week on the Afghan war. This will amounts to nearly 110 billion dollars a year. This has had negative effect on an economy that was already in trouble.
The Afghan war has gone through ebb and flows in the last decade. Despite their huge military advantages, the imperialists have suffered humiliating set-backs, first when their inability to deal with the situation as they had originally planned compelled the US to more than triple its forces to today's levels, and now in the increasingly public admissions from Washington and elsewhere that military victory is impossible unless the Taliban can be brought to negotiate.
Even if the invaders stick to their plan for the next year and a half, they will simply be withdrawing the forces that Obama ordered to Afghanistan in 2009. The withdrawals announced for the next 18 months would still leave the US with more than twice as many troops occupying the country as when Obama took office. The announcement that security control of Afghanistan will supposedly be handed over to Afghan forces doesn’t mean that the US will all leave Afghanistan. Although rarely mentioned, there have been well-informed reports that the US hopes "to keep upward of 25,000 American forces in Afghanistan” indefinitely, even after 2014. (The New York Times, 22 June)
This is not far from the number of invaders that first occupied all of Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban in 2001. According to this source, the US plans to keep permanent, strategic military bases in Afghanistan. They would be tasked with securing American global interests in the region, including by threatening Pakistan and if need be carrying out military action in that country.
Why the US has decided to reduce its forces at this point
The drawdown seems to represent a recognition of necessity by US imperialism, even though there are some differences within the American ruling class about the pace. The US is trying to change its war strategy and tactics in Afghanistan in order to make them more efficient and better correspond with the US's overall present situation in the region and world.
A war that was meant to increase and consolidate the global superiority of US imperialism could have the opposite effect and even has the potential to endanger America's present position if continued in the same way.
One aspect of this is the economic burden, although this doesn't seem to be the main aspect. As Obama confessed in his speech, "Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war at a time of rising debt and hard economic times."
Opposition to the war in Afghanistan is growing all over the world as well as in the US. At the same time and more importantly for US imperialism, there is a growing frustration within the American ruling class regarding the lack of success in Afghanistan.
A fear of being bogged down in Afghanistan for a long time and with little positive result for the empire is growing within the ruling class. While the spectre of Vietnam war still is most present in the minds of the US ruling class, it also cannot ignore the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
Concentrating such a massive force in one place, with the expenses associated with that, could reduce the manoeuvrability of the US in an especially turbulent world. That is something that the US cannot afford at the present time.
Not only did the US totally fail to keep any of the promises of liberation that it made to the Afghan people at the time of the invasion, it even failed to meet its own declared war aims. It was unable to build a solid state, or reconstruct the economy of Afghanistan in accordance with its own needs and interests.
In another words, the US clearly failed in "reconstructing" a country that it had totally destroyed over the previous four decades, starting when the US backed jihadi forces in the war against the Soviet occupation, continuing with the civil war between warlords after the Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban's coming to power with US approval, and then the 2001 bombardment and invasion and the installation of the government led by Hamid Karzai, whom the US and its allies had picked out as their man to lead a motley mix of pro-US jihadist forces.
The occupiers have come up with a state, government and president that some observers believe will collapse as soon as the US and Nato forces pull out.
As the International Crisis Group report of 20 November 2010 said, "Nearly a decade after the U.S. engagement began, Afghanistan operates as a complex system of multi-layered fiefdoms in which insurgents control parallel justice and security organs in many if not most rural areas, while Kabul’s kleptocratic elites control the engines of graft and international contracts countrywide. The inflow of billions in international funds has cemented the linkages between corrupt members of the Afghan government and violent local commanders – insurgent and criminal, alike."
The "reconstruction" of Afghanistan's economy comprises little more than the destructive "aid" from the imperialist countries through government agencies and NGOs, on the one hand, and on the other the opium cultivation and drug production that procures foreign currency for the country's domestic rulers.
"Nearly a decade after the US-led military intervention began, little has been done to challenge the perverse incentives of continued conflict in Afghanistan. Insecurity and the inflow of billions of dollars in international assistance has failed to significantly strengthen the state's capacity to provide security or basic services and has instead, by progressively fusing the interests of political gatekeepers and insurgent commanders, provided new opportunities for criminals and insurgents to expand their influence inside the government. The economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen." (ICG, Asia Report No. 207, 27 June 2011)
Another ICG report on Afghanistan shows that despite their emphasis on building an Afghan army, the US and Nato have not been successful. They might have an army of 300,000 men by the end of this year, its quality reflects the mess that the invaders have created in Afghanistan. As this ICG report put it:
"Persistent structural flaws meanwhile have undermined the military's ability to operate independently. Ethnic frictions and political factionalism among high-level players in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the general staff have also stunted the army's growth. As a result, the army is a fragmented force, serving disparate interests, and far from attaining the unified national character needed to confront numerous security threats.
"The lack of consensus between Kabul, Washington and Brussels has hobbled the Afghan military's capacity to respond effectively to threats confronting the state. Failure to develop a sustainable, comprehensive long-term defence posture could risk the army's disintegration after the withdrawal of international forces.” (ICG report no. 190, 12 May 2010)
All this shows that the US has realized that it cannot meet the goals that it had set at the time of the invasion, for the creation of an Afghan puppet state and economic and social reform of the kind that could make American domination sustainable in the long run. Now Obama has publicly dropped some of those goals.
But the Obama government is very clear that it will not stop waging the war against the Taliban that the US still seeks to win by a combination of military and political means. It argues that what's needed is a switch in emphasis away from the use of massive numbers of occupation troops to hold ground and instead concentrating more on what it believes have been shown to be more efficient and effective tactics: spy networks, commando operations, and drone strikes to assassinate Taliban activists and leaders who are said to have been forced to move their bases into Pakistan. Obama's authorities point to the killing of Bin Laden in a compound in Abbotabad in Pakistan, as an example of how this war could be waged.
According to a report "The official made clear that the administration's primary focus now was a much larger, and more dangerous, presence of insurgents remaining in Pakistan." (NYT, 22 June)
In his speech, Obama indicated his preference for more focused covert operations of the kind that the US is conducting in Pakistan. "When threatened, we must respond with force… But when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas."
In other words, Obama is arguing that this is a better way to continue the war and especially to maintain US domination in Afghanistan and the region, not to end it.
In line with this, the US counting on being able to integrate an important section of the Taliban and other Islamic opposition forces into the Afghan government. The US recently officially admitted that it seeks negotiations with the Taliban and has had initial talks with them. However, some Taliban elements have already been integrated into various governmental institutions. There have been innumerable official moves by the Karzai government to please the fundamentalists, in particular by denying women's rights and maintaining other backward relations. After all, what the US is looking for in Afghanistan is not a fundamentally different world than what the Taliban are seeking, so it is not impossible for a reconciliation to take place. This issue requires a separate and more thorough examination in a future article.
So considering all the problems that the US has encountered in its drive to secure control over Afghanistan and the whole region, it has had to change its strategy and especially tactics. Some of the most important aspects of this new approach can be summarised as follows:
1) Drawdown of its forces gradually over the next three years. 2) Building permanent bases in Afghanistan and keeping around 25,000 soldiers for an indefinite period after 2014. 3) Relying on Afghan soldiers in the forefront of the war to secure the interests of US imperialism in the country and region. 4) Turning more to the assassination of activists and leaders of the opposition groups and using more drone strikes in Pakistan, while still keeping lots of "boots on the ground".
This means that the US war in Afghanistan is far from over. It will continue, even if in different ways and in accord with a changing situation. Whether or not it is successful in forcing the Taliban to enter a US-backed government – and both sides are fighting more fiercely than ever to seize a military advantageous situation from which to negotiate – the US will do its best to keep the country politically, militarily and economically at the mercy of imperialism.
Not only will the war will go on, there is no sign that the US will leave the region in the near future. Instead, it will continue to pursue regional domination in pursuit of its global interests.
Nevertheless the situation has brought to the surface some of the weaknesses and frustrations facing US imperialism.
Freitag, 10. Dezember 2010
Afghanistan: Measuring what the occupation has done to women
29 November 2010. A World to Win News Service. Recent reports by both human rights groups and Afghan officials indicate that violence against women in Afghanistan is on the rise and that this has been the trend since the beginning of the occupation of Afghanistan by the U.S. and other Nato countries.
A report published in April 2009 by the women's rights organisation Womankind said that 80 percent of Afghan women suffer from domestic violence. Other reports put this figure as high as 87 percent. Afghan minister of women’s affairs Hassan-Banu Ghazanfar recently said that it effects 90 percent.
November 25 marked the International Day for the Eradication of Violence Against Women. This violence is global and not particular to Afghan women. In the world as a whole the vast majority of women face violence in one or another serious form during their their lifetime. The facts about violence against women even in the most developed countries are shocking. Rape, physical and sexual abuse by the husband or boyfriend, harassment and worse at work places, the trade in women and sex slavery are only some of forms of anti-woman violence. These facts suggest that this is not just a remnant of the past but that world capitalism even in its most developed stage is a source of oppression, discrimination and violence against women.
So there is not single country in the imperialist-dominated world where women have escaped from oppression and violence. This article focuses on Afghanistan not only because these women have suffered severe oppression by the various fundamentalist rulers over the last three decades, and not only because the level of violence and other sorts of oppression is so extreme, but also because the imperialist powers have occupied the country under the pretext of liberating Afghan women. Their political representatives still shamelessly claim that whatever else might have gone wrong with their plans, at least this is their one great achievement. Now after nine years of occupation we are in a position to measure the results of that so-called liberation by the imperialist occupiers.
Many of the published reports and investigations about violence against women in Afghanistan cite beating, harassment, forced marriage, rape, preventing women from going to the hospital and to school, forcing them to do hard labour, taking their children away from them and depriving them of any voice in family and social affairs.
According to the previously mentioned Womankind report, 60 percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced. And nearly 57 percent of girls are forced into marriage before they are 16 years old.
The situation is especially severe in areas controlled by the Taliban, where public punishment is delivered for disobedience to patriarchy. According to the BBC Persian service, in August in Badghais province in north-western Afghanistan, "a 48 year-old widow whose husband had been killed a few years earlier and who became pregnant by another man was accused of an illicit relationship and sentenced to 200 lashes and then death. The death penalty was carried out by a Taliban commander who shot her in public. According to a police official in Badghais, the man had promised to marry her. According to the same report, the man was also arrested but was released after paying a fine to the Taliban."
Amnesty International on 16 August confirmed that in the north-eastern province of Kunduz a couple was stoned to death in a village under Taliban control. The young couple were accused of running away because their parents opposed their marriage.
Last summer a picture on the cover of Time magazine revealed just how horrendous the situation can be. In Oruzgan province the Taliban accused an 18-year-old named Ayesha of leaving her husband and sentenced her to ghesas (an Islamic punishment that means cutting off part of the body). This sentence was carried out by her husband, a Taliban fighter, who sliced off her ears and nose and left them in a mountainous area.
The Western official media uses this kind of news and has especially highlighted the crime against Ayesha to argue that the Taliban are the source of violence against women in Afghanistan. This is an attempt to justify the occupation. And more than anything it was used to counter the opinion of people in the U.S. who favour an American withdrawal. The Time magazine picture of Ayesha was accompanied by this headline message: "This is what happens if we leave Afghanistan."
Now Ayesha has been transferred to the U.S. for plastic surgery to rebuild her nose and ears. But the problem is that the Taliban are not the only force who support and carry out violence against women. There are thousands of Ayeshas in the areas under Taliban control and also under the occupiers' control who have lost parts of their body or their lives. Even if they are still alive, their real life has been stolen from them.
This imperialist war propaganda might be able to deceive some people abroad but in no way can it justify the occupation in the eyes of the majority of people of Afghanistan who have also experienced the brutal violence of the U.S. and other occupiers, not only against women but also children, the elderly and the whole population. The fact is that the imperialists can hardly conceal the blood on their hands from violence against millions of people all over the world, including and particularly the women in Afghanistan. None of this can be washed away by plastic surgery for Ayesha.
Another report indirectly sheds light on the situation for women under the U.S.-led occupation. "New research in Afghanistan shows that the number of women committing suicide in this country is increasing. Young women committing suicide by setting fire to themselves first seemed to be a problem in Herat province and partly in Qandahar and Nimrooz, but now it has spread to most provinces and particularly the northern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan. Faiz Mohammad Kaker, Karazi's advisor on health and sanitation, said at a news conference that 90 percent of these suicides are due to depression or mental problems. He also put the number of the women who suffer from severe depression at 28 percent, which is a very high figure. He said that approximately 2,300 Afghan girls and women between the ages of 15 and 40 who suffer from depression commit suicide every year." (BBC Persian service, 31 July 2010)
Why are depression and mental problems so widespread among women and so severe that they led to many suicides? Could it be anything but the kind of life that these women are subjected to? Even Kaker did not try to hide it, or better said, could not hide it. He said, "The continuation of the civil war and violence in Afghanistan, displacement, early marriage and forced marriage, rape, domestic violence and broad poverty are the causes of mental problems and depression in Afghanistan."
A new phenomenon in Afghanistan is that the number of women using drugs is on the rise. According to the figures released by the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission, more than 120,000 women are now using drugs, particularly opium.
Why is the number of women drug addicts and suicides increasing? Is it not that poverty and violence against them is increasing? Doesn't that mean that the U.S. and other imperialists countries have made the situation even worse for women?
There is no doubt that women suffered in almost unbelievable ways when the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist groups were in power. But isn't it true that the occupation has made the situation more complicated for women? Hasn't it added to the problems and hard lives of women in Afghanistan, just as the U.S.-led occupation has indisputably done in Iraq? The available reports and figures, and even the research carried out by pro-imperialist forces and Karzai government officials, all suggest that it has.
And we know that the figures are far from complete. We are not talking about the violence of air bombardments, or the night raids, or the random killing by occupation soldiers. In all of this, as in family life, women are the main victims.
The Western imperialists are responsible for this. In the 1980s they supported, trained and financed the Islamic fundamentalists to use them in their global fight with the rival Soviet imperialist bloc. They supported these Islamic fundamentalists when they seized power after the Soviets were driven out. The West chose to remain silent for the following two decades while their Afghan allies committed atrocities against women. As the Taliban fought to come to power to enslave women, there were many reports that the U.S. was involved in backing them through the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. And then when the U.S. decided to fight the Taliban, once again the people of Afghanistan and particularly the women had to pay for it.
The only way that the U.S. can try to make themselves look good in Afghanistan is by trying to compare the situation for women in certain areas now with the way it was or is under the Taliban. This in itself is an implicit admission of how horrible the situation for women is throughout the country. However even in this revolting comparison it is not clear who is the "winner".
What the U.S. and the Karzai government they installed point to as their big achievement is that they have opened schools for girls and allowed women to go to work. Some women are employed as the government officials or members of parliament and even a handful as police. All this was forbidden by the Taliban.
But Afghanistan has been an Islamic republic where sharia (religious law) takes precedence since its current constitution was adopted to give religious cover to the occupation. The Karzai regime has adopted sharia-inspired laws related to marriage and the family that give men the right to prevent their wives from leaving the house. It is illegal for a wife not to give in to her husband's sexual demands. The Karzai's government habit of freeing men imprisoned for committing gang rape is so notorious that it even provoked a protest by the United Nations. In an interview with the BBC Persian service, Sima Samar, now the head of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan, declared, "the government institutions are a serious obstacle to women's rights in Afghanistan."
But the U.S. and other Western imperialists have not finished punishing Afghan women. Now that they have decided to explore negotiations with the Taliban, we can be sure that whatever pretence of women's "rights" that may remain will be sold out if the U.S. can obtain some "political solution" for its failing war. This course of action has been denounced in advance by several women's rights groups operating under the occupation.
The lesson that can be taken from this is that no imperialists or other reactionary forces can free women; they are the main oppressors of the people of the world including women. Liberating the women in Afghanistan was only a pretext to invade for their own imperialist interests.
A report published in April 2009 by the women's rights organisation Womankind said that 80 percent of Afghan women suffer from domestic violence. Other reports put this figure as high as 87 percent. Afghan minister of women’s affairs Hassan-Banu Ghazanfar recently said that it effects 90 percent.
November 25 marked the International Day for the Eradication of Violence Against Women. This violence is global and not particular to Afghan women. In the world as a whole the vast majority of women face violence in one or another serious form during their their lifetime. The facts about violence against women even in the most developed countries are shocking. Rape, physical and sexual abuse by the husband or boyfriend, harassment and worse at work places, the trade in women and sex slavery are only some of forms of anti-woman violence. These facts suggest that this is not just a remnant of the past but that world capitalism even in its most developed stage is a source of oppression, discrimination and violence against women.
So there is not single country in the imperialist-dominated world where women have escaped from oppression and violence. This article focuses on Afghanistan not only because these women have suffered severe oppression by the various fundamentalist rulers over the last three decades, and not only because the level of violence and other sorts of oppression is so extreme, but also because the imperialist powers have occupied the country under the pretext of liberating Afghan women. Their political representatives still shamelessly claim that whatever else might have gone wrong with their plans, at least this is their one great achievement. Now after nine years of occupation we are in a position to measure the results of that so-called liberation by the imperialist occupiers.
Many of the published reports and investigations about violence against women in Afghanistan cite beating, harassment, forced marriage, rape, preventing women from going to the hospital and to school, forcing them to do hard labour, taking their children away from them and depriving them of any voice in family and social affairs.
According to the previously mentioned Womankind report, 60 percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced. And nearly 57 percent of girls are forced into marriage before they are 16 years old.
The situation is especially severe in areas controlled by the Taliban, where public punishment is delivered for disobedience to patriarchy. According to the BBC Persian service, in August in Badghais province in north-western Afghanistan, "a 48 year-old widow whose husband had been killed a few years earlier and who became pregnant by another man was accused of an illicit relationship and sentenced to 200 lashes and then death. The death penalty was carried out by a Taliban commander who shot her in public. According to a police official in Badghais, the man had promised to marry her. According to the same report, the man was also arrested but was released after paying a fine to the Taliban."
Amnesty International on 16 August confirmed that in the north-eastern province of Kunduz a couple was stoned to death in a village under Taliban control. The young couple were accused of running away because their parents opposed their marriage.
Last summer a picture on the cover of Time magazine revealed just how horrendous the situation can be. In Oruzgan province the Taliban accused an 18-year-old named Ayesha of leaving her husband and sentenced her to ghesas (an Islamic punishment that means cutting off part of the body). This sentence was carried out by her husband, a Taliban fighter, who sliced off her ears and nose and left them in a mountainous area.
The Western official media uses this kind of news and has especially highlighted the crime against Ayesha to argue that the Taliban are the source of violence against women in Afghanistan. This is an attempt to justify the occupation. And more than anything it was used to counter the opinion of people in the U.S. who favour an American withdrawal. The Time magazine picture of Ayesha was accompanied by this headline message: "This is what happens if we leave Afghanistan."
Now Ayesha has been transferred to the U.S. for plastic surgery to rebuild her nose and ears. But the problem is that the Taliban are not the only force who support and carry out violence against women. There are thousands of Ayeshas in the areas under Taliban control and also under the occupiers' control who have lost parts of their body or their lives. Even if they are still alive, their real life has been stolen from them.
