Why It's Not Working in Afghanistan
By Ann Jones
from TomDispatch
Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already proclaiming the new Afghanistan "a breathtaking accomplishment" and "a successful model of what could happen to Iraq." As everybody now knows, the model isn't working in Iraq. So we shouldn't be surprised to learn that it's not working in Afghanistan either.
The story of success in Afghanistan was always more fairy tale than fact -- one scam used to sell another. Now, as the Bush administration hands off "peacekeeping" to NATO forces, Afghanistan is the scene of the largest military operation in the history of that organization. Today's personal email brings word from an American surgeon in Kabul that her emergency medical team can't handle half the wounded civilians brought in from embattled provinces to the south and east. American, British, and Canadian troops find themselves at war with Taliban fighters -- which is to say "Afghans" -- while stunned NATO commanders, who hadn't bargained for significant combat, are already asking what went wrong.
The answer is a threefold failure: no peace, no democracy, and no reconstruction.
Doing Things Backward
Critics of American Afghan policy agree that the Bush administration, in its haste to take out Saddam's Iraq, did things backward. After bombing the Taliban into the boondocks in 2001, it set up a government without first making peace -- a scenario later to be repeated in Iraq.
Instead of pressing for peace negotiations among rival Afghan parties, the victorious Americans handed power to Islamists and militia commanders who had served as America's stand-in soldiers in its Afghan proxy war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Then the Bush administration staged elections for these candidates and touted the result as democracy. It also confined an International Security Assistance Force, made up largely of European troops, to the capital, creating an island of safety for the government, while dispatching warlords of its choice to hunt for Osama bin Laden in the countryside.
In the east and south -- that is, about half the country -- the Taliban never stopped fighting. Now, augmented by imported al-Qaeda fighters ("Arab-Afghans") and new tactics learned from the insurgency in Iraq (roadside bombs or IEDs, suicide bombing), Taliban forces are stronger than at any time since the United States "conquered" them in 2001. According to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, most Afghans have long favored a process of amnesty and reconciliation; and President Hamid Karzai recently called on the Bush administration to change course and stop killing Afghans. But administration policy, recently reaffirmed in Kabul by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calls for a fight to the last Talib.
Predictably, public opinion has been turning steadily against the largely powerless central government, guarded in the capital by foreign forces. The insecurity endured by most Afghans -- the absence of peace -- is enough to make them give up hope in President Karzai, often jeeringly referred to as the "mayor of Kabul" or "assistant to the American Ambassador."
(The rest is here.)
from TomDispatch
Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already proclaiming the new Afghanistan "a breathtaking accomplishment" and "a successful model of what could happen to Iraq." As everybody now knows, the model isn't working in Iraq. So we shouldn't be surprised to learn that it's not working in Afghanistan either.
The story of success in Afghanistan was always more fairy tale than fact -- one scam used to sell another. Now, as the Bush administration hands off "peacekeeping" to NATO forces, Afghanistan is the scene of the largest military operation in the history of that organization. Today's personal email brings word from an American surgeon in Kabul that her emergency medical team can't handle half the wounded civilians brought in from embattled provinces to the south and east. American, British, and Canadian troops find themselves at war with Taliban fighters -- which is to say "Afghans" -- while stunned NATO commanders, who hadn't bargained for significant combat, are already asking what went wrong.
The answer is a threefold failure: no peace, no democracy, and no reconstruction.
Doing Things Backward
Critics of American Afghan policy agree that the Bush administration, in its haste to take out Saddam's Iraq, did things backward. After bombing the Taliban into the boondocks in 2001, it set up a government without first making peace -- a scenario later to be repeated in Iraq.
Instead of pressing for peace negotiations among rival Afghan parties, the victorious Americans handed power to Islamists and militia commanders who had served as America's stand-in soldiers in its Afghan proxy war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Then the Bush administration staged elections for these candidates and touted the result as democracy. It also confined an International Security Assistance Force, made up largely of European troops, to the capital, creating an island of safety for the government, while dispatching warlords of its choice to hunt for Osama bin Laden in the countryside.
In the east and south -- that is, about half the country -- the Taliban never stopped fighting. Now, augmented by imported al-Qaeda fighters ("Arab-Afghans") and new tactics learned from the insurgency in Iraq (roadside bombs or IEDs, suicide bombing), Taliban forces are stronger than at any time since the United States "conquered" them in 2001. According to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, most Afghans have long favored a process of amnesty and reconciliation; and President Hamid Karzai recently called on the Bush administration to change course and stop killing Afghans. But administration policy, recently reaffirmed in Kabul by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calls for a fight to the last Talib.
Predictably, public opinion has been turning steadily against the largely powerless central government, guarded in the capital by foreign forces. The insecurity endured by most Afghans -- the absence of peace -- is enough to make them give up hope in President Karzai, often jeeringly referred to as the "mayor of Kabul" or "assistant to the American Ambassador."
(The rest is here.)
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