Afghanistan and neo-colonialism.
While I was away I read Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh - hardly the most politically correct of novels today, and it is indeed horrendously racist in places - a satire based around a fictional African country where an Oxford-educated native comes to power and attempts to impose his own idea of "progress" upon a country which is first indifferent then turns resistant when his megalomania extends to introducing a new currency, resulting in a coup launched by the disaffected English general who first brought him to power and the French ambassador. While not an exact fit by any means, the parallels with Afghanistan are there, and beginning to become ever more evident.
There certainly is in any event a satire to be written about the complete gibbering lunacy of our Afghanistan policy, a policy which has never been more exposed that with the reappointment of Hamid Karzai as president after Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of a second round of voting. To get just a flavour of the insanity of our current policy, you have to know that despite this being the absolute nightmare scenario, it is at the same time the one which was most favoured given the circumstances. For months the Americans and our own representatives