This imperialist war propaganda might be able to deceive some people abroad but in no way can it justify the occupation in the eyes of the majority of people of Afghanistan who have also experienced the brutal violence of the U.S. and other occupiers, not only against women but also children, the elderly and the whole population. The fact is that the imperialists can hardly conceal the blood on their hands from violence against millions of people all over the world, including and particularly the women in Afghanistan. None of this can be washed away by plastic surgery for Ayesha.
Another report indirectly sheds light on the situation for women under the U.S.-led occupation. "New research in Afghanistan shows that the number of women committing suicide in this country is increasing. Young women committing suicide by setting fire to themselves first seemed to be a problem in Herat province and partly in Qandahar and Nimrooz, but now it has spread to most provinces and particularly the northern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan. Faiz Mohammad Kaker, Karazi's advisor on health and sanitation, said at a news conference that 90 percent of these suicides are due to depression or mental problems. He also put the number of the women who suffer from severe depression at 28 percent, which is a very high figure. He said that approximately 2,300 Afghan girls and women between the ages of 15 and 40 who suffer from depression commit suicide every year." (BBC Persian service, 31 July 2010)
Why are depression and mental problems so widespread among women and so severe that they led to many suicides? Could it be anything but the kind of life that these women are subjected to? Even Kaker did not try to hide it, or better said, could not hide it. He said, "The continuation of the civil war and violence in Afghanistan, displacement, early marriage and forced marriage, rape, domestic violence and broad poverty are the causes of mental problems and depression in Afghanistan."
A new phenomenon in Afghanistan is that the number of women using drugs is on the rise. According to the figures released by the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission, more than 120,000 women are now using drugs, particularly opium.
Why is the number of women drug addicts and suicides increasing? Is it not that poverty and violence against them is increasing? Doesn't that mean that the U.S. and other imperialists countries have made the situation even worse for women?
There is no doubt that women suffered in almost unbelievable ways when the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist groups were in power. But isn't it true that the occupation has made the situation more complicated for women? Hasn't it added to the problems and hard lives of women in Afghanistan, just as the U.S.-led occupation has indisputably done in Iraq? The available reports and figures, and even the research carried out by pro-imperialist forces and Karzai government officials, all suggest that it has.
And we know that the figures are far from complete. We are not talking about the violence of air bombardments, or the night raids, or the random killing by occupation soldiers. In all of this, as in family life, women are the main victims.
The Western imperialists are responsible for this. In the 1980s they supported, trained and financed the Islamic fundamentalists to use them in their global fight with the rival Soviet imperialist bloc. They supported these Islamic fundamentalists when they seized power after the Soviets were driven out. The West chose to remain silent for the following two decades while their Afghan allies committed atrocities against women. As the Taliban fought to come to power to enslave women, there were many reports that the U.S. was involved in backing them through the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. And then when the U.S. decided to fight the Taliban, once again the people of Afghanistan and particularly the women had to pay for it.
The only way that the U.S. can try to make themselves look good in Afghanistan is by trying to compare the situation for women in certain areas now with the way it was or is under the Taliban. This in itself is an implicit admission of how horrible the situation for women is throughout the country. However even in this revolting comparison it is not clear who is the "winner".
What the U.S. and the Karzai government they installed point to as their big achievement is that they have opened schools for girls and allowed women to go to work. Some women are employed as the government officials or members of parliament and even a handful as police. All this was forbidden by the Taliban.
But Afghanistan has been an Islamic republic where sharia (religious law) takes precedence since its current constitution was adopted to give religious cover to the occupation. The Karzai regime has adopted sharia-inspired laws related to marriage and the family that give men the right to prevent their wives from leaving the house. It is illegal for a wife not to give in to her husband's sexual demands. The Karzai's government habit of freeing men imprisoned for committing gang rape is so notorious that it even provoked a protest by the United Nations. In an interview with the BBC Persian service, Sima Samar, now the head of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan, declared, "the government institutions are a serious obstacle to women's rights in Afghanistan."
But the U.S. and other Western imperialists have not finished punishing Afghan women. Now that they have decided to explore negotiations with the Taliban, we can be sure that whatever pretence of women's "rights" that may remain will be sold out if the U.S. can obtain some "political solution" for its failing war. This course of action has been denounced in advance by several women's rights groups operating under the occupation.
The lesson that can be taken from this is that no imperialists or other reactionary forces can free women; they are the main oppressors of the people of the world including women. Liberating the women in Afghanistan was only a pretext to invade for their own imperialist interests.
Mittwoch, 3. November 2010
The U.S.'s mercenaries in Afghanistan
1 November 2010. A World to Win News Service. The flap about President Hamid Karzai's threat to restrict the use of mercenaries in Afghanistan sheds a bright light on what the U.S. and its allies are doing in there.
In August Karzai announced that foreign security firms would be banned from operating in the country, citing the undeniable fact that the men they employ have been responsible for all sorts of murders and other atrocities. He also claimed that this would be part of reasserting Afghan sovereignty.
The U.S., UK and other allies have been reliant on paid civilian fighters as part of their effort to wage this war without awakening broader opposition in their home countries, especially the U.S., where, it must be said, the Obama government has been unhindered by antiwar public opinion. The exact number of mercenaries and their deployment are secret, but there have been reliable reports that the occupation forces include more private contractor employees than official troops (The New York Times, 25 October 2010), who now total about 170,000.
These men perform tasks left to soldiers in previous wars, from guarding military convoys and bases to taking part in commando raids alongside special forces and CIA "kill teams" that storm into villages at night to assassinate suspected anti-occupation fighters and terrorize civilians suspected of harbouring them. Many of these mercenaries are the worst of the worst, former U.S. and UK armed forces commandos who now combine their taste for murder with lust for money.
Further, it is extremely telling that the U.S. authorities responded to Karzai's threat by calling it "impossible" to trust Afghan national army and police forces to perform even simple defensive tasks. The U.S. trains its own soldiers in a few months, but these organizations are said to be "untrained and undisciplined" after Washington has spent nine years and billions of dollars trying to build them up. Members of Karzai's armed forces have repeatedly killed their "trainers". There are simply not enough Afghans whom the occupation forces can trust enough to turn their backs on.
Karzai's threat, as it turned out after the initial bluster when he spelled it out more clearly, was limited. He proposed to allow the U.S. military and State Department, the main combat mercenary employers, to continue as usual. Only for-profit construction and development firms would be forced to lay off their guards and rely on police and soldiers working for the Karzai government.
Even this was too much for the occupiers. U.S. President Barack Obama had his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ring up Karzai to make him change his mind. Obama also had General David Patraeus, the man running this war on his behalf as head of the U.S. and Nato forces, conduct an "unusually tense" talk with him.
Karzai backed down the next day, well before the 17 December deadline he had fixed. In fact, the first announcement that he had undergone a change of heart came not from the Afghan president or his office, but the U.S. authorities. They said that Karzai had decided to postpone a decision, so that any restriction on private security contractors would not come until February 2011 at the very earliest, if at all.
One reason why the Obama government became so focused on this matter is its enthusiasm for the use of mercenaries in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. While of course his predecessor George W. Bush initiated the policy on its current scale, the Obama government has distinguished itself by its insistence in continuing their use in the face of scandals and even some Congressional opposition.
The issue came to the foreground in the U.S. after the unprovoked massacre in Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2006, when mercenaries employed by the Blackwater company gunned down at least 17 Iraqis simply to clear a traffic jam. Some of these murders were indicted under the Bush government, but Obama's Attorney General Stephen Holder, who is supposed to oversee the prosecution, has so far successfully failed to advance the cases against them. Blackwater, more ideologically-driven than most security contractors in that it is run by extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists, has changed its name to Xe Services. In Afghanistan, it supplies not just guards but also fighters for offensive operations and assassinations. In Iraq, the U.S. is greatly stepping up its use of mercenaries to replace some of the regular forces withdrawn from there.
Political pretence and real contradictions
But questions regarding the relationship between the U.S. and Karzai have also been at play in this matter. They involve both political pretence and real contradictions for both sides.
Karzai was, after all, brought to the presidency of Afghanistan by the U.S. and its allies. They chose him at a conclave of Western imperialist nations in Bonn in 2001, had their troops install him in office, organized an election in 2004 to lend his appointment legitimacy and have sustained his regime militarily, economically and politically. His regime could not survive without them, and everyone knows that.
In retaliation for Karzai's threats, at least according to him, the Western media began to make a big fuss about how he receives bags of cash from the Islamic Republic of Iran. He didn't bother to deny it: "It's not hidden. We are grateful to the Iranians' for their help in this regard. The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices," he said. An unnamed "senior U.S. official in Kabul" commented, "Everyone knew about it, including the U.S. government. Everyone talked about it openly for years." (Washington Post, 24 October 2010) Karzai argues that the money was not just for him, and that's probably true. Of course the warlords, tribal leaders and others he has allied himself with have their own reasons to support his regime, but bags of money have furthered these fragile relationships.
It is almost funny to hear these complaints about Karzai and Co. taking a few million dollars a year from Iran when the U.S. admits that it has spent tens of billions of dollars in Afghanistan that it can't – or won't – account for.
Part of the real content of American complaints about corruption in the Karzai government is that he is ungrateful enough to take money from the U.S.'s enemies. Why is it, U.S. officials and their media seem to lament, that whenever we buy someone they turn out to be so corrupt!
The U.S. and the Iranian regime are certainly contending for influence in Afghanistan, both within and against the Karzai government. But just as with the Nouri Maliki government in Iraq right now, Iran is supporting a regime that tolerates a U.S.-led occupation. For Washington and Tehran alike, Afghanistan simultaneously represents a temporary confluence of interests and an arena of intense competition.
How this works shows just how ruthlessly cynical both the U.S. and Iranian governments can be in pursuit of their reactionary interests. Karzai's long-time chief of staff accused of being the funnel for Iranian funds and political influence, Umar Daudzai, like other members of Karzai's inner circle was formerly with the Hezbi-Islami. Led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord whose religious fanaticism and brutality the Taliban could envy, it was one of the Islamic fundamentalist groups to which the U.S. funnelled money during the war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. In the civil war among the mujahideen in the 1990s after the withdrawal of the Soviet invaders, Hekmatyar's men bombarded Kabul extensively and killed many thousands of civilians. Now he is loosely allied with the Taliban – and continues to have ties with the Iranian regime. The U.S. is entertaining the idea of drawing more of this grouping – along with a part of the Taliban themselves and the equally vicious Haqanni group (once Washington's favourite mujahideen forces and now also allied with the Taliban) – into the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan over which Karzai currently presides.
It seems that the U.S. has also considered dumping Karzai, perhaps as part of some new configuration of henchmen and at any rate because he is one of the most hated men in Afghanistan. You could say the American attitude isn't really fair to Karzai, because what Afghans hate him for is above all the way he has put the interests of the U.S.-led occupation ahead of those of the people and sold out the country to the invaders.
Over the nine years since the 2001 invasion, the Taliban have gone from a widely discredited and hated organization, especially by people not part of its immediate ethnic and ideological base, to one that if not enthusiastically welcomed by most Afghanis throughout the country at least benefits from their neutrality. This change has been brought about by the occupiers' murderous disregard for Afghan lives and the moral climate and social collapse the occupation has produced. The fact that Karzai took money to facilitate the humiliation of the country and its people is just an added reason to hate him.
In these circumstances, it's no surprise that Karzai has tried a little nationalist posturing to try and renew his brand image. There are real conflicts of interest between him and the occupiers, since he has no one to depend on but them while they could consider alternatives. But also, as Karzai himself must realize, the more he succeeds at putting what looks like a little political distance between himself and the U.S. the more valuable he might be to them. It might not work, but what else can he do?
The occupiers want it to appear like they are in Afghanistan as partners of a local sovereign government and not just trying to impose their will on the country by force. They are also more than happy to blame Karzai for Afghanistan's misery. But his is not a sovereign government. The U.S. couldn't help demonstrating that yet again in the last few days by bringing in Russian forces to join American troops for a massive raid in eastern Afghanistan without even telling Karzai about it. This left him looking not only like a lowly underling of the U.S. but an heir of the national traitors who sold Afghanistan to the Soviet Union. No wonder he squirms and seeks to play the patriot.
Even now the U.S. doesn't take his protests very seriously. When he threatened to impose a deadline for private security firms to leave the country, a "Western official in Kabul" mocked it as a self-interested tactical political manoeuvre. "What this timeline means is withdrawal. The discussion that needs to happen now is: What do you really want? What are your real concerns? Let's draw up a different plan." (Washington Post, 17 August 2010) This statement was both the truth and an attempt to humble and undermine him further.
This filthy game shows what's really going on in Afghanistan. What the U.S. "really wants" is not an independent Afghan "partner" but a flunky regime that can facilitate and provide cover for the occupation. What matters to Washington are the U.S.'s strategic geopolitical goals and not the interests of any people. When the U.S. supports Karzai it is to serve those goals, and when it criticizes Karzai it's for the same reason, just as it fights the reactionary Taliban to serve those goals and seeks to negotiate for the same reason.
The situation in Afghanistan is a nightmare for its people and getting worse. Some misguided Westerners argue that even if the initial invasion was wrong, "'We' have no choice but to stay" until the U.S. can sort out the mess it has created. But when you see how the U.S. is weighing its options, all you can say is that until the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, it can only do more and more harm.
In August Karzai announced that foreign security firms would be banned from operating in the country, citing the undeniable fact that the men they employ have been responsible for all sorts of murders and other atrocities. He also claimed that this would be part of reasserting Afghan sovereignty.
The U.S., UK and other allies have been reliant on paid civilian fighters as part of their effort to wage this war without awakening broader opposition in their home countries, especially the U.S., where, it must be said, the Obama government has been unhindered by antiwar public opinion. The exact number of mercenaries and their deployment are secret, but there have been reliable reports that the occupation forces include more private contractor employees than official troops (The New York Times, 25 October 2010), who now total about 170,000.
These men perform tasks left to soldiers in previous wars, from guarding military convoys and bases to taking part in commando raids alongside special forces and CIA "kill teams" that storm into villages at night to assassinate suspected anti-occupation fighters and terrorize civilians suspected of harbouring them. Many of these mercenaries are the worst of the worst, former U.S. and UK armed forces commandos who now combine their taste for murder with lust for money.
Further, it is extremely telling that the U.S. authorities responded to Karzai's threat by calling it "impossible" to trust Afghan national army and police forces to perform even simple defensive tasks. The U.S. trains its own soldiers in a few months, but these organizations are said to be "untrained and undisciplined" after Washington has spent nine years and billions of dollars trying to build them up. Members of Karzai's armed forces have repeatedly killed their "trainers". There are simply not enough Afghans whom the occupation forces can trust enough to turn their backs on.
Karzai's threat, as it turned out after the initial bluster when he spelled it out more clearly, was limited. He proposed to allow the U.S. military and State Department, the main combat mercenary employers, to continue as usual. Only for-profit construction and development firms would be forced to lay off their guards and rely on police and soldiers working for the Karzai government.
Even this was too much for the occupiers. U.S. President Barack Obama had his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ring up Karzai to make him change his mind. Obama also had General David Patraeus, the man running this war on his behalf as head of the U.S. and Nato forces, conduct an "unusually tense" talk with him.
Karzai backed down the next day, well before the 17 December deadline he had fixed. In fact, the first announcement that he had undergone a change of heart came not from the Afghan president or his office, but the U.S. authorities. They said that Karzai had decided to postpone a decision, so that any restriction on private security contractors would not come until February 2011 at the very earliest, if at all.
One reason why the Obama government became so focused on this matter is its enthusiasm for the use of mercenaries in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. While of course his predecessor George W. Bush initiated the policy on its current scale, the Obama government has distinguished itself by its insistence in continuing their use in the face of scandals and even some Congressional opposition.
The issue came to the foreground in the U.S. after the unprovoked massacre in Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2006, when mercenaries employed by the Blackwater company gunned down at least 17 Iraqis simply to clear a traffic jam. Some of these murders were indicted under the Bush government, but Obama's Attorney General Stephen Holder, who is supposed to oversee the prosecution, has so far successfully failed to advance the cases against them. Blackwater, more ideologically-driven than most security contractors in that it is run by extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists, has changed its name to Xe Services. In Afghanistan, it supplies not just guards but also fighters for offensive operations and assassinations. In Iraq, the U.S. is greatly stepping up its use of mercenaries to replace some of the regular forces withdrawn from there.
Political pretence and real contradictions
But questions regarding the relationship between the U.S. and Karzai have also been at play in this matter. They involve both political pretence and real contradictions for both sides.
Karzai was, after all, brought to the presidency of Afghanistan by the U.S. and its allies. They chose him at a conclave of Western imperialist nations in Bonn in 2001, had their troops install him in office, organized an election in 2004 to lend his appointment legitimacy and have sustained his regime militarily, economically and politically. His regime could not survive without them, and everyone knows that.
In retaliation for Karzai's threats, at least according to him, the Western media began to make a big fuss about how he receives bags of cash from the Islamic Republic of Iran. He didn't bother to deny it: "It's not hidden. We are grateful to the Iranians' for their help in this regard. The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices," he said. An unnamed "senior U.S. official in Kabul" commented, "Everyone knew about it, including the U.S. government. Everyone talked about it openly for years." (Washington Post, 24 October 2010) Karzai argues that the money was not just for him, and that's probably true. Of course the warlords, tribal leaders and others he has allied himself with have their own reasons to support his regime, but bags of money have furthered these fragile relationships.
It is almost funny to hear these complaints about Karzai and Co. taking a few million dollars a year from Iran when the U.S. admits that it has spent tens of billions of dollars in Afghanistan that it can't – or won't – account for.
Part of the real content of American complaints about corruption in the Karzai government is that he is ungrateful enough to take money from the U.S.'s enemies. Why is it, U.S. officials and their media seem to lament, that whenever we buy someone they turn out to be so corrupt!
The U.S. and the Iranian regime are certainly contending for influence in Afghanistan, both within and against the Karzai government. But just as with the Nouri Maliki government in Iraq right now, Iran is supporting a regime that tolerates a U.S.-led occupation. For Washington and Tehran alike, Afghanistan simultaneously represents a temporary confluence of interests and an arena of intense competition.
How this works shows just how ruthlessly cynical both the U.S. and Iranian governments can be in pursuit of their reactionary interests. Karzai's long-time chief of staff accused of being the funnel for Iranian funds and political influence, Umar Daudzai, like other members of Karzai's inner circle was formerly with the Hezbi-Islami. Led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord whose religious fanaticism and brutality the Taliban could envy, it was one of the Islamic fundamentalist groups to which the U.S. funnelled money during the war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. In the civil war among the mujahideen in the 1990s after the withdrawal of the Soviet invaders, Hekmatyar's men bombarded Kabul extensively and killed many thousands of civilians. Now he is loosely allied with the Taliban – and continues to have ties with the Iranian regime. The U.S. is entertaining the idea of drawing more of this grouping – along with a part of the Taliban themselves and the equally vicious Haqanni group (once Washington's favourite mujahideen forces and now also allied with the Taliban) – into the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan over which Karzai currently presides.
It seems that the U.S. has also considered dumping Karzai, perhaps as part of some new configuration of henchmen and at any rate because he is one of the most hated men in Afghanistan. You could say the American attitude isn't really fair to Karzai, because what Afghans hate him for is above all the way he has put the interests of the U.S.-led occupation ahead of those of the people and sold out the country to the invaders.
Over the nine years since the 2001 invasion, the Taliban have gone from a widely discredited and hated organization, especially by people not part of its immediate ethnic and ideological base, to one that if not enthusiastically welcomed by most Afghanis throughout the country at least benefits from their neutrality. This change has been brought about by the occupiers' murderous disregard for Afghan lives and the moral climate and social collapse the occupation has produced. The fact that Karzai took money to facilitate the humiliation of the country and its people is just an added reason to hate him.
In these circumstances, it's no surprise that Karzai has tried a little nationalist posturing to try and renew his brand image. There are real conflicts of interest between him and the occupiers, since he has no one to depend on but them while they could consider alternatives. But also, as Karzai himself must realize, the more he succeeds at putting what looks like a little political distance between himself and the U.S. the more valuable he might be to them. It might not work, but what else can he do?
The occupiers want it to appear like they are in Afghanistan as partners of a local sovereign government and not just trying to impose their will on the country by force. They are also more than happy to blame Karzai for Afghanistan's misery. But his is not a sovereign government. The U.S. couldn't help demonstrating that yet again in the last few days by bringing in Russian forces to join American troops for a massive raid in eastern Afghanistan without even telling Karzai about it. This left him looking not only like a lowly underling of the U.S. but an heir of the national traitors who sold Afghanistan to the Soviet Union. No wonder he squirms and seeks to play the patriot.
Even now the U.S. doesn't take his protests very seriously. When he threatened to impose a deadline for private security firms to leave the country, a "Western official in Kabul" mocked it as a self-interested tactical political manoeuvre. "What this timeline means is withdrawal. The discussion that needs to happen now is: What do you really want? What are your real concerns? Let's draw up a different plan." (Washington Post, 17 August 2010) This statement was both the truth and an attempt to humble and undermine him further.
This filthy game shows what's really going on in Afghanistan. What the U.S. "really wants" is not an independent Afghan "partner" but a flunky regime that can facilitate and provide cover for the occupation. What matters to Washington are the U.S.'s strategic geopolitical goals and not the interests of any people. When the U.S. supports Karzai it is to serve those goals, and when it criticizes Karzai it's for the same reason, just as it fights the reactionary Taliban to serve those goals and seeks to negotiate for the same reason.
The situation in Afghanistan is a nightmare for its people and getting worse. Some misguided Westerners argue that even if the initial invasion was wrong, "'We' have no choice but to stay" until the U.S. can sort out the mess it has created. But when you see how the U.S. is weighing its options, all you can say is that until the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, it can only do more and more harm.
Montag, 20. September 2010
Eine politische Abschiedsvorstellung
KABUL/BERLIN
german-foreign-policy vom17.09.2010 – Berliner Regierungsberater diagnostizieren vor den morgigen Parlamentswahlen in Afghanistan einen „Abbau“ formaldemokratischer Restbestände in Kabul. Die westlichen Besatzer legten offenbar keinen Wert mehr auf „glaubwürdige Wahlen“ am Hindukusch, heißt es in einer aktuellen Analyse der Berliner Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). Präsident Karzai erhalte vielmehr „freie Hand“, mit Hilfe der Wahlen „nun auch das Unterhaus seinem Willen zu unterwerfen“. Afghanistan sei unter westlicher Kontrolle eine „Fassadendemokratie“ geworden, die „auf einem Unterbau aus kriegs- und drogenökonomischen sowie klientelistischen Strukturen“ basiere. Während Karzai sich offenkundig darauf vorbereitet, eine „Präsidentendynastie“ in Kabul zu etablieren, treiben westliche Thinktanks ihre Planungen für eine künftige Afghanistan-Strategie voran. Jüngsten Vorschlägen zufolge sollen die westlichen Besatzungstruppen stark reduziert und nur in wenigen Militärbasen für gelegentliche Überfälle auf antiwestliche Kräfte bereitgehalten werden. Afghanistan selbst, heißt es, sei in relativ eigenständige Provinzen zu zerlegen, die zur „Zentralregierung“ in Kabul in einem „Gleichgewicht der Schwäche“ stünden - optimale Voraussetzungen für die Kontrolle des Landes durch die westlichen Mächte.
Freie Hand
Berliner Regierungsberater rechnen mit „erheblichen Fälschungen“ und ernstem Wahlbetrug bei den morgigen Parlamentswahlen in Afghanistan. Wie aus einer aktuellen Analyse der Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) hervorgeht, sind die Vorschläge afghanischer und internationaler Beobachter, wie aus den Wahlfälschungen der Jahre 2004, 2005 und 2009 Konsequenzen gezogen werden könnten, von den westlichen Besatzungsmächten ignoriert worden. Selbst gegen schwerste Mängel werde nicht eingeschritten; zum Beispiel seien inzwischen 17,4 Millionen Wählerausweise in Umlauf, während die Gesamtzahl der Wahlberechtigten nur mit unter 12,6 Millionen angegeben werde. Weite Landstriche stünden nicht unter der Kontrolle des Kabuler Regimes oder der NATO, weshalb ein geregelter Wahlablauf dort recht unwahrscheinlich sei. Wie die SWP feststellt, haben die westlichen Staaten ihre Wahlbeobachtung mittlerweile deutlich reduziert. So entsendet die EU keine „Observation Mission“ mehr, sondern lediglich eine „Assistance Mission“, deren Aufgaben und Kompetenzen deutlich verringert wurden. Wie die SWP resümiert, habe der Westen „das Ziel glaubwürdiger Wahlen in Afghanistan aufgegeben“ und lasse „Präsident Karzai freie Hand“.[1]
Kriegs- und Drogenökonomie
Über die aktuellen Wahlen hinaus diagnostiziert die SWP einen „Abbau“ der formaldemokratischen Bestände in Kabul. Afghanistan sei unter westlicher Kontrolle zur „Fassadendemokratie“ geworden, „mit übermächtiger Exekutive gegenüber einem politisch und legitimatorisch schwachen Parlament und einer nicht unabhängigen Gerichtsbarkeit“. Die morgigen Parlamentswahlen machten es Hamid Karzai möglich, „nun auch das Unterhaus seinem Willen zu unterwerfen“.[2] Die Entwicklung einer „Präsidialdynastie“ sei nicht auszuschließen. Als etwaiger Nachfolger des aktuellen Präsidenten gilt der SWP Hamids Bruder Mahmud Karzai, „der sich bisher vor allem um die Geschäftsinteressen seines Familienclans kümmert, aber politische Ambitionen hegt und dabei auch vom Amtsinhaber gefördert wird“. Über die Grundlagen des Karzai-Regimes, soweit sie über den Unterhalt durch die westlichen Besatzer hinausgehen, lässt die SWP keinerlei Illusionen zu: „Dieses Gebilde basiert auf einem Unterbau aus kriegs- und drogenökonomischen sowie klientelistischen Strukturen.“
Zu ehrgeizig
Während Hamid Karzai mit Billigung der Besatzer sein Regime weiter festzurrt, dauert im Westen die Debatte um die künftige Besatzungspolitik an. Dabei gilt die aktuelle Aufstandsbekämpfung am Hindukusch weithin als gescheitert; sie sei „zu ehrgeizig“ und verschwende diplomatische wie auch militärische Energie, hieß es etwa vor kurzem im diesjährigen „Strategic Survey“ des renommierten International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS, London), einem führenden westlichen Thinktank auf dem Gebiet der internationalen Politik. Die Vorschläge des IISS für eine künftige Afghanistan-Strategie basieren auf Kernelementen, die mittlerweile vor allem in den USA befürwortet werden und in absehbarer Zeit wohl auch die deutsche Öffentlichkeit erreichen; intern werden sie auch in der Bundesrepublik schon diskutiert. Als unverzichtbar gilt dabei nur noch das Ziel, nach Westen ausgreifende terroristische Strukturen („Al Qaida“) aus Afghanistan fernzuhalten. Mit örtlichen islamistischen Kräften („Taliban“), heißt es, könne man jedoch durchaus kooperieren.
Gezielte Militärschläge
Wie das IISS in seinem „Strategic Survey“ konkret vorschlägt, sollen die Besatzungstruppen aus den paschtunischen Gebieten im Süden und Osten Afghanistans - dort haben die „Taliban“ schon seit je den größten Einfluss - abgezogen werden. Zugleich gelte es, sich in Militärstützpunkten in Kabul und in Nordafghanistan auf Dauer festzusetzen. Sobald die erwähnten, nach Westen ausgreifenden Terrorstrukturen sich erneut in Afghanistan anzusiedeln suchten, müssten die NATO-Truppen gezielt zuschlagen; dazu müsse man Schnelle Einsatztruppen aufbauen. Islamistische Kräfte, die auf Aggressionen gegenüber dem Westen verzichteten, seien als Partner zu behandeln und allenfalls zu bekämpfen, wenn sie aus ihrer angestammten Heimat zu expandieren suchten.[3] Der Vorschlag des IISS stimmt mit Konzepten überein, die seit geraumer Zeit in den USA auch öffentlich debattiert werden (german-foreign-policy.com berichtete [4]) und einen Abzug der meisten westlichen Truppen ermöglichen, ohne die militärische Kontrolle über Afghanistan ganz aufzugeben.
Gleichgewicht der Schwäche
Für die Binnenstruktur Afghanistans schlägt das IISS vor, die formelle Kontrolle über das Land sowie die offizielle Außenpolitik wie bisher dem Regime in Kabul zu überlassen. Die „praktische Souveränität“ dagegen solle bei den Provinzen liegen, deren Eigenständigkeit gegenüber Kabul zu stärken sei. Insbesondere plädiert das IISS dafür, die Afghan National Army (ANA) „konföderal“ zu strukturieren: „Örtliche Streitkräfte“ - de facto Warlord-Milizen - sollten mit dem Etikett ANA versehen und offiziell in die nationalen Streitkräfte eingegliedert werden. In der Praxis laufen die Vorschläge des IISS darauf hinaus, Afghanistan in ein Geflecht kleiner Territorien zu zerlegen, in denen jeweils örtliche Warlords mit Hilfe ihrer Milizen die Macht innehaben und nur noch locker mit der Zentrale in Kabul verbunden sind. Ähnliche Konzepte werden ebenfalls schon seit einiger Zeit diskutiert (german-foreign-policy.com berichtete [5]); US-General David Petraeus soll bereits Absprachen darüber mit Hamid Karzai getroffen haben. Das IISS spricht ausdrücklich von einem „Gleichgewicht der Schwäche zwischen der Hauptstadt und den Provinzen“ [6] - eine prekäre Balance, die den Besatzern die Kontrolle über widerspenstige Kräfte erleichtert.
Afghanisierung
Während sich die internationale Debatte über Afghanistan - fernab der deutschen Öffentlichkeit - erkennbar in die Richtung bewegt, die das IISS mit seinen neuen Vorschlägen beschreibt, sucht der Kabuler Machthaber Hamid Karzai mit Hilfe der morgigen Parlamentswahlen seine Herrschaft in der afghanischen Hauptstadt zu festigen - als ein Pfeiler der künftigen Kontrolle des Westens über ein eventuell gänzlich zersplittertes Afghanistan. Die Wahl, urteilt der renommierte Afghanistan-Experte Thomas Ruttig, werde „die politische Abschiedsvorstellung“ des Westens sein - „alles danach nur noch Teil des Rückzugs, durch das beschönigende Wort 'Afghanisierung' verbrämt.“[7] Und zudem erweitert um Maßnahmen wie das vom IISS vorgeschlagene Konzept, das dem Westen auf Dauer die Kontrolle über Afghanistan sichern soll.
[1], [2] Citha D. Maaß, Thomas Ruttig: Afghanistans Parlamentswahl 2010. Verpasste Wahlrechtsreformen und politische Manöver schwächen neues Parlament, SWP-Aktuell 66, September 2010
[3] Strategic Survey 2010: The Annual Review of World Affairs - Press Statement; www.iiss.org
[4] s. dazu Dauerkrieg
[5] s. dazu Totalschaden und Die Kolonialisten kommen zurück
[6] Strategic Survey 2010: The Annual Review of World Affairs - Press Statement; www.iiss.org
[7] Thomas Ruttig: Afghanistans embryonale Demokratie unterliegt; Neues Deutschland 14.09.2010
german-foreign-policy vom17.09.2010 – Berliner Regierungsberater diagnostizieren vor den morgigen Parlamentswahlen in Afghanistan einen „Abbau“ formaldemokratischer Restbestände in Kabul. Die westlichen Besatzer legten offenbar keinen Wert mehr auf „glaubwürdige Wahlen“ am Hindukusch, heißt es in einer aktuellen Analyse der Berliner Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). Präsident Karzai erhalte vielmehr „freie Hand“, mit Hilfe der Wahlen „nun auch das Unterhaus seinem Willen zu unterwerfen“. Afghanistan sei unter westlicher Kontrolle eine „Fassadendemokratie“ geworden, die „auf einem Unterbau aus kriegs- und drogenökonomischen sowie klientelistischen Strukturen“ basiere. Während Karzai sich offenkundig darauf vorbereitet, eine „Präsidentendynastie“ in Kabul zu etablieren, treiben westliche Thinktanks ihre Planungen für eine künftige Afghanistan-Strategie voran. Jüngsten Vorschlägen zufolge sollen die westlichen Besatzungstruppen stark reduziert und nur in wenigen Militärbasen für gelegentliche Überfälle auf antiwestliche Kräfte bereitgehalten werden. Afghanistan selbst, heißt es, sei in relativ eigenständige Provinzen zu zerlegen, die zur „Zentralregierung“ in Kabul in einem „Gleichgewicht der Schwäche“ stünden - optimale Voraussetzungen für die Kontrolle des Landes durch die westlichen Mächte.
Freie Hand
Berliner Regierungsberater rechnen mit „erheblichen Fälschungen“ und ernstem Wahlbetrug bei den morgigen Parlamentswahlen in Afghanistan. Wie aus einer aktuellen Analyse der Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) hervorgeht, sind die Vorschläge afghanischer und internationaler Beobachter, wie aus den Wahlfälschungen der Jahre 2004, 2005 und 2009 Konsequenzen gezogen werden könnten, von den westlichen Besatzungsmächten ignoriert worden. Selbst gegen schwerste Mängel werde nicht eingeschritten; zum Beispiel seien inzwischen 17,4 Millionen Wählerausweise in Umlauf, während die Gesamtzahl der Wahlberechtigten nur mit unter 12,6 Millionen angegeben werde. Weite Landstriche stünden nicht unter der Kontrolle des Kabuler Regimes oder der NATO, weshalb ein geregelter Wahlablauf dort recht unwahrscheinlich sei. Wie die SWP feststellt, haben die westlichen Staaten ihre Wahlbeobachtung mittlerweile deutlich reduziert. So entsendet die EU keine „Observation Mission“ mehr, sondern lediglich eine „Assistance Mission“, deren Aufgaben und Kompetenzen deutlich verringert wurden. Wie die SWP resümiert, habe der Westen „das Ziel glaubwürdiger Wahlen in Afghanistan aufgegeben“ und lasse „Präsident Karzai freie Hand“.[1]
Kriegs- und Drogenökonomie
Über die aktuellen Wahlen hinaus diagnostiziert die SWP einen „Abbau“ der formaldemokratischen Bestände in Kabul. Afghanistan sei unter westlicher Kontrolle zur „Fassadendemokratie“ geworden, „mit übermächtiger Exekutive gegenüber einem politisch und legitimatorisch schwachen Parlament und einer nicht unabhängigen Gerichtsbarkeit“. Die morgigen Parlamentswahlen machten es Hamid Karzai möglich, „nun auch das Unterhaus seinem Willen zu unterwerfen“.[2] Die Entwicklung einer „Präsidialdynastie“ sei nicht auszuschließen. Als etwaiger Nachfolger des aktuellen Präsidenten gilt der SWP Hamids Bruder Mahmud Karzai, „der sich bisher vor allem um die Geschäftsinteressen seines Familienclans kümmert, aber politische Ambitionen hegt und dabei auch vom Amtsinhaber gefördert wird“. Über die Grundlagen des Karzai-Regimes, soweit sie über den Unterhalt durch die westlichen Besatzer hinausgehen, lässt die SWP keinerlei Illusionen zu: „Dieses Gebilde basiert auf einem Unterbau aus kriegs- und drogenökonomischen sowie klientelistischen Strukturen.“
Zu ehrgeizig
Während Hamid Karzai mit Billigung der Besatzer sein Regime weiter festzurrt, dauert im Westen die Debatte um die künftige Besatzungspolitik an. Dabei gilt die aktuelle Aufstandsbekämpfung am Hindukusch weithin als gescheitert; sie sei „zu ehrgeizig“ und verschwende diplomatische wie auch militärische Energie, hieß es etwa vor kurzem im diesjährigen „Strategic Survey“ des renommierten International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS, London), einem führenden westlichen Thinktank auf dem Gebiet der internationalen Politik. Die Vorschläge des IISS für eine künftige Afghanistan-Strategie basieren auf Kernelementen, die mittlerweile vor allem in den USA befürwortet werden und in absehbarer Zeit wohl auch die deutsche Öffentlichkeit erreichen; intern werden sie auch in der Bundesrepublik schon diskutiert. Als unverzichtbar gilt dabei nur noch das Ziel, nach Westen ausgreifende terroristische Strukturen („Al Qaida“) aus Afghanistan fernzuhalten. Mit örtlichen islamistischen Kräften („Taliban“), heißt es, könne man jedoch durchaus kooperieren.
Gezielte Militärschläge
Wie das IISS in seinem „Strategic Survey“ konkret vorschlägt, sollen die Besatzungstruppen aus den paschtunischen Gebieten im Süden und Osten Afghanistans - dort haben die „Taliban“ schon seit je den größten Einfluss - abgezogen werden. Zugleich gelte es, sich in Militärstützpunkten in Kabul und in Nordafghanistan auf Dauer festzusetzen. Sobald die erwähnten, nach Westen ausgreifenden Terrorstrukturen sich erneut in Afghanistan anzusiedeln suchten, müssten die NATO-Truppen gezielt zuschlagen; dazu müsse man Schnelle Einsatztruppen aufbauen. Islamistische Kräfte, die auf Aggressionen gegenüber dem Westen verzichteten, seien als Partner zu behandeln und allenfalls zu bekämpfen, wenn sie aus ihrer angestammten Heimat zu expandieren suchten.[3] Der Vorschlag des IISS stimmt mit Konzepten überein, die seit geraumer Zeit in den USA auch öffentlich debattiert werden (german-foreign-policy.com berichtete [4]) und einen Abzug der meisten westlichen Truppen ermöglichen, ohne die militärische Kontrolle über Afghanistan ganz aufzugeben.
Gleichgewicht der Schwäche
Für die Binnenstruktur Afghanistans schlägt das IISS vor, die formelle Kontrolle über das Land sowie die offizielle Außenpolitik wie bisher dem Regime in Kabul zu überlassen. Die „praktische Souveränität“ dagegen solle bei den Provinzen liegen, deren Eigenständigkeit gegenüber Kabul zu stärken sei. Insbesondere plädiert das IISS dafür, die Afghan National Army (ANA) „konföderal“ zu strukturieren: „Örtliche Streitkräfte“ - de facto Warlord-Milizen - sollten mit dem Etikett ANA versehen und offiziell in die nationalen Streitkräfte eingegliedert werden. In der Praxis laufen die Vorschläge des IISS darauf hinaus, Afghanistan in ein Geflecht kleiner Territorien zu zerlegen, in denen jeweils örtliche Warlords mit Hilfe ihrer Milizen die Macht innehaben und nur noch locker mit der Zentrale in Kabul verbunden sind. Ähnliche Konzepte werden ebenfalls schon seit einiger Zeit diskutiert (german-foreign-policy.com berichtete [5]); US-General David Petraeus soll bereits Absprachen darüber mit Hamid Karzai getroffen haben. Das IISS spricht ausdrücklich von einem „Gleichgewicht der Schwäche zwischen der Hauptstadt und den Provinzen“ [6] - eine prekäre Balance, die den Besatzern die Kontrolle über widerspenstige Kräfte erleichtert.
Afghanisierung
Während sich die internationale Debatte über Afghanistan - fernab der deutschen Öffentlichkeit - erkennbar in die Richtung bewegt, die das IISS mit seinen neuen Vorschlägen beschreibt, sucht der Kabuler Machthaber Hamid Karzai mit Hilfe der morgigen Parlamentswahlen seine Herrschaft in der afghanischen Hauptstadt zu festigen - als ein Pfeiler der künftigen Kontrolle des Westens über ein eventuell gänzlich zersplittertes Afghanistan. Die Wahl, urteilt der renommierte Afghanistan-Experte Thomas Ruttig, werde „die politische Abschiedsvorstellung“ des Westens sein - „alles danach nur noch Teil des Rückzugs, durch das beschönigende Wort 'Afghanisierung' verbrämt.“[7] Und zudem erweitert um Maßnahmen wie das vom IISS vorgeschlagene Konzept, das dem Westen auf Dauer die Kontrolle über Afghanistan sichern soll.
[1], [2] Citha D. Maaß, Thomas Ruttig: Afghanistans Parlamentswahl 2010. Verpasste Wahlrechtsreformen und politische Manöver schwächen neues Parlament, SWP-Aktuell 66, September 2010
[3] Strategic Survey 2010: The Annual Review of World Affairs - Press Statement; www.iiss.org
[4] s. dazu Dauerkrieg
[5] s. dazu Totalschaden und Die Kolonialisten kommen zurück
[6] Strategic Survey 2010: The Annual Review of World Affairs - Press Statement; www.iiss.org
[7] Thomas Ruttig: Afghanistans embryonale Demokratie unterliegt; Neues Deutschland 14.09.2010
Donnerstag, 19. August 2010
Gezielte Tötungen
ABUL/WASHINGTON/BERLIN
Quelle: german-foreign-policy vom 18.08.2010 - Deutsche Militärs verlangen einen „nüchterneren“ Umgang der Öffentlichkeit mit der gezielten Tötung mutmaßlicher Aufständischer in Afghanistan. Es sei „völlig klar und verständlich“, dass die NATO-Streitkräfte Insurgenten jagen sowie „effektiv ausschalten“ müssten, erklärt der deutsche ISAF-Sprecher Josef Dieter Blotz. Dazu werde auch die Sondereinheit Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) der Bundeswehr eingesetzt. Wie es im Berliner Verteidigungsministerium heißt, dürften deutsche Soldaten zwar keine gezielte Tötung selbst vornehmen. Allerdings gebe man Informationen an Verbündete weiter, die gezielte Tötungen möglich machten. Laut Rechtsauffassung der Bundesregierung ist es zulässig, Aufständische „auch außerhalb der Teilnahme an konkreten Feindseligkeiten“, zum Beispiel bei nächtlichen Überfällen, umzubringen. Die Verlautbarungen erfolgen zu einem Zeitpunkt, da einflussreiche US-Militärs das Scheitern der Versuche konstatieren, Afghanistan mit einer Truppenaufstockung unter Kontrolle zu bekommen. Erfolge, heißt es, erziele man zur Zeit allenfalls mit der Jagd auf einzelne Anführer der Aufständischen. Als Modell wird in rechtsgerichteten deutschen Militärzirkeln unter anderem die verdeckte Kriegführung der USA im Jemen genannt.
Aufständische „ausschalten“
Wie der deutsche ISAF-Sprecher Brigadegeneral Josef Dieter Blotz verlangt, soll die Öffentlichkeit in der Bundesrepublik „nüchterner“ mit gezielten Tötungen (Militärjargon: „Targeted Killing“) am Hindukusch umgehen. Es sei „völlig klar und verständlich“, dass die Feinde des Westens „verfolgt und bekämpft“ werden müssten [1]; man müsse sie „ausschalten“, „noch bevor sie unsere Soldaten angreifen können“. Dies sei die „Aufgabe von militärischen Kräften, die speziell dafür ausgebildet, ausgerüstet und trainiert sind“, weshalb man die Anzahl der Spezialeinheiten in Afghanistan in den letzten 18 Monaten „ganz erheblich“ erhöht habe. Das deutsche Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) sei an der „Ausschaltung“ von Aufständischen beteiligt, dürfe allerdings keine gezielten Tötungen durchführen. Wie das Verteidigungsministerium mitteilt, hat die Bundeswehr-“Task Force 47“, der auch KSK-Soldaten angehören, inzwischen über 50 „Aufklärungsoperationen“ sowie 21 „offensive Operationen“ durchgeführt. Dabei habe es einen Toten gegeben, 59 Personen seien „in Gewahrsam genommen“ worden.[2]
„Capture“, „kill“
Gleichzeitig räumt das Bundesverteidigungsministerium ein, dass Informationen deutscher Militärs grundsätzlich für sogenannte gezielte Tötungen genutzt werden können. „Aufklärungsergebnisse deutscher Kräfte“ tragen demnach zur „Identifizierung und Auswahl potenzieller militärischer Ziele im Rahmen des ISAF-Targeting“ bei: Sie fließen in die ISAF-“Joint Prioritized Effects List“ (JPEL) ein, die gegenwärtig Berichten zufolge rund 550 Personen enthält - versehen mit einem Hinweis, ob diese gefangenzunehmen („c“ für „capture“) oder zu töten („k“ für „kill“) sind. Laut Ministerium geben die Deutschen dabei auch Informationen über Personen weiter, „die mit der Vorbereitung und Durchführung von Anschlägen (...) in Zusammenhang gebracht werden“.[3] Bei Personen, „die sich unmittelbar oder dauerhaft an den Feindseligkeiten beteiligen“, bestehe dabei „die Möglichkeit, die Anwendung gezielt tödlich wirkender militärischer Gewalt zu empfehlen“, schreibt das Ministerium in einer gestern in Auszügen bekannt gewordenen Stellungnahme.[4]
„Gezieltes Töten erlaubt“
Galt die mögliche Nutzung deutscher Informationen für gezielte Tötungen noch vor wenigen Jahren unter Rechtsberatern der Bundesregierung als völkerrechtlich höchst problematisch, hat Berlin jetzt keine Einwände mehr. Man habe sich seitdem „in vielen Bereichen weiterentwickelt“, heißt es dazu im Verteidigungsministerium. Laut Völkerrecht ist die Tötung von Zivilisten erlaubt, wenn diese im Krieg bewaffnete Angriffe auf Soldaten unternehmen. Dies gilt allerdings nur für eine unmittelbare Kampfsituation. Befürworter gezielter Tötungen berufen sich heute gewöhnlich auf ein letztes Jahr veröffentlichtes Gutachten des Internationalen Komitees vom Roten Kreuz, das Militärangriffe auf mutmaßliche Aufständische auch außerhalb von Kampfsituationen für zulässig erklärt - wenn auch nur unter der Maßgabe, dass statt der Tötung eine Gefangennahme angestrebt werden muss. In der NATO werden Positionen vertreten, die noch weit über die Zugeständnisse des Roten Kreuzes an das westliche Kriegsbündnis hinausgehen. So behauptet ein Assistant Legal Advisor am Allied Command Transformation der NATO in Norfolk (USA), der Deutsche Ulf Häußler: „Es gibt keine Rechtsüberzeugung des Inhalts, dass gezielte Tötungen verboten seien oder dass die Festsetzung von besonders ausgewählten Zielpersonen grundsätzlich Vorrang hätte.“[5] Dieser Behauptung hat sich die Bundesregierung offenbar angeschlossen. So heißt es in dem gestern bekannt gewordenen Papier aus dem Verteidigungsministerium, man dürfe „feindliche Kämpfer gegebenenfalls auch außerhalb der Teilnahme an konkreten Feindseligkeiten (...) gezielt bekämpfen, was auch den Einsatz tödlich wirkender Gewalt einschließen kann“.[6]
Neuer Schwerpunkt
Die Plädoyers für gezieltes Töten von Aufständischen erfolgen zu einem Zeitpunkt, da US-Militärs die offizielle NATO-Strategie, durch massive Truppenpräsenz Aufstände im Keim zu ersticken, für gescheitert erklären. Die Strategie habe „wenig Erfolg gebracht“ [7], heißt es in US-Medien unter Berufung auf Militärs und US-Regierungsvertreter; gleichzeitig sei es jedoch gelungen, über 130 „bedeutende Insurgenten aus dem Verkehr zu ziehen“. „Verhöre“ gefangengenommener Kämpfer hätten zudem neue Erkenntnisse über die Aufstandsbewegung erbracht. Die „Verhöre“ finden im klassischen Falle in der US-Basis Bagram statt, wo mindestens zwei Gefangene zu Tode gefoltert wurden; auch der deutsche Staatsbürger Khaled el Masri war dort interniert.[8] Auf eine Frage im US-Senat, ob sich der Schwerpunkt von der offiziellen NATO-Strategie hin zum Targeted Killing verschiebe, antwortete vor kurzem ein General aus dem US Central Command: „Ich denke, das ist der Ansatz“.[9]
Auch die Bundeswehr
Für Forderungen aus rechtsgerichteten deutschen Militärzirkeln, die Bundeswehr solle sich dieser Strategie noch stärker als bisher anschließen, hat sich kürzlich der deutsche Verteidigungsminister geöffnet. Am Hindukusch sei auch nach dem Abzug der größten Truppenteile eine „internationale Koordination des Einsatzes von Nachrichtendiensten und Spezialkräften“ unumgänglich, erklärte Minister Guttenberg Anfang Juli in einem Presseinterview. Dies könne den Operationen der USA im pakistanischen Grenzgebiet in mancher Hinsicht ähneln, erläuterte Guttenberg. Bei diesen US-Operationen handelt es sich gewöhnlich um gezielte Tötungen mit Hilfe von Drohnen - zahlreiche Ziviltote inklusive.[10]
Verdeckter Krieg
Das Kriegsmodell, dem zu folgen Berlin sich anschickt, wird von Washington bereits seit Jahren systematisch angewandt - beileibe nicht nur in Afghanistan, Pakistan und dem Irak, sondern unter anderem auch in Somalia sowie im Jemen. Allein im Jemen führten US-Militärs seit vergangenem Dezember mindestens vier Attacken durch, bei denen neben einigen mutmaßlichen Mitgliedern Al Qaidas zahlreiche Zivilisten zu Tode kamen, darunter ein stellvertretender Provinzgouverneur. Die punktuellen, offiziell nie zugegebenen gezielten Tötungen, die auch in deutschen Militärkreisen als Modell für die künftige Kriegführung in Afghanistan diskutiert werden, haben im Jemen mehrere Gegenschläge provoziert und drohen die bewaffneten Auseinandersetzungen weiter eskalieren zu lassen. Sie laufen auf einen von außerhalb des Landes geführten Dauerkrieg mit relativ wenigen Opfern aus dem Westen und umso mehr einheimischen Toten hinaus.
[1] Deutsche Elitesoldaten jagen gezielt Taliban; www.tagesspiegel.de 16.08.2010
[2] Mehr als 70 deutsche Geheim-Einsätze in Afghanistan; www.tagesspiegel.de 13.08.2010. Dem Ministerium zufolge kam es zu dem Todesopfer, als ein Mitglied verbündeter Truppen - nicht der Task Force 47 - bei einer Hausdurchsuchung im Rahmen einer Aktion der „Nothilfe“ schoss.
[3], [4] So kommen die Taliban-Terroristen auf die Todesliste! www.bild.de 17.08.2010
[5] Gezieltes Töten erlaubt; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12.08.2010
[6] So kommen die Taliban-Terroristen auf die Todesliste! www.bild.de 17.08.2010
[7] Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan; The New York Times 31.08.2010
[8] s. dazu Wer ist „Sam“, der deutsche Foltergesandte?
[9] Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan; The New York Times 31.08.2010
[10] s. dazu Nachsorgeelemente
http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/de/fulltext/57869
Quelle: german-foreign-policy vom 18.08.2010 - Deutsche Militärs verlangen einen „nüchterneren“ Umgang der Öffentlichkeit mit der gezielten Tötung mutmaßlicher Aufständischer in Afghanistan. Es sei „völlig klar und verständlich“, dass die NATO-Streitkräfte Insurgenten jagen sowie „effektiv ausschalten“ müssten, erklärt der deutsche ISAF-Sprecher Josef Dieter Blotz. Dazu werde auch die Sondereinheit Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) der Bundeswehr eingesetzt. Wie es im Berliner Verteidigungsministerium heißt, dürften deutsche Soldaten zwar keine gezielte Tötung selbst vornehmen. Allerdings gebe man Informationen an Verbündete weiter, die gezielte Tötungen möglich machten. Laut Rechtsauffassung der Bundesregierung ist es zulässig, Aufständische „auch außerhalb der Teilnahme an konkreten Feindseligkeiten“, zum Beispiel bei nächtlichen Überfällen, umzubringen. Die Verlautbarungen erfolgen zu einem Zeitpunkt, da einflussreiche US-Militärs das Scheitern der Versuche konstatieren, Afghanistan mit einer Truppenaufstockung unter Kontrolle zu bekommen. Erfolge, heißt es, erziele man zur Zeit allenfalls mit der Jagd auf einzelne Anführer der Aufständischen. Als Modell wird in rechtsgerichteten deutschen Militärzirkeln unter anderem die verdeckte Kriegführung der USA im Jemen genannt.
Aufständische „ausschalten“
Wie der deutsche ISAF-Sprecher Brigadegeneral Josef Dieter Blotz verlangt, soll die Öffentlichkeit in der Bundesrepublik „nüchterner“ mit gezielten Tötungen (Militärjargon: „Targeted Killing“) am Hindukusch umgehen. Es sei „völlig klar und verständlich“, dass die Feinde des Westens „verfolgt und bekämpft“ werden müssten [1]; man müsse sie „ausschalten“, „noch bevor sie unsere Soldaten angreifen können“. Dies sei die „Aufgabe von militärischen Kräften, die speziell dafür ausgebildet, ausgerüstet und trainiert sind“, weshalb man die Anzahl der Spezialeinheiten in Afghanistan in den letzten 18 Monaten „ganz erheblich“ erhöht habe. Das deutsche Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) sei an der „Ausschaltung“ von Aufständischen beteiligt, dürfe allerdings keine gezielten Tötungen durchführen. Wie das Verteidigungsministerium mitteilt, hat die Bundeswehr-“Task Force 47“, der auch KSK-Soldaten angehören, inzwischen über 50 „Aufklärungsoperationen“ sowie 21 „offensive Operationen“ durchgeführt. Dabei habe es einen Toten gegeben, 59 Personen seien „in Gewahrsam genommen“ worden.[2]
„Capture“, „kill“
Gleichzeitig räumt das Bundesverteidigungsministerium ein, dass Informationen deutscher Militärs grundsätzlich für sogenannte gezielte Tötungen genutzt werden können. „Aufklärungsergebnisse deutscher Kräfte“ tragen demnach zur „Identifizierung und Auswahl potenzieller militärischer Ziele im Rahmen des ISAF-Targeting“ bei: Sie fließen in die ISAF-“Joint Prioritized Effects List“ (JPEL) ein, die gegenwärtig Berichten zufolge rund 550 Personen enthält - versehen mit einem Hinweis, ob diese gefangenzunehmen („c“ für „capture“) oder zu töten („k“ für „kill“) sind. Laut Ministerium geben die Deutschen dabei auch Informationen über Personen weiter, „die mit der Vorbereitung und Durchführung von Anschlägen (...) in Zusammenhang gebracht werden“.[3] Bei Personen, „die sich unmittelbar oder dauerhaft an den Feindseligkeiten beteiligen“, bestehe dabei „die Möglichkeit, die Anwendung gezielt tödlich wirkender militärischer Gewalt zu empfehlen“, schreibt das Ministerium in einer gestern in Auszügen bekannt gewordenen Stellungnahme.[4]
„Gezieltes Töten erlaubt“
Galt die mögliche Nutzung deutscher Informationen für gezielte Tötungen noch vor wenigen Jahren unter Rechtsberatern der Bundesregierung als völkerrechtlich höchst problematisch, hat Berlin jetzt keine Einwände mehr. Man habe sich seitdem „in vielen Bereichen weiterentwickelt“, heißt es dazu im Verteidigungsministerium. Laut Völkerrecht ist die Tötung von Zivilisten erlaubt, wenn diese im Krieg bewaffnete Angriffe auf Soldaten unternehmen. Dies gilt allerdings nur für eine unmittelbare Kampfsituation. Befürworter gezielter Tötungen berufen sich heute gewöhnlich auf ein letztes Jahr veröffentlichtes Gutachten des Internationalen Komitees vom Roten Kreuz, das Militärangriffe auf mutmaßliche Aufständische auch außerhalb von Kampfsituationen für zulässig erklärt - wenn auch nur unter der Maßgabe, dass statt der Tötung eine Gefangennahme angestrebt werden muss. In der NATO werden Positionen vertreten, die noch weit über die Zugeständnisse des Roten Kreuzes an das westliche Kriegsbündnis hinausgehen. So behauptet ein Assistant Legal Advisor am Allied Command Transformation der NATO in Norfolk (USA), der Deutsche Ulf Häußler: „Es gibt keine Rechtsüberzeugung des Inhalts, dass gezielte Tötungen verboten seien oder dass die Festsetzung von besonders ausgewählten Zielpersonen grundsätzlich Vorrang hätte.“[5] Dieser Behauptung hat sich die Bundesregierung offenbar angeschlossen. So heißt es in dem gestern bekannt gewordenen Papier aus dem Verteidigungsministerium, man dürfe „feindliche Kämpfer gegebenenfalls auch außerhalb der Teilnahme an konkreten Feindseligkeiten (...) gezielt bekämpfen, was auch den Einsatz tödlich wirkender Gewalt einschließen kann“.[6]
Neuer Schwerpunkt
Die Plädoyers für gezieltes Töten von Aufständischen erfolgen zu einem Zeitpunkt, da US-Militärs die offizielle NATO-Strategie, durch massive Truppenpräsenz Aufstände im Keim zu ersticken, für gescheitert erklären. Die Strategie habe „wenig Erfolg gebracht“ [7], heißt es in US-Medien unter Berufung auf Militärs und US-Regierungsvertreter; gleichzeitig sei es jedoch gelungen, über 130 „bedeutende Insurgenten aus dem Verkehr zu ziehen“. „Verhöre“ gefangengenommener Kämpfer hätten zudem neue Erkenntnisse über die Aufstandsbewegung erbracht. Die „Verhöre“ finden im klassischen Falle in der US-Basis Bagram statt, wo mindestens zwei Gefangene zu Tode gefoltert wurden; auch der deutsche Staatsbürger Khaled el Masri war dort interniert.[8] Auf eine Frage im US-Senat, ob sich der Schwerpunkt von der offiziellen NATO-Strategie hin zum Targeted Killing verschiebe, antwortete vor kurzem ein General aus dem US Central Command: „Ich denke, das ist der Ansatz“.[9]
Auch die Bundeswehr
Für Forderungen aus rechtsgerichteten deutschen Militärzirkeln, die Bundeswehr solle sich dieser Strategie noch stärker als bisher anschließen, hat sich kürzlich der deutsche Verteidigungsminister geöffnet. Am Hindukusch sei auch nach dem Abzug der größten Truppenteile eine „internationale Koordination des Einsatzes von Nachrichtendiensten und Spezialkräften“ unumgänglich, erklärte Minister Guttenberg Anfang Juli in einem Presseinterview. Dies könne den Operationen der USA im pakistanischen Grenzgebiet in mancher Hinsicht ähneln, erläuterte Guttenberg. Bei diesen US-Operationen handelt es sich gewöhnlich um gezielte Tötungen mit Hilfe von Drohnen - zahlreiche Ziviltote inklusive.[10]
Verdeckter Krieg
Das Kriegsmodell, dem zu folgen Berlin sich anschickt, wird von Washington bereits seit Jahren systematisch angewandt - beileibe nicht nur in Afghanistan, Pakistan und dem Irak, sondern unter anderem auch in Somalia sowie im Jemen. Allein im Jemen führten US-Militärs seit vergangenem Dezember mindestens vier Attacken durch, bei denen neben einigen mutmaßlichen Mitgliedern Al Qaidas zahlreiche Zivilisten zu Tode kamen, darunter ein stellvertretender Provinzgouverneur. Die punktuellen, offiziell nie zugegebenen gezielten Tötungen, die auch in deutschen Militärkreisen als Modell für die künftige Kriegführung in Afghanistan diskutiert werden, haben im Jemen mehrere Gegenschläge provoziert und drohen die bewaffneten Auseinandersetzungen weiter eskalieren zu lassen. Sie laufen auf einen von außerhalb des Landes geführten Dauerkrieg mit relativ wenigen Opfern aus dem Westen und umso mehr einheimischen Toten hinaus.
[1] Deutsche Elitesoldaten jagen gezielt Taliban; www.tagesspiegel.de 16.08.2010
[2] Mehr als 70 deutsche Geheim-Einsätze in Afghanistan; www.tagesspiegel.de 13.08.2010. Dem Ministerium zufolge kam es zu dem Todesopfer, als ein Mitglied verbündeter Truppen - nicht der Task Force 47 - bei einer Hausdurchsuchung im Rahmen einer Aktion der „Nothilfe“ schoss.
[3], [4] So kommen die Taliban-Terroristen auf die Todesliste! www.bild.de 17.08.2010
[5] Gezieltes Töten erlaubt; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12.08.2010
[6] So kommen die Taliban-Terroristen auf die Todesliste! www.bild.de 17.08.2010
[7] Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan; The New York Times 31.08.2010
[8] s. dazu Wer ist „Sam“, der deutsche Foltergesandte?
[9] Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan; The New York Times 31.08.2010
[10] s. dazu Nachsorgeelemente
http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/de/fulltext/57869
Montag, 16. August 2010
Afghanistan WikiLeaks: correction and update
9 August 2010. A World to Win News Service. In the article "The WikiLeaks and what they reveal" in the AWTWNS news packet for 2 August 2010, we referred to "30-70" civilian deaths in the Nato bombing of a crowd of people seeking to fill their jerry cans from two fuel tankers stuck in a riverbed in the northern province of Kunduz in September 2009.
This was meant to expose the self-serving lies in the U.S. military internal report on this incident released by the WikiLeaks organisation. Immediately after these killings, Nato denied that any civilians had died, and this was what was said in the document.
The casualty figures we gave were based on reports filed by Western journalists who investigated at the scene. Afghan sources at that time put the figure much higher. Now almost a year later, Germany has announced that it will pay compensation to the families of 91 people killed and 11 wounded by the airstrike called in by a German commander operating as part of Nato. This casualty figure was reached by an "independent local mediator" who identified these victims and concluded that about 140 people were killed in all. (BBC, The New York Times, 7 August 2010).
Meanwhile, local Afghan authorities said that a Nato airstrike on a house in Nangarhar province killed 32 people on 5 August. Occupation officials at first denied there were any civilian casualties, but later were forced to admit a few such deaths.
Fresh reports continue to surface about events in Sangin district of Helmand province 26 July, when U.S. Marines fired a missile at a house from which they said they had been shot at. Yet again Nato and U.S. officials initially denied that any civilians were killed. Now an unidentified "senior intelligence official for the international forces" has tried to justify the killings by explaining that "Taliban fighters" had been firing from the roof of the building. He acknowledged that the American soldiers knew that people had taken refuge inside and were trapped by the fighting. He stressed that "The Marines were unbelievable in the length of time they waited to return fire", waiting more than four hours before deciding to fire the shoulder-fired Javelin rocket that killed 52 ordinary people inside, according to local reports. (NYT 7 August).
The American explanation amounts to a guilty plea on two counts, once because the official says the occupation soldiers knowingly decided that civilian families were expendable, and secondly because like his soldiers he cannot even conceive that there is anything wrong with this. If Afghanistan must be occupied at all costs – or at least at any cost to Afghanis, then isn't this the logic of a war for empire?
This was meant to expose the self-serving lies in the U.S. military internal report on this incident released by the WikiLeaks organisation. Immediately after these killings, Nato denied that any civilians had died, and this was what was said in the document.
The casualty figures we gave were based on reports filed by Western journalists who investigated at the scene. Afghan sources at that time put the figure much higher. Now almost a year later, Germany has announced that it will pay compensation to the families of 91 people killed and 11 wounded by the airstrike called in by a German commander operating as part of Nato. This casualty figure was reached by an "independent local mediator" who identified these victims and concluded that about 140 people were killed in all. (BBC, The New York Times, 7 August 2010).
Meanwhile, local Afghan authorities said that a Nato airstrike on a house in Nangarhar province killed 32 people on 5 August. Occupation officials at first denied there were any civilian casualties, but later were forced to admit a few such deaths.
Fresh reports continue to surface about events in Sangin district of Helmand province 26 July, when U.S. Marines fired a missile at a house from which they said they had been shot at. Yet again Nato and U.S. officials initially denied that any civilians were killed. Now an unidentified "senior intelligence official for the international forces" has tried to justify the killings by explaining that "Taliban fighters" had been firing from the roof of the building. He acknowledged that the American soldiers knew that people had taken refuge inside and were trapped by the fighting. He stressed that "The Marines were unbelievable in the length of time they waited to return fire", waiting more than four hours before deciding to fire the shoulder-fired Javelin rocket that killed 52 ordinary people inside, according to local reports. (NYT 7 August).
The American explanation amounts to a guilty plea on two counts, once because the official says the occupation soldiers knowingly decided that civilian families were expendable, and secondly because like his soldiers he cannot even conceive that there is anything wrong with this. If Afghanistan must be occupied at all costs – or at least at any cost to Afghanis, then isn't this the logic of a war for empire?
Samstag, 7. August 2010
Artikel zur Bewaffnung von Milizen in Afghanistan
IMI-Analyse 2010/031 - in: AUSDRUCK (August 2010)
Hilfspolizisten, Schutzkräfte, Dorfschützer: Die Bewaffnung afghanischer
Milizen
http://www.imi-online.de/2010.php?id=2162
http://imi-online.de/download/JS-AUSDRUCK-AfghMilizen.pdf
Von Jonna Schürkes, 2.8.2010
"Sie sollten nicht vergessen, meine Damen und Herren, dass die Taliban
Afghanistan okkupiert haben. Sie sind nicht die legitime und
völkerrechtlich anerkannte Regierung. Zur Durchsetzung ihrer Macht haben
sie grausamste Menschenrechtsverletzungen begangen und die Frauen in dem
Land regelrecht versklavt. Sie haben Afghanistan zu einer Brutstätte des
Terrorismus und der organisierten Kriminalität gemacht. Sie
destabilisieren mit ihren fundamentalistischen Glaubenskriegern die
gesamte Region. Unter der Herrschaft der Taliban wird das afghanische
Volk unterdrückt, und es leidet Hunger und große soziale Not. [...] Wir
begrüßen daher sehr die amerikanische Initiative, die militärischen
Angriffe mit Hilfen für die darbende Bevölkerung zu flankieren. Das ist
Bestandteil einer umfassenden Initiative der westlichen Staaten und der
Afghanistan Support Group, dem afghanischen Volk mit humanitärer Hilfe
beizustehen", so der damalige Vorsitzende der SPD-Bundestagsfraktion und
spätere Verteidigungsminister Peter Struck am 11.Oktober 2001 im
Deutschen Bundestag. Dass der Krieg aus diesen Gründen geführt wird,
erzählt man heute fast nur noch Kindern, wie beispielsweise auf der
Homepage "www.regierenkapieren.de" der Bundesregierung für Kinder und
Jugendliche.[1]
Ganz offiziell wird inzwischen eingeräumt, dass es in Afghanistan nicht
um die Menschen und den Aufbau einer Demokratie, sondern einzig und
allein um westliche Interessen geht: "Ich bin schon länger zu der
Überzeugung gelangt, dass Afghanistan gerade wegen seiner Geschichte und
seiner Prägung sich nicht als Vorzeige-Demokratie nach unseren Maßstäben
eignet. Und wir müssen uns fragen, wer von den Aufständischen stellt
eine ernsthafte Bedrohung für die Staatengemeinschaft dar und wem geht
es um afghanische Angelegenheiten", so Verteidigungsminister Guttenberg
im Dezember 2009.
In den Strategie-Papieren zu Afghanistan der Bundesregierung und in der
Afghanistan-Pakistan-Strategie der Regierung Obama geht es im
Wesentlichen noch darum, die afghanische Regierung möglichst schnell
dazu zu befähigen, die Aufständischen in ihrem Land selber bekämpfen und
damit das Risiko für die eigenen NATO-Soldaten verringern zu können.
Dies versucht man zu erreichen, indem man der Regierung Karzai einen
möglichst großen Repressionsapparat aufbaut und ihn finanziell,
nachrichtendienstlich und logistisch auch mittel- bis langfristig von
sich abhängig hält.[2] Allerdings gibt es hierfür immer noch zu wenige
afghanische Bodentruppen, die im Kampf gegen die Aufständischen in
erster Reihe kämpfen. Viele Menschen schließen sich eher den
Aufständischen an, als Soldat oder Polizist zu werden -- beides schlecht
bezahlte, hochgradig gefährliche und nicht gut angesehene Berufe in
Afghanistan. Daher geht der Westen seit Juli 2010 verstärkt dazu über,
Milizen zu bewaffnen und sie in den Kampf gegen die Aufständischen
einzubeziehen. Dies bedeutet vor allem eine weitere Bewaffnung der
Gesellschaft -- der Bürgerkrieg wird zusätzlich angeheizt. Damit
tendiert die sowieso schon geringe Wirkung der seit 2003 laufenden
Entwaffnungs-, Demobilisierungs- und Wiedereingliederungsprogramme unter
der Leitung der UN gegen Null.
Von der afghanischen Bevölkerung und deren Leiden unter den bewaffneten
Gruppen, von Menschen- und Frauenrechten redet schon lange keiner mehr.
Milizen zu Hilfspolizisten: eine Geschichte des Scheiterns
Mitte Juli 2010 brachte der neue ISAF-Kommandeur General Petraeus den
afghanischen Präsidenten Karzai dazu, dem Aufbau von
"Dorfstreitkräften"(Village Defence Forces) zuzustimmen. Dabei handelt
es sich um lokale Milizen, die von der Regierung in Kabul bezahlt,
ausgerüstet und bewaffnet werden und dann in ihrem Dorf für Sicherheit
sorgen sollen. Die Aufstellung dieser Dorfstreitkräfte sei notwendig, da
der Aufbau der afghanischen Sicherheitskräfte nicht schnell genug
vorangehe und die internationalen Truppen alleine nicht in der Lage
seien, die Aufständischen zu vertreiben.
Die Milizen sollen also verstärkt den Krieg gegen die
"regierungsfeindlichen" Gruppen unterstützen und das, obwohl bereits
seit 2006 verschiedene Programme, die eine ähnliche Ausrichtung gehabt
haben oder noch haben, grandios gescheitert sind.
Als das Mandat der ISAF 2006 auf den Süden und Osten des Landes
ausgeweitet wurde, eskalierte der Krieg und die "Internationale
Gemeinschaft" wurde sich dessen bewusst, dass die von ihnen geschaffene
Polizei (ANP) und Armee (ANA) kaum in der Lage war, die internationalen
Truppen bei ihrem Kampf gegen die Aufständischen zu unterstützen. Also
beschlossen ISAF, das für den Aufbau der afghanischen Armee zuständige
US-amerikanische Kommando CSTC-A und die afghanische Regierung eine
"Afghanische Hilfspolizei" (Afghanistan National Auxiliary Police; ANAP)
zu schaffen. Die Hilfspolizisten sollten vor allem zur Vertreibung der
Aufständischen in unruhigen Distrikten, an wichtigen
Infrastrukturpunkten und an Check-Points eingesetzt werden und die
afghanische Armee und Polizei in Kämpfen unterstützen. Bis Ende 2006
wurden -- vor allem in südlichen Distrikten - 11.271 Hilfspolizisten
angeworben. Die Ausbildung bestand aus 40 Stunden Unterricht, in denen
ihnen von US-Soldaten ihre Aufgaben erläutert und 40 Stunden Training an
den Ak-47, die ihnen ausgehändigt wurden. Ihre Uniformen unterschieden
sich von denen der regulären Polizei nur in einem Abzeichen und auch der
Lohn von 70$ im Monat entsprach dem der Polizisten der ANP.
Die Rekrutierung der Männer beschreibt ein Ausbilder des CSTC-A
folgendermaßen: "Viele der Freiwilligen hatten schon Polizeiuniformen
an, als sie ankamen, aber wir haben es vermieden zu viele Fragen zu
stellen. [...] Die meisten von ihnen (den Rekruten) waren Angehörige von
Milizen. Das ist mir ziemlich egal. Wir haben keinen weggeschickt, es
sei denn, sie hatten Drogen oder Waffen bei sich. Wir haben ihnen die
alte Uniform abgenommen und ihnen eine neue gegeben".[3]
Offiziell wurde die ANAP 2008 aufgelöst. Dies hatte verschiedene Gründe,
in allererster Linie wohl den, dass das US-Militär innerhalb kürzester
Zeit keine Kontrolle mehr über die Hilfspolizisten ausübte und meist
vollkommen unklar war, ob die bewaffneten Einheiten tatsächlich gegen
Aufständische vorgingen oder vielmehr mit Waffe und Uniform zu ihnen
übergelaufen waren.[4] Auch der Plan, die Hilfspolizisten später in die
Polizei und die Armee aufzunehmen und damit den Aufbau der
Sicherheitskräfte in Afghanistan zu beschleunigen, ging nicht auf. Die
ANAP sorgte vielmehr aufgrund der Tatsache, dass der Lohn bei der
Polizei gleich hoch, die Ausbildung jedoch wesentlich schneller
absolviert war und vor allem weil die Hilfspolizisten nicht wie die
regulären Polizisten teilweise weit weg von ihrer Heimat eingesetzt
wurden, eher für ein Konkurrenz für die ANP, als dass damit mehr
Menschen zu regulären Polizisten geworden wären.[5] Laut CSTC-A wurden
lediglich 3.200 Männer aus der ANAP weiter ausgebildet und in die ANP
übernommen.[6] Informationen über den Verbleib der restlichen
Hilfspolizisten, ihrer Waffen und Uniformen gibt es keine.
Von ANAP zu AP3
Der grandiose Misserfolg der ANAP führte aber nicht dazu, dass der
Versuch, Milizen durch Ausrüstung und Bezahlung zu billigen Bodentruppen
für den Krieg gegen die Aufständischen zu machen, fallen gelassen worden
wäre. Mit dem Ende der ANAP entwarfen die USA und die afghanische
Regierung ein neues Programm, das zunächst in der Provinz Wardak
getestet und dann auf andere Distrikte übertragen werden sollte. Die
Aufgaben der im "Afghanistan Public Protection Program" (AP3)
angeheuerten Milizen entsprachen denen der Hilfspolizisten, auch sie
wurden bewaffnet und bekamen Uniformen. Allerdings wurde die
Ausbildungszeit verlängert und die Milizen sollten stärker mit den
US-Militärs zusammenarbeiten. Davon erhoffte man sich eine bessere
Kontrolle über die Truppen.
Das Modell wurde von verschiedenen Seiten als Erfolg gefeiert. So sei
die Provinz seit der Einführung des AP3 deutlich sicherer geworden und
die Aufständischen hätten weitgehend vertrieben werden können.[7]
Mathieu Lefevre vom Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) bewertet das
Programm hingegen ganz anders. So habe es das Gleichgewicht der
unterschiedlichen Gruppen in der Region gestört und damit die Konflikte
deutlich verschärft. Der Kommandeur der 1.100 im Rahmen des AP3
bewaffneten und angeheuerten Milizen sei seither deutlich gestärkt,
zumal die reguläre Polizei (ANP) in der Provinz nicht einmal über halb
so viele Männer verfüge. Die Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Milizen und der
Polizei gestalte sich schwierig, da die Milizen sich einerseits weigern,
die Anweisungen der lokalen Polizei zu befolgen und andererseits die ANP
nicht in der Lage oder nicht willens sei, die Milizen zu unterstützen.
In Wardak, so Lefevre, gehe man davon aus, dass es nur eine Frage der
Zeit sei, wann die Milizen sich offen gegen die Regierung in Kabul
wenden und samt Waffen und Uniformen sich den Aufständischen anschließen
würden.
Auch sei nicht klar, ob die Anschläge von Aufständischen in Wardak
tatsächlich seit der Einführung der AP3 zurückgegangen seien, es gäbe
Quellen, die das Gegenteil behaupten würden. Aufgrund der genannten
Schwierigkeiten sollte das Programm zunächst nicht auf andere Provinzen
ausgeweitet werden, aber zurücknehmen könne man es in Wardak nun auch
nicht mehr, denn es sei sehr unwahrscheinlich, dass sich die Milizen
einfach entwaffnen lassen würden, so Lefevres ernüchterndes Fazit.[8]
Neben den beschriebenen Programmen gab es in den letzten Jahren
zahlreiche weitere, die sich kaum voneinander unterscheiden. Erwähnt sei
aber noch die Local Defence Initiative, die sich von den anderen dadurch
hervortut, dass der Lohn der Milizen Entwicklungshilfeprojekte für ihre
Dorfgemeinschaften sind.[9]
Kein alleiniges Projekt der USA
Im Juni 2010 wurde Stanley McCrystal von David Petraeus als
ISAF-Kommandeur abgelöst. Petreaus war 2007 und 2008 Oberster
Befehlshaber der Multinationalen Truppe im Irak (MNF-I) und hatte dort
eine große Anzahl von Milizen bewaffnet, die gemeinsam mit der US-Armee
gegen die Aufständischem im Irak vorgegangen sind (s. Kasten). Die so
genannten "Söhne des Irak" gelten als ein Faktor, der es der USA
ermöglichte, Truppen abzuziehen. Dieses Vorgehen soll nun offensichtlich
für Afghanistan kopiert werden, ebenfalls mit dem Ziel, damit eine
Verringerung der internationalen Truppenpräsenz einleiten zu können.
Hier spielt es auch keine Rolle, dass die irakische Regierung heute
massive Probleme mit den "Söhnen des Irak" hat. Auch die Tatsache, dass
die Aufrüstung der unterschiedlichen Bevölkerungsgruppen dazu führte,
dass es in den meisten Städten ethnisch getrennte Viertel gibt, die
militärisch bewacht sind, hindert den Westen nicht daran, es nicht
dennoch auch in Afghanistan zu versuchen. Da hilft auch nicht, dass
Karzai sich massiv gegen die Bewaffnung von Milizen ausgesprochen hat.[10]
Mit welchen Mitteln Petraeus Karzai schließlich dazu gebracht hat,
zuzustimmen, dass seine Gegner in spe nun von seinen westlichen
Verbündeten auf den Bürgerkrieg vorbereitet werden, ist nicht bekannt.
Klar ist aber, dass dieses neue Programm dem AP3 sehr ähnlich sein wird.
Es sollen 10.000 Dorfschützer rekrutiert werden, die dann vom
Afghanischen Innenministerium bewaffnet, bezahlt und "kontrolliert"
werden.[11] Die Ausbildung der Männer wird wohl begrenzt sein, denn --
so Geoff Morrell, der Sprecher des US-Verteidigungsministeriums: "Ich
glaube nicht, dass eine breit angelegte Ausbildung für jemanden --
zumindest in dieser Kultur, in der Waffen so weit verbreitet sind --
notwendig ist, der in der Nachbarschaft patrouillieren soll und
aufpassen soll, was in der Umgebung passiert."[12] Die Aufgaben der
Dorfschützer fasste Morrell folgendermaßen zusammen: Es seien "lokale
Polizeieinheiten, die von der Regierung aufgestellt, bezahlt und
uniformiert werden und die ein Auge auf die Bösewichte haben werden --
in ihrer Nachbarschaft und in ihren Dörfern - und die sie gemeinsam mit
der afghanischen Polizei und Armee aus den Städten halten werden".[13]
Der Sondergesandte der EU für Afghanistan Vygaudas Usackas äußerte sich
zur Aufstellung der "Dorfstreitkräfte" äußerst positiv: "Das ist ein
sehr gut durchdachtes Konzept, das sich zum Ziel gesetzt hat, die
Zivilisten zu beschützen und es der lokalen Bevölkerung zu ermöglichen,
auf Grundlage des Rechts zu handeln".[14]
Die deutsche Regierung hat -- vor allem in Reaktion auf die Kritik
gegenüber ihrer schlechten Bilanz beim Polizeiaufbau -- diese Art der
Kriegsführung lange offiziell kritisiert. Inzwischen ist aber auch sie
daran interessiert, möglichst schnell eine große Anzahl afghanischer
Bodentruppen zu rekrutieren, die den Krieg gegen die Aufständischen
führen. Dies ist wohl vor allem auf das erhöhte Risiko für die deutschen
Truppen und der damit zusammenhängenden steigenden Anzahl getöteter
Soldaten zurückzuführen. Die zunehmende Ablehnung des
Afghanistan-Einsatzes der Bundeswehr in der deutschen Bevölkerung wird
unter anderem auf diese Faktoren zurückgeführt.
Ruprecht Polenz, Vorsitzender des Auswärtigen Bundestagsausschusses,
vertrat Mitte Juli 2010 im Deutschlandfunk die Meinung, Milizen könnten,
wenn sie "sich nur vorher zur afghanischen Verfassung bekennen, der
Gewalt bei der Durchsetzung eigener politischer Ziele abschwören und
keine Verbindungen zu El Kaida unterhalten", durchaus Partner für die
internationalen Truppen sein.[15]
Ganz offen fordert auch der Versitzende der Gewerkschaft der Polizei,
Konrad Freiberg, die Bewaffnung von Milizen, die wesentlich besser für
Sicherheit sorgen könnten, als die Polizei.[16]
Entwaffnen -- Bewaffnen: die weitere Eskalation eines Bürgerkrieges
In der Afghanistan-Strategie der Bundesregierung von 2007 heißt es: "Die
Entwaffnung und Auflösung illegaler Milizen ist für die Entwicklung
eines sicheren Umfeldes in Afghanistan von großer Bedeutung. Dieser
Prozess kommt nach wie vor nicht entscheidend voran. Lokale Machthaber
stützen sich auf ihre illegal bewaffneten Gruppen und unterminieren so
die Durchsetzung der Staatsgewalt".[17]
Zwischen 2003 und 2005 wurden im Rahmen des Disarmament, Demobilization
und Reintegration Programms etwa 63.000 Waffen eingesammelt und
teilweise zerstört. Das anschließende DIAG (Disbandment of Illegal Armed
Groups) Programm hat bis Anfang 2010 46.000 Waffen einkassiert und dem
afghanischen Verteidigungsministerium übergeben.[18] Die Arbeit der UN,
die demnach seit 2003 mit großem finanziellem und personellem Aufwand
insgesamt 109.000 Waffen eingesammelt hat, ist angesichts der
derzeitigen Wiederbewaffnung der Milizen, aber auch der großen Anzahl
von Waffen, die an die offiziellen afghanischen Sicherheitskräfte
geliefert werden sollen und schlicht verschwinden, für die Katz[19].
Was derzeit in Afghanistan produziert wird, ist eine noch stärker
bewaffnete Gesellschaft, in der einzelne Gruppen dazu befähigt werden,
ihre Interessen, die eventuell zeitweilig mit denen des Westens
übereinstimmen, gewaltsam durchzusetzen. Damit wird bewusst die weitere
Eskalation des Bürgerkrieges in Kauf genommen, unter der vor allem die
Zivilbevölkerung leidet, deren Rechte -- so wurde es uns jahrelang
erzählt -- eben mit jenem Krieg gestärkt werden sollten.
-----------
Kasten: "Söhne des Irak"
2006 nahm die US-Armee Verhandlungen mit lokalen und regionalen
Stammesbündnissen über die Aufstellung von Milizen für
Sicherungsaufgaben und ein gemeinsames Vorgehen gegen Al-Qaeda auf.
Stammesangehörige, die sich bereit erklärten, gegen al-Qaeda und
sonstige Störenfriede zu kämpfen, wurden ausgerüstet und bezahlt. In der
Folge entstand eine Vielzahl sogenannter "Awakening"-(Erweckungs-)Räte,
von den Besatzern gerne als ,Söhne des Iraks' bezeichnet.[20]
Das erklärte Ziel war, die "Söhne des Iraks" langfristig in die reguläre
Armee und Polizei zu integrieren. Allerdings erweist sich die Bewaffnung
der Stammesmilizen mittlerweile als massives Problem der irakischen
Regierung. Der einflussreiche "Council of Foreign Relations" urteilte
2008, die Bewaffnung und Bezahlung der Milizen durch die USA und später
die irakische Regierung habe zwar kurzzeitig dazu beigetragen, die
Gewalt im Irak zu drosseln, langfristig allerdings würde dies zu
Stammeskonflikten, warlordism und Sektierertum führen.[21]
Im April 2008 gab es 95.000 "Söhne des Iraks", davon wurden 91.000 vom
US-Militär bezahlt[22]. Inzwischen erhalten alle bis auf 10.000 von der
irakischen Regierung ihren Sold und unterstehen offiziell dem irakischen
Militär. Das Versprechen, in die Armee oder in die Polizei aufgenommen
zu werden, wo der Lohn mehr als doppelt so hoch ist, wurde allerdings
bisher für die allermeisten "Söhne des Iraks" nicht eingelöst. Der New
York Times zufolge seien nur 5% von den Sicherheitskräften übernommen
worden.[23] Die Irakische Regierung hat nun die schwere Aufgabe, die
"Söhne des Iraks" zu demobilisieren, ohne dass die Gewalt, die durch die
Bestechung und Einbindung dieser Milizen eingedämmt wurde, - eventuell
potenziert - zurückkehrt.
Anmerkungen
[1] Was machen deutsche Soldaten in anderen Ländern der Welt?,
http://www.regierenkapieren.de
[2] Vgl. Jonna Schürkes: Boots on the Ground, in: Krisenmanagement.
Sicherheitsarchitektur im globalen Ausnahmezustand, Tübingen 2010, S.
31-41, URL: http://www.imi-online.de
[3] Graeme Smith: "Can new Afghan police resist temptation", in: The
Globe and Mail, 08.11.2006; zitiert in: Andrew Wilder: Cops or Robbers?
The Struggle to Reform the Afghan National Police. Afghanistan Research
and Evaluation Unit, 2007, S. 16.
[4] Mathieu Lefevre: Local Defence in Afghanistan, in: AAN Thematic
Report 03/2010.
[5] Ebd.
[6] International Crisis Group: Policing in Afghanistan: Still Searching
for a Strategy, Asia Briefing Nr. 85, Dezember 2008, URL:
http://www.crisisgroup.org.
[7] Jason Motlagh: In an Afghan Valley of Death, Good News --- for Now,
in Times, 16.06.2010; URL: http://www.time.com
[8] Mathieu Lefevre: Local Defence in Afghanistan, in: Afghanistan
Analysts Network Thematic Report 03/2010.
[9] US keeps secret anti-Taliban militia on a bright leash, in: The
Guardian, 08.03.2010; URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk
[10] Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense
forces, Washington Post, 10.07.2010; URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com
[11] Afghan President Karzai approves plan for local defense forces,
Washington Post, 15.07.2010; URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com
[12] U.S. Department of Defense: DOD News Briefing with Geoff Morrell
from the Pentagon, 14.07.2010; URL: http://www.defense.gov
[13] Ebd.
[14] Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense
forces, Washington Post, 10.07.2010; URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com
[15] Den Bock zum Gärtner machen?, in: Deutschlandfunk, 20.07.2010.
[16] Afghanistan braucht Miliz, in: N24, 27.01.2010.
[17] Afghansitan-Konzept der Bundesregierung, August 2007; URL:
www.auswaertiges-amt.de
[18] Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Fraktion DIE
LINKE: Bewaffnete Gruppen in Afghanistan, 20.01.2010, BT-DS 17/492.
[19] Vgl. Jonna Schürkes 2010.
[20] Vgl. Joachim Guilliard: Irak -- kein Weg vorwärts, in: AUSDRUCK
(Oktober 2008); URL: http://www.imi-online.de
[21] Steven Simon: The Price of the Surge, Council on Foreign Relations,
Mai/Juni 2008; URL: http://www.cfr.org
[22] Greg Bruno: Finding a Place for the 'Sons of Iraq', Council on
Foreign Relations, 09.01.2009; URL: http://www.cfr.org
[23] Sunni Fighters say Iraq didn't keep job promise, New York Times,
23.03.2009; URL: http://www.nytimes.com
IMI-List - Der Infoverteiler der
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imi@imi-online.de
Hilfspolizisten, Schutzkräfte, Dorfschützer: Die Bewaffnung afghanischer
Milizen
http://www.imi-online.de/2010.php?id=2162
http://imi-online.de/download/JS-AUSDRUCK-AfghMilizen.pdf
Von Jonna Schürkes, 2.8.2010
"Sie sollten nicht vergessen, meine Damen und Herren, dass die Taliban
Afghanistan okkupiert haben. Sie sind nicht die legitime und
völkerrechtlich anerkannte Regierung. Zur Durchsetzung ihrer Macht haben
sie grausamste Menschenrechtsverletzungen begangen und die Frauen in dem
Land regelrecht versklavt. Sie haben Afghanistan zu einer Brutstätte des
Terrorismus und der organisierten Kriminalität gemacht. Sie
destabilisieren mit ihren fundamentalistischen Glaubenskriegern die
gesamte Region. Unter der Herrschaft der Taliban wird das afghanische
Volk unterdrückt, und es leidet Hunger und große soziale Not. [...] Wir
begrüßen daher sehr die amerikanische Initiative, die militärischen
Angriffe mit Hilfen für die darbende Bevölkerung zu flankieren. Das ist
Bestandteil einer umfassenden Initiative der westlichen Staaten und der
Afghanistan Support Group, dem afghanischen Volk mit humanitärer Hilfe
beizustehen", so der damalige Vorsitzende der SPD-Bundestagsfraktion und
spätere Verteidigungsminister Peter Struck am 11.Oktober 2001 im
Deutschen Bundestag. Dass der Krieg aus diesen Gründen geführt wird,
erzählt man heute fast nur noch Kindern, wie beispielsweise auf der
Homepage "www.regierenkapieren.de" der Bundesregierung für Kinder und
Jugendliche.[1]
Ganz offiziell wird inzwischen eingeräumt, dass es in Afghanistan nicht
um die Menschen und den Aufbau einer Demokratie, sondern einzig und
allein um westliche Interessen geht: "Ich bin schon länger zu der
Überzeugung gelangt, dass Afghanistan gerade wegen seiner Geschichte und
seiner Prägung sich nicht als Vorzeige-Demokratie nach unseren Maßstäben
eignet. Und wir müssen uns fragen, wer von den Aufständischen stellt
eine ernsthafte Bedrohung für die Staatengemeinschaft dar und wem geht
es um afghanische Angelegenheiten", so Verteidigungsminister Guttenberg
im Dezember 2009.
In den Strategie-Papieren zu Afghanistan der Bundesregierung und in der
Afghanistan-Pakistan-Strategie der Regierung Obama geht es im
Wesentlichen noch darum, die afghanische Regierung möglichst schnell
dazu zu befähigen, die Aufständischen in ihrem Land selber bekämpfen und
damit das Risiko für die eigenen NATO-Soldaten verringern zu können.
Dies versucht man zu erreichen, indem man der Regierung Karzai einen
möglichst großen Repressionsapparat aufbaut und ihn finanziell,
nachrichtendienstlich und logistisch auch mittel- bis langfristig von
sich abhängig hält.[2] Allerdings gibt es hierfür immer noch zu wenige
afghanische Bodentruppen, die im Kampf gegen die Aufständischen in
erster Reihe kämpfen. Viele Menschen schließen sich eher den
Aufständischen an, als Soldat oder Polizist zu werden -- beides schlecht
bezahlte, hochgradig gefährliche und nicht gut angesehene Berufe in
Afghanistan. Daher geht der Westen seit Juli 2010 verstärkt dazu über,
Milizen zu bewaffnen und sie in den Kampf gegen die Aufständischen
einzubeziehen. Dies bedeutet vor allem eine weitere Bewaffnung der
Gesellschaft -- der Bürgerkrieg wird zusätzlich angeheizt. Damit
tendiert die sowieso schon geringe Wirkung der seit 2003 laufenden
Entwaffnungs-, Demobilisierungs- und Wiedereingliederungsprogramme unter
der Leitung der UN gegen Null.
Von der afghanischen Bevölkerung und deren Leiden unter den bewaffneten
Gruppen, von Menschen- und Frauenrechten redet schon lange keiner mehr.
Milizen zu Hilfspolizisten: eine Geschichte des Scheiterns
Mitte Juli 2010 brachte der neue ISAF-Kommandeur General Petraeus den
afghanischen Präsidenten Karzai dazu, dem Aufbau von
"Dorfstreitkräften"(Village Defence Forces) zuzustimmen. Dabei handelt
es sich um lokale Milizen, die von der Regierung in Kabul bezahlt,
ausgerüstet und bewaffnet werden und dann in ihrem Dorf für Sicherheit
sorgen sollen. Die Aufstellung dieser Dorfstreitkräfte sei notwendig, da
der Aufbau der afghanischen Sicherheitskräfte nicht schnell genug
vorangehe und die internationalen Truppen alleine nicht in der Lage
seien, die Aufständischen zu vertreiben.
Die Milizen sollen also verstärkt den Krieg gegen die
"regierungsfeindlichen" Gruppen unterstützen und das, obwohl bereits
seit 2006 verschiedene Programme, die eine ähnliche Ausrichtung gehabt
haben oder noch haben, grandios gescheitert sind.
Als das Mandat der ISAF 2006 auf den Süden und Osten des Landes
ausgeweitet wurde, eskalierte der Krieg und die "Internationale
Gemeinschaft" wurde sich dessen bewusst, dass die von ihnen geschaffene
Polizei (ANP) und Armee (ANA) kaum in der Lage war, die internationalen
Truppen bei ihrem Kampf gegen die Aufständischen zu unterstützen. Also
beschlossen ISAF, das für den Aufbau der afghanischen Armee zuständige
US-amerikanische Kommando CSTC-A und die afghanische Regierung eine
"Afghanische Hilfspolizei" (Afghanistan National Auxiliary Police; ANAP)
zu schaffen. Die Hilfspolizisten sollten vor allem zur Vertreibung der
Aufständischen in unruhigen Distrikten, an wichtigen
Infrastrukturpunkten und an Check-Points eingesetzt werden und die
afghanische Armee und Polizei in Kämpfen unterstützen. Bis Ende 2006
wurden -- vor allem in südlichen Distrikten - 11.271 Hilfspolizisten
angeworben. Die Ausbildung bestand aus 40 Stunden Unterricht, in denen
ihnen von US-Soldaten ihre Aufgaben erläutert und 40 Stunden Training an
den Ak-47, die ihnen ausgehändigt wurden. Ihre Uniformen unterschieden
sich von denen der regulären Polizei nur in einem Abzeichen und auch der
Lohn von 70$ im Monat entsprach dem der Polizisten der ANP.
Die Rekrutierung der Männer beschreibt ein Ausbilder des CSTC-A
folgendermaßen: "Viele der Freiwilligen hatten schon Polizeiuniformen
an, als sie ankamen, aber wir haben es vermieden zu viele Fragen zu
stellen. [...] Die meisten von ihnen (den Rekruten) waren Angehörige von
Milizen. Das ist mir ziemlich egal. Wir haben keinen weggeschickt, es
sei denn, sie hatten Drogen oder Waffen bei sich. Wir haben ihnen die
alte Uniform abgenommen und ihnen eine neue gegeben".[3]
Offiziell wurde die ANAP 2008 aufgelöst. Dies hatte verschiedene Gründe,
in allererster Linie wohl den, dass das US-Militär innerhalb kürzester
Zeit keine Kontrolle mehr über die Hilfspolizisten ausübte und meist
vollkommen unklar war, ob die bewaffneten Einheiten tatsächlich gegen
Aufständische vorgingen oder vielmehr mit Waffe und Uniform zu ihnen
übergelaufen waren.[4] Auch der Plan, die Hilfspolizisten später in die
Polizei und die Armee aufzunehmen und damit den Aufbau der
Sicherheitskräfte in Afghanistan zu beschleunigen, ging nicht auf. Die
ANAP sorgte vielmehr aufgrund der Tatsache, dass der Lohn bei der
Polizei gleich hoch, die Ausbildung jedoch wesentlich schneller
absolviert war und vor allem weil die Hilfspolizisten nicht wie die
regulären Polizisten teilweise weit weg von ihrer Heimat eingesetzt
wurden, eher für ein Konkurrenz für die ANP, als dass damit mehr
Menschen zu regulären Polizisten geworden wären.[5] Laut CSTC-A wurden
lediglich 3.200 Männer aus der ANAP weiter ausgebildet und in die ANP
übernommen.[6] Informationen über den Verbleib der restlichen
Hilfspolizisten, ihrer Waffen und Uniformen gibt es keine.
Von ANAP zu AP3
Der grandiose Misserfolg der ANAP führte aber nicht dazu, dass der
Versuch, Milizen durch Ausrüstung und Bezahlung zu billigen Bodentruppen
für den Krieg gegen die Aufständischen zu machen, fallen gelassen worden
wäre. Mit dem Ende der ANAP entwarfen die USA und die afghanische
Regierung ein neues Programm, das zunächst in der Provinz Wardak
getestet und dann auf andere Distrikte übertragen werden sollte. Die
Aufgaben der im "Afghanistan Public Protection Program" (AP3)
angeheuerten Milizen entsprachen denen der Hilfspolizisten, auch sie
wurden bewaffnet und bekamen Uniformen. Allerdings wurde die
Ausbildungszeit verlängert und die Milizen sollten stärker mit den
US-Militärs zusammenarbeiten. Davon erhoffte man sich eine bessere
Kontrolle über die Truppen.
Das Modell wurde von verschiedenen Seiten als Erfolg gefeiert. So sei
die Provinz seit der Einführung des AP3 deutlich sicherer geworden und
die Aufständischen hätten weitgehend vertrieben werden können.[7]
Mathieu Lefevre vom Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) bewertet das
Programm hingegen ganz anders. So habe es das Gleichgewicht der
unterschiedlichen Gruppen in der Region gestört und damit die Konflikte
deutlich verschärft. Der Kommandeur der 1.100 im Rahmen des AP3
bewaffneten und angeheuerten Milizen sei seither deutlich gestärkt,
zumal die reguläre Polizei (ANP) in der Provinz nicht einmal über halb
so viele Männer verfüge. Die Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Milizen und der
Polizei gestalte sich schwierig, da die Milizen sich einerseits weigern,
die Anweisungen der lokalen Polizei zu befolgen und andererseits die ANP
nicht in der Lage oder nicht willens sei, die Milizen zu unterstützen.
In Wardak, so Lefevre, gehe man davon aus, dass es nur eine Frage der
Zeit sei, wann die Milizen sich offen gegen die Regierung in Kabul
wenden und samt Waffen und Uniformen sich den Aufständischen anschließen
würden.
Auch sei nicht klar, ob die Anschläge von Aufständischen in Wardak
tatsächlich seit der Einführung der AP3 zurückgegangen seien, es gäbe
Quellen, die das Gegenteil behaupten würden. Aufgrund der genannten
Schwierigkeiten sollte das Programm zunächst nicht auf andere Provinzen
ausgeweitet werden, aber zurücknehmen könne man es in Wardak nun auch
nicht mehr, denn es sei sehr unwahrscheinlich, dass sich die Milizen
einfach entwaffnen lassen würden, so Lefevres ernüchterndes Fazit.[8]
Neben den beschriebenen Programmen gab es in den letzten Jahren
zahlreiche weitere, die sich kaum voneinander unterscheiden. Erwähnt sei
aber noch die Local Defence Initiative, die sich von den anderen dadurch
hervortut, dass der Lohn der Milizen Entwicklungshilfeprojekte für ihre
Dorfgemeinschaften sind.[9]
Kein alleiniges Projekt der USA
Im Juni 2010 wurde Stanley McCrystal von David Petraeus als
ISAF-Kommandeur abgelöst. Petreaus war 2007 und 2008 Oberster
Befehlshaber der Multinationalen Truppe im Irak (MNF-I) und hatte dort
eine große Anzahl von Milizen bewaffnet, die gemeinsam mit der US-Armee
gegen die Aufständischem im Irak vorgegangen sind (s. Kasten). Die so
genannten "Söhne des Irak" gelten als ein Faktor, der es der USA
ermöglichte, Truppen abzuziehen. Dieses Vorgehen soll nun offensichtlich
für Afghanistan kopiert werden, ebenfalls mit dem Ziel, damit eine
Verringerung der internationalen Truppenpräsenz einleiten zu können.
Hier spielt es auch keine Rolle, dass die irakische Regierung heute
massive Probleme mit den "Söhnen des Irak" hat. Auch die Tatsache, dass
die Aufrüstung der unterschiedlichen Bevölkerungsgruppen dazu führte,
dass es in den meisten Städten ethnisch getrennte Viertel gibt, die
militärisch bewacht sind, hindert den Westen nicht daran, es nicht
dennoch auch in Afghanistan zu versuchen. Da hilft auch nicht, dass
Karzai sich massiv gegen die Bewaffnung von Milizen ausgesprochen hat.[10]
Mit welchen Mitteln Petraeus Karzai schließlich dazu gebracht hat,
zuzustimmen, dass seine Gegner in spe nun von seinen westlichen
Verbündeten auf den Bürgerkrieg vorbereitet werden, ist nicht bekannt.
Klar ist aber, dass dieses neue Programm dem AP3 sehr ähnlich sein wird.
Es sollen 10.000 Dorfschützer rekrutiert werden, die dann vom
Afghanischen Innenministerium bewaffnet, bezahlt und "kontrolliert"
werden.[11] Die Ausbildung der Männer wird wohl begrenzt sein, denn --
so Geoff Morrell, der Sprecher des US-Verteidigungsministeriums: "Ich
glaube nicht, dass eine breit angelegte Ausbildung für jemanden --
zumindest in dieser Kultur, in der Waffen so weit verbreitet sind --
notwendig ist, der in der Nachbarschaft patrouillieren soll und
aufpassen soll, was in der Umgebung passiert."[12] Die Aufgaben der
Dorfschützer fasste Morrell folgendermaßen zusammen: Es seien "lokale
Polizeieinheiten, die von der Regierung aufgestellt, bezahlt und
uniformiert werden und die ein Auge auf die Bösewichte haben werden --
in ihrer Nachbarschaft und in ihren Dörfern - und die sie gemeinsam mit
der afghanischen Polizei und Armee aus den Städten halten werden".[13]
Der Sondergesandte der EU für Afghanistan Vygaudas Usackas äußerte sich
zur Aufstellung der "Dorfstreitkräfte" äußerst positiv: "Das ist ein
sehr gut durchdachtes Konzept, das sich zum Ziel gesetzt hat, die
Zivilisten zu beschützen und es der lokalen Bevölkerung zu ermöglichen,
auf Grundlage des Rechts zu handeln".[14]
Die deutsche Regierung hat -- vor allem in Reaktion auf die Kritik
gegenüber ihrer schlechten Bilanz beim Polizeiaufbau -- diese Art der
Kriegsführung lange offiziell kritisiert. Inzwischen ist aber auch sie
daran interessiert, möglichst schnell eine große Anzahl afghanischer
Bodentruppen zu rekrutieren, die den Krieg gegen die Aufständischen
führen. Dies ist wohl vor allem auf das erhöhte Risiko für die deutschen
Truppen und der damit zusammenhängenden steigenden Anzahl getöteter
Soldaten zurückzuführen. Die zunehmende Ablehnung des
Afghanistan-Einsatzes der Bundeswehr in der deutschen Bevölkerung wird
unter anderem auf diese Faktoren zurückgeführt.
Ruprecht Polenz, Vorsitzender des Auswärtigen Bundestagsausschusses,
vertrat Mitte Juli 2010 im Deutschlandfunk die Meinung, Milizen könnten,
wenn sie "sich nur vorher zur afghanischen Verfassung bekennen, der
Gewalt bei der Durchsetzung eigener politischer Ziele abschwören und
keine Verbindungen zu El Kaida unterhalten", durchaus Partner für die
internationalen Truppen sein.[15]
Ganz offen fordert auch der Versitzende der Gewerkschaft der Polizei,
Konrad Freiberg, die Bewaffnung von Milizen, die wesentlich besser für
Sicherheit sorgen könnten, als die Polizei.[16]
Entwaffnen -- Bewaffnen: die weitere Eskalation eines Bürgerkrieges
In der Afghanistan-Strategie der Bundesregierung von 2007 heißt es: "Die
Entwaffnung und Auflösung illegaler Milizen ist für die Entwicklung
eines sicheren Umfeldes in Afghanistan von großer Bedeutung. Dieser
Prozess kommt nach wie vor nicht entscheidend voran. Lokale Machthaber
stützen sich auf ihre illegal bewaffneten Gruppen und unterminieren so
die Durchsetzung der Staatsgewalt".[17]
Zwischen 2003 und 2005 wurden im Rahmen des Disarmament, Demobilization
und Reintegration Programms etwa 63.000 Waffen eingesammelt und
teilweise zerstört. Das anschließende DIAG (Disbandment of Illegal Armed
Groups) Programm hat bis Anfang 2010 46.000 Waffen einkassiert und dem
afghanischen Verteidigungsministerium übergeben.[18] Die Arbeit der UN,
die demnach seit 2003 mit großem finanziellem und personellem Aufwand
insgesamt 109.000 Waffen eingesammelt hat, ist angesichts der
derzeitigen Wiederbewaffnung der Milizen, aber auch der großen Anzahl
von Waffen, die an die offiziellen afghanischen Sicherheitskräfte
geliefert werden sollen und schlicht verschwinden, für die Katz[19].
Was derzeit in Afghanistan produziert wird, ist eine noch stärker
bewaffnete Gesellschaft, in der einzelne Gruppen dazu befähigt werden,
ihre Interessen, die eventuell zeitweilig mit denen des Westens
übereinstimmen, gewaltsam durchzusetzen. Damit wird bewusst die weitere
Eskalation des Bürgerkrieges in Kauf genommen, unter der vor allem die
Zivilbevölkerung leidet, deren Rechte -- so wurde es uns jahrelang
erzählt -- eben mit jenem Krieg gestärkt werden sollten.
-----------
Kasten: "Söhne des Irak"
2006 nahm die US-Armee Verhandlungen mit lokalen und regionalen
Stammesbündnissen über die Aufstellung von Milizen für
Sicherungsaufgaben und ein gemeinsames Vorgehen gegen Al-Qaeda auf.
Stammesangehörige, die sich bereit erklärten, gegen al-Qaeda und
sonstige Störenfriede zu kämpfen, wurden ausgerüstet und bezahlt. In der
Folge entstand eine Vielzahl sogenannter "Awakening"-(Erweckungs-)Räte,
von den Besatzern gerne als ,Söhne des Iraks' bezeichnet.[20]
Das erklärte Ziel war, die "Söhne des Iraks" langfristig in die reguläre
Armee und Polizei zu integrieren. Allerdings erweist sich die Bewaffnung
der Stammesmilizen mittlerweile als massives Problem der irakischen
Regierung. Der einflussreiche "Council of Foreign Relations" urteilte
2008, die Bewaffnung und Bezahlung der Milizen durch die USA und später
die irakische Regierung habe zwar kurzzeitig dazu beigetragen, die
Gewalt im Irak zu drosseln, langfristig allerdings würde dies zu
Stammeskonflikten, warlordism und Sektierertum führen.[21]
Im April 2008 gab es 95.000 "Söhne des Iraks", davon wurden 91.000 vom
US-Militär bezahlt[22]. Inzwischen erhalten alle bis auf 10.000 von der
irakischen Regierung ihren Sold und unterstehen offiziell dem irakischen
Militär. Das Versprechen, in die Armee oder in die Polizei aufgenommen
zu werden, wo der Lohn mehr als doppelt so hoch ist, wurde allerdings
bisher für die allermeisten "Söhne des Iraks" nicht eingelöst. Der New
York Times zufolge seien nur 5% von den Sicherheitskräften übernommen
worden.[23] Die Irakische Regierung hat nun die schwere Aufgabe, die
"Söhne des Iraks" zu demobilisieren, ohne dass die Gewalt, die durch die
Bestechung und Einbindung dieser Milizen eingedämmt wurde, - eventuell
potenziert - zurückkehrt.
Anmerkungen
[1] Was machen deutsche Soldaten in anderen Ländern der Welt?,
http://www.regierenkapieren.de
[2] Vgl. Jonna Schürkes: Boots on the Ground, in: Krisenmanagement.
Sicherheitsarchitektur im globalen Ausnahmezustand, Tübingen 2010, S.
31-41, URL: http://www.imi-online.de
[3] Graeme Smith: "Can new Afghan police resist temptation", in: The
Globe and Mail, 08.11.2006; zitiert in: Andrew Wilder: Cops or Robbers?
The Struggle to Reform the Afghan National Police. Afghanistan Research
and Evaluation Unit, 2007, S. 16.
[4] Mathieu Lefevre: Local Defence in Afghanistan, in: AAN Thematic
Report 03/2010.
[5] Ebd.
[6] International Crisis Group: Policing in Afghanistan: Still Searching
for a Strategy, Asia Briefing Nr. 85, Dezember 2008, URL:
http://www.crisisgroup.org.
[7] Jason Motlagh: In an Afghan Valley of Death, Good News --- for Now,
in Times, 16.06.2010; URL: http://www.time.com
[8] Mathieu Lefevre: Local Defence in Afghanistan, in: Afghanistan
Analysts Network Thematic Report 03/2010.
[9] US keeps secret anti-Taliban militia on a bright leash, in: The
Guardian, 08.03.2010; URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk
[10] Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense
forces, Washington Post, 10.07.2010; URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com
[11] Afghan President Karzai approves plan for local defense forces,
Washington Post, 15.07.2010; URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com
[12] U.S. Department of Defense: DOD News Briefing with Geoff Morrell
from the Pentagon, 14.07.2010; URL: http://www.defense.gov
[13] Ebd.
[14] Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense
forces, Washington Post, 10.07.2010; URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com
[15] Den Bock zum Gärtner machen?, in: Deutschlandfunk, 20.07.2010.
[16] Afghanistan braucht Miliz, in: N24, 27.01.2010.
[17] Afghansitan-Konzept der Bundesregierung, August 2007; URL:
www.auswaertiges-amt.de
[18] Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Fraktion DIE
LINKE: Bewaffnete Gruppen in Afghanistan, 20.01.2010, BT-DS 17/492.
[19] Vgl. Jonna Schürkes 2010.
[20] Vgl. Joachim Guilliard: Irak -- kein Weg vorwärts, in: AUSDRUCK
(Oktober 2008); URL: http://www.imi-online.de
[21] Steven Simon: The Price of the Surge, Council on Foreign Relations,
Mai/Juni 2008; URL: http://www.cfr.org
[22] Greg Bruno: Finding a Place for the 'Sons of Iraq', Council on
Foreign Relations, 09.01.2009; URL: http://www.cfr.org
[23] Sunni Fighters say Iraq didn't keep job promise, New York Times,
23.03.2009; URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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Donnerstag, 15. Juli 2010
Afghanistan: the occupation's bitter crisis produces insubordination
12 July 2010. A World to Win News Service. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal has been removed from his position and replaced by Gen. David Petraeus, his superior as the officer in charge of all U.S. forces in the greater Middle East. In an interview with a Rolling Stone magazine reporter who spent a month with the general in Europe and at his Afghanistan headquarters, McChrystal had criticised and even ridiculed his civilian leadership, including President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones, Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador.
The general's insubordination and his subsequent firing came after another remarkable incident, a public exchange of bitter criticisms between the Obama administration and officials of the Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan.
These open challenges to the U.S. government are hints of a festering crisis that the Afghanistan war has created for the U.S. and the Nato alliance it leads in this occupation. The problem seems all the more serious for these imperialists in that this dismissal represents something more than a reaction to some unwelcome public disparagement.
What previously seemed to be a quick and easy war for the U.S. and other Western imperialists has turned out differently. After a decade, it is only getting harder for them. Casualty levels for the occupation troops are approaching the level of the Iraq war at its height. The U.S. alone has spent more than 200 billion dollars on the war, mainly on military aspects. There are about 130,00 occupation troops, not counting the private mercenaries, and more American soldiers are on the way.
Increasing the number of forces and military spending on this war has only led to a deteriorating military and political situation for the imperialists and dragged them deeper into a war with no end in sight.
In fact, the way General McChrystal treated some of the political leaders and the way they reacted reveals something about both the growing frustration and impatience among the imperialists and the real policy differences about how to deal with the war that are beginning to break out in their once united ranks.
These differences include how to deal with the "insurgents" , or in other words, whether or not to negotiate with the Taliban in view of some sort of power-sharing arrangement. There has also been the disagreement about whether or not to increase the number of occupation troops that flared up when McChrystal demanded 40,000 more soldiers in June 2009, a month after he was assigned to run the war. This seems to be an attempt to build up a stronger position from which to negotiate.
The irony is that Hamid Karzai, his brother Ahmad Vali Karzai and his government have been the bluntest defenders of General McChrystal. They did all they could to keep the U.S. administration from sacking him. This shows the entanglement of the two above-mentioned issues with a third: how to deal with the regime that the U.S. and its allies themselves installed, and with the head of government they themselves designated, Hamid Karzai.
Karzai and the nature of his insubordination to the U.S.
We have read and heard much in the last couple of years about the corruption that has taken over Afghanistan, to the point that its government is considered one of the most corrupt on the planet, and Karzai's unwillingness and inability to clean house. Even some American media have clearly exposed the involvement of the president's brother and other present and former cabinet members and high-ranking officials in drug trafficking. The content of this exposure is not that the government, from top to bottom, is literally on the imperialist payroll, but that its members are more interested in drug dealing, bribes and other means of amassing personal fortunes stashed away in foreign banks than in acting for the "greater good" of their employers' goals.
Let’s briefly review the conflict between Karzai and the U.S. that escalated when Obama took office and heightened even more when Karzai came up for re-election in August 2009.
Many U.S. and British officials had already accused him of a lack of will in fighting corruption. For this reason there were rumours that the U.S. and other Western imperialists might not support him for a second term in office. However, in the end, they seemed to come to the conclusion that due to the complexity of the political situation, such a change might create even more problems for them. For instance, there was consideration of replacing him with his rival Abdullah Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister under Karzai. But bringing in this Tajik member of the Northern Alliance of warlords who were the U.S.'s main allies in their original invasion would create more problems among different factions supporting the occupation now, including the reactionary Pashtun warlords.
In sum, there was no alternative to Karzai at that point. Besides, Karzai himself felt it was not the time for him to leave. Maybe he thought his service to the imperialists was worth more than he had been paid.
So in the end they had to support him for another term. However, the Obama government put conditions on this. Obama said, "As I indicated to him [Karzai]… the proof is not going to be in words; it's going to be in deeds." (The New York Times, 3 November 2009). His Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Afghanistan president "could do better", told him to set up an "anti-corruption commission" and warned him that otherwise the U.S. could cut off civilian "aid". When Karzai complied and set up the commission to work with the FBI and the UK and European Union police, U.S. ambassador Eikenberry thundered that this was not enough. "Words are cheap. Deeds are required." (BBC, 16 November 2009)
After Karzai was re-assigned to his job he convened a "national conference against corruption" in Kabul where he blamed unsolicited foreign aid and contracts for his government's weakness and corruption. He said, "When the government is weakened, when the authority of the president is weakened, the authority of the Parliament and the ministers and their assistants are weakened and their salaries are paid by foreigners, their armoured cars are supplied by the foreigners, they think they have some support from outside and no one can tell them what to do… part of the corruption is a product of this problem. And this has produced another government in parallel to the Afghanistan government." (BBC Persian website, 15 December 2009)
Continuing his defiance of the U.S. and other Nato countries, Karzai invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to his palace where he could denounce the occupiers and demand their exit. On another occasion, Karzai threatened the Americans, "If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban." (NYT, 2 April 2010)
This behaviour infuriated some U.S. politicians and commentators. They were scandalized that their flunky could be so insubordinate. For instance, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the NYT 30 March:
"President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had invited Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Kabul – in order to stick a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration – after the White House had rescinded an invitation to Mr Karzai to come to Washington because the Afghan president had gutted an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in his re-election last year… That is what we're getting for risking thousands of U.S. soldiers and having spent $200 billion already. This news is a flashing red light."
It is worth mentioning that McChrystal stayed aloof from these tensions between Karzai and the White House, and during this period warmly received Karzai at his headquarters.
McChrystal's firing has not settled this conflict and open criticisms are still going both ways. For example, recently Afghan Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Alako said that the American ambassador "had pressed him to bring particular cases against high-profile figures" and instructed him to resign if he did not. Alako continued, "Do diplomatic ethics allow threats such as this one?" (NYT, 29 June 2010)
According to the same report, on 28 June "Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, announced she was cutting most of the $3.9 billion in foreign aid requested for Afghanistan by the Obama administration until the country got a handle on corruption."
This poses two questions, or rather, the same question seen from two different angles. On the one hand, since the imperialists appointed their own man, why consider removing him, and continue to criticise him? On the other, what does this mean about Karzai? How can he dare be so disrespectful to those to whom he owes his crown? And why would he challenge them openly?
The point is that because of the complex and deteriorating situation of the occupation he has found some room to manoeuvre. Contradictions between the U.S. and other imperialists and the reactionary rulers of the countries they oppress do not automatically mean that those rulers are independent or represent the national interests of the people.
Further, not only has Karzai found some manoeuvring room in the face of the threat to his position, he may feel that he can achieve some fake legitimacy by verbally challenging the big powers and resisting their removal orders. Other reactionaries put in power by the imperialists have done so before and are still doing it, so why shouldn't Karzai?
After all, the U.S. & Co. knew Karzai and his cabinet were corrupt when they installed him in office. The biggest problem for them is not Karzai but the situation they themselves have brought about. When they invaded Afghanistan, the imperialists promised to rebuild the country and bring it prosperity, security, the liberation of women, peace and democracy. Now, nine years later, the vast majority of people have hardly seen anything but poverty, an economy based on drug trafficking, war, aerial bombardment, murder, rape, insecurity and the continuing oppression of women – and national humiliation. The imperialists are trying to blame everything on a corrupt government. But the corrupt government is not the cause of this situation; rather, it is a product of this war and occupation. In fact the U.S. has little choice but to get on with Karzai because, at least for the moment, they seem to have no alternative to him.
Depending on the development of the situation, this skirmishing could intensify even more and manifest itself in more unpredictable and explosive forms. These debates are indications of objective contradictions.
The sacking of McChrystal and a possible strategy adjustment
What connects the public criticisms voiced by McChrystal and Karzai and those aimed at them is the crisis created by the way the war is going.
McChrystal's removal cannot be limited to what he told Rolling Stone. It is a continuation of disagreements amid an alarming situation for the imperialists.
It seems that McChrystal's sacking has given U.S. policy-makers an opportunity to change some elements of their strategy. "Privately, at least one senior White House official suggested using General McChrystal's exit as an excuse for a housecleaning, " reported the NYT 30 June.
In the policy debate in U.S. government and military circles that began during the last months of the Bush administration and grew during the months after his successor came to office, Obama eventually chose to support the position identified with McChrystal, a large-scale escalation of ground forces. The contending position, identified with Biden and the other people McChrystal ended up rubbishing in Rolling Stone, was that such a large "footprint" (or better said, boot print) would only increase the people's hatred for the occupiers. Now, even though the "surge" is still under way and more American troops are yet to come, already these troops have shown that they may not be able to "clear and hold" established Taliban strongholds as expected, while the Taliban and their allies have been able to mount unexpected offensives against the occupiers in new areas. The other aspect of the new "COIN" (counter-insurgency ) strategy, building up elements of pro-occupation political power in former insurgent areas, has also manifestly failed.
In June of last year Obama fired McChrystal's predecessor and embraced McChrystal and his approach to the war. This new sacking – yet another of the kind of abrupt replacement of top generals that had not occurred in the U.S. since the Korean war – seems to a growing dismay and divisions among those responsible for waging this war.
U.S civilian officials and General Petraeus emphasised that the basic strategy will not change. There is, however, at least one policy that might be adjusted. The Rolling Stone article makes it clear that many American solders are furious with their commanders because they are no longer permitted to "get their gun on", or in other words, spray bullets at any Afghan they feel like killing, and "just bomb the place". The rules of engagement associated with the COIN strategy state that they should try to avoid engagements in which unarmed people may be killed and calling in air power against civilians. This is supposed to help win "hearts and minds", McChrystal has explained to his dissatisfied troops.
At the same time, the Special Operations Forces, commandos described by a McChrystal aid as a "killing machine", often storming into villages at night and firing indiscriminately, have been greatly built up as part of COIN. Under the leadership of McChrystal, formerly in charge of U.S. Special Operations forces worldwide, the number of these commando units has been multiplied from four to nineteen. And for all of McChrystal's stated concern with reducing civilian casualties for what he calls "cold-blooded" reasons – to win the war – Nato forces admit to killing some 90 civilians between January and April of this year, a huge increase from the same period last year. As the general said himself – whether out of chagrin or pride is not clear – "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” (NYT, 26 March 2020)
These rules of engagement may change. At the U.S. Senate hearing where his new command was confirmed, Petraeus said he wanted "to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see it as a moral imperative to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform… Those on the ground must have all the support they need when they are in a tough situation." The NYT called this – an indication that the occupiers may go back to the old rules of engagement, with fewer official limits on killing – "his first departure from the policies of the former top American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal." (29 June 2010)
As is clear to anyone who reads the Rolling Stone interview (rollingstone. com), McChrystal is an extreme reactionary in every dimension. His contempt for civilians extends not only to those in Afghanistan but in his home country and others as well. Now Petraeus, whose image is less brutal, seems to be heading towards making the war itself even more brutal. (Actually, both men are highly conscious products of the highest levels of American military and civilian education.) What drives these debates about the rules of engagement, like the policy debate about how to run the war overall, is not mainly the sensibilities of the commanders. It reflects a contradictory objective situation: the more they kill the more the occupiers are hated, but their occupation is inherently hateful and people will resist it no matter what. The occupiers treat all Afghans as potential enemies, and that is increasingly the reality. General Petraeus' comments are a signal that there will be even more murdering of civilians in the next few months.
However the rulers of the U.S. may try to resolve both their objective contradictions and infighting, there is this: President Obama took the occasion of McChrystal's dismissal to remind all concerned that "Our politics often fuels conflict, but we have to renew our sense of common purpose". (Whitehouse. gov, 23 June 2010) He reaffirmed that the U.S. is not about to leave Afghanistan.
The occupation of Afghanistan and all that has been associated with it have given the Taliban, hated by many people in Afghanistan, a chance to find some bases of support among the people in some areas, especially in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
The development of the situation increasingly reveals that the roots of all the problems of Afghanistan – including the Taliban, Karzai, the warlords, the poverty and misery – are all completely tied up with imperialist domination. The big powers have been the main pillar of Afghan reactionaries and their social system for more than a century. The first step to deal with these problems is to fight the imperialists. That is why people everywhere must oppose the occupation of Afghanistan with a forceful voice.
The general's insubordination and his subsequent firing came after another remarkable incident, a public exchange of bitter criticisms between the Obama administration and officials of the Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan.
These open challenges to the U.S. government are hints of a festering crisis that the Afghanistan war has created for the U.S. and the Nato alliance it leads in this occupation. The problem seems all the more serious for these imperialists in that this dismissal represents something more than a reaction to some unwelcome public disparagement.
What previously seemed to be a quick and easy war for the U.S. and other Western imperialists has turned out differently. After a decade, it is only getting harder for them. Casualty levels for the occupation troops are approaching the level of the Iraq war at its height. The U.S. alone has spent more than 200 billion dollars on the war, mainly on military aspects. There are about 130,00 occupation troops, not counting the private mercenaries, and more American soldiers are on the way.
Increasing the number of forces and military spending on this war has only led to a deteriorating military and political situation for the imperialists and dragged them deeper into a war with no end in sight.
In fact, the way General McChrystal treated some of the political leaders and the way they reacted reveals something about both the growing frustration and impatience among the imperialists and the real policy differences about how to deal with the war that are beginning to break out in their once united ranks.
These differences include how to deal with the "insurgents" , or in other words, whether or not to negotiate with the Taliban in view of some sort of power-sharing arrangement. There has also been the disagreement about whether or not to increase the number of occupation troops that flared up when McChrystal demanded 40,000 more soldiers in June 2009, a month after he was assigned to run the war. This seems to be an attempt to build up a stronger position from which to negotiate.
The irony is that Hamid Karzai, his brother Ahmad Vali Karzai and his government have been the bluntest defenders of General McChrystal. They did all they could to keep the U.S. administration from sacking him. This shows the entanglement of the two above-mentioned issues with a third: how to deal with the regime that the U.S. and its allies themselves installed, and with the head of government they themselves designated, Hamid Karzai.
Karzai and the nature of his insubordination to the U.S.
We have read and heard much in the last couple of years about the corruption that has taken over Afghanistan, to the point that its government is considered one of the most corrupt on the planet, and Karzai's unwillingness and inability to clean house. Even some American media have clearly exposed the involvement of the president's brother and other present and former cabinet members and high-ranking officials in drug trafficking. The content of this exposure is not that the government, from top to bottom, is literally on the imperialist payroll, but that its members are more interested in drug dealing, bribes and other means of amassing personal fortunes stashed away in foreign banks than in acting for the "greater good" of their employers' goals.
Let’s briefly review the conflict between Karzai and the U.S. that escalated when Obama took office and heightened even more when Karzai came up for re-election in August 2009.
Many U.S. and British officials had already accused him of a lack of will in fighting corruption. For this reason there were rumours that the U.S. and other Western imperialists might not support him for a second term in office. However, in the end, they seemed to come to the conclusion that due to the complexity of the political situation, such a change might create even more problems for them. For instance, there was consideration of replacing him with his rival Abdullah Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister under Karzai. But bringing in this Tajik member of the Northern Alliance of warlords who were the U.S.'s main allies in their original invasion would create more problems among different factions supporting the occupation now, including the reactionary Pashtun warlords.
In sum, there was no alternative to Karzai at that point. Besides, Karzai himself felt it was not the time for him to leave. Maybe he thought his service to the imperialists was worth more than he had been paid.
So in the end they had to support him for another term. However, the Obama government put conditions on this. Obama said, "As I indicated to him [Karzai]… the proof is not going to be in words; it's going to be in deeds." (The New York Times, 3 November 2009). His Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Afghanistan president "could do better", told him to set up an "anti-corruption commission" and warned him that otherwise the U.S. could cut off civilian "aid". When Karzai complied and set up the commission to work with the FBI and the UK and European Union police, U.S. ambassador Eikenberry thundered that this was not enough. "Words are cheap. Deeds are required." (BBC, 16 November 2009)
After Karzai was re-assigned to his job he convened a "national conference against corruption" in Kabul where he blamed unsolicited foreign aid and contracts for his government's weakness and corruption. He said, "When the government is weakened, when the authority of the president is weakened, the authority of the Parliament and the ministers and their assistants are weakened and their salaries are paid by foreigners, their armoured cars are supplied by the foreigners, they think they have some support from outside and no one can tell them what to do… part of the corruption is a product of this problem. And this has produced another government in parallel to the Afghanistan government." (BBC Persian website, 15 December 2009)
Continuing his defiance of the U.S. and other Nato countries, Karzai invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to his palace where he could denounce the occupiers and demand their exit. On another occasion, Karzai threatened the Americans, "If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban." (NYT, 2 April 2010)
This behaviour infuriated some U.S. politicians and commentators. They were scandalized that their flunky could be so insubordinate. For instance, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the NYT 30 March:
"President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had invited Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Kabul – in order to stick a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration – after the White House had rescinded an invitation to Mr Karzai to come to Washington because the Afghan president had gutted an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in his re-election last year… That is what we're getting for risking thousands of U.S. soldiers and having spent $200 billion already. This news is a flashing red light."
It is worth mentioning that McChrystal stayed aloof from these tensions between Karzai and the White House, and during this period warmly received Karzai at his headquarters.
McChrystal's firing has not settled this conflict and open criticisms are still going both ways. For example, recently Afghan Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Alako said that the American ambassador "had pressed him to bring particular cases against high-profile figures" and instructed him to resign if he did not. Alako continued, "Do diplomatic ethics allow threats such as this one?" (NYT, 29 June 2010)
According to the same report, on 28 June "Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, announced she was cutting most of the $3.9 billion in foreign aid requested for Afghanistan by the Obama administration until the country got a handle on corruption."
This poses two questions, or rather, the same question seen from two different angles. On the one hand, since the imperialists appointed their own man, why consider removing him, and continue to criticise him? On the other, what does this mean about Karzai? How can he dare be so disrespectful to those to whom he owes his crown? And why would he challenge them openly?
The point is that because of the complex and deteriorating situation of the occupation he has found some room to manoeuvre. Contradictions between the U.S. and other imperialists and the reactionary rulers of the countries they oppress do not automatically mean that those rulers are independent or represent the national interests of the people.
Further, not only has Karzai found some manoeuvring room in the face of the threat to his position, he may feel that he can achieve some fake legitimacy by verbally challenging the big powers and resisting their removal orders. Other reactionaries put in power by the imperialists have done so before and are still doing it, so why shouldn't Karzai?
After all, the U.S. & Co. knew Karzai and his cabinet were corrupt when they installed him in office. The biggest problem for them is not Karzai but the situation they themselves have brought about. When they invaded Afghanistan, the imperialists promised to rebuild the country and bring it prosperity, security, the liberation of women, peace and democracy. Now, nine years later, the vast majority of people have hardly seen anything but poverty, an economy based on drug trafficking, war, aerial bombardment, murder, rape, insecurity and the continuing oppression of women – and national humiliation. The imperialists are trying to blame everything on a corrupt government. But the corrupt government is not the cause of this situation; rather, it is a product of this war and occupation. In fact the U.S. has little choice but to get on with Karzai because, at least for the moment, they seem to have no alternative to him.
Depending on the development of the situation, this skirmishing could intensify even more and manifest itself in more unpredictable and explosive forms. These debates are indications of objective contradictions.
The sacking of McChrystal and a possible strategy adjustment
What connects the public criticisms voiced by McChrystal and Karzai and those aimed at them is the crisis created by the way the war is going.
McChrystal's removal cannot be limited to what he told Rolling Stone. It is a continuation of disagreements amid an alarming situation for the imperialists.
It seems that McChrystal's sacking has given U.S. policy-makers an opportunity to change some elements of their strategy. "Privately, at least one senior White House official suggested using General McChrystal's exit as an excuse for a housecleaning, " reported the NYT 30 June.
In the policy debate in U.S. government and military circles that began during the last months of the Bush administration and grew during the months after his successor came to office, Obama eventually chose to support the position identified with McChrystal, a large-scale escalation of ground forces. The contending position, identified with Biden and the other people McChrystal ended up rubbishing in Rolling Stone, was that such a large "footprint" (or better said, boot print) would only increase the people's hatred for the occupiers. Now, even though the "surge" is still under way and more American troops are yet to come, already these troops have shown that they may not be able to "clear and hold" established Taliban strongholds as expected, while the Taliban and their allies have been able to mount unexpected offensives against the occupiers in new areas. The other aspect of the new "COIN" (counter-insurgency ) strategy, building up elements of pro-occupation political power in former insurgent areas, has also manifestly failed.
In June of last year Obama fired McChrystal's predecessor and embraced McChrystal and his approach to the war. This new sacking – yet another of the kind of abrupt replacement of top generals that had not occurred in the U.S. since the Korean war – seems to a growing dismay and divisions among those responsible for waging this war.
U.S civilian officials and General Petraeus emphasised that the basic strategy will not change. There is, however, at least one policy that might be adjusted. The Rolling Stone article makes it clear that many American solders are furious with their commanders because they are no longer permitted to "get their gun on", or in other words, spray bullets at any Afghan they feel like killing, and "just bomb the place". The rules of engagement associated with the COIN strategy state that they should try to avoid engagements in which unarmed people may be killed and calling in air power against civilians. This is supposed to help win "hearts and minds", McChrystal has explained to his dissatisfied troops.
At the same time, the Special Operations Forces, commandos described by a McChrystal aid as a "killing machine", often storming into villages at night and firing indiscriminately, have been greatly built up as part of COIN. Under the leadership of McChrystal, formerly in charge of U.S. Special Operations forces worldwide, the number of these commando units has been multiplied from four to nineteen. And for all of McChrystal's stated concern with reducing civilian casualties for what he calls "cold-blooded" reasons – to win the war – Nato forces admit to killing some 90 civilians between January and April of this year, a huge increase from the same period last year. As the general said himself – whether out of chagrin or pride is not clear – "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” (NYT, 26 March 2020)
These rules of engagement may change. At the U.S. Senate hearing where his new command was confirmed, Petraeus said he wanted "to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see it as a moral imperative to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform… Those on the ground must have all the support they need when they are in a tough situation." The NYT called this – an indication that the occupiers may go back to the old rules of engagement, with fewer official limits on killing – "his first departure from the policies of the former top American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal." (29 June 2010)
As is clear to anyone who reads the Rolling Stone interview (rollingstone. com), McChrystal is an extreme reactionary in every dimension. His contempt for civilians extends not only to those in Afghanistan but in his home country and others as well. Now Petraeus, whose image is less brutal, seems to be heading towards making the war itself even more brutal. (Actually, both men are highly conscious products of the highest levels of American military and civilian education.) What drives these debates about the rules of engagement, like the policy debate about how to run the war overall, is not mainly the sensibilities of the commanders. It reflects a contradictory objective situation: the more they kill the more the occupiers are hated, but their occupation is inherently hateful and people will resist it no matter what. The occupiers treat all Afghans as potential enemies, and that is increasingly the reality. General Petraeus' comments are a signal that there will be even more murdering of civilians in the next few months.
However the rulers of the U.S. may try to resolve both their objective contradictions and infighting, there is this: President Obama took the occasion of McChrystal's dismissal to remind all concerned that "Our politics often fuels conflict, but we have to renew our sense of common purpose". (Whitehouse. gov, 23 June 2010) He reaffirmed that the U.S. is not about to leave Afghanistan.
The occupation of Afghanistan and all that has been associated with it have given the Taliban, hated by many people in Afghanistan, a chance to find some bases of support among the people in some areas, especially in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
The development of the situation increasingly reveals that the roots of all the problems of Afghanistan – including the Taliban, Karzai, the warlords, the poverty and misery – are all completely tied up with imperialist domination. The big powers have been the main pillar of Afghan reactionaries and their social system for more than a century. The first step to deal with these problems is to fight the imperialists. That is why people everywhere must oppose the occupation of Afghanistan with a forceful voice.
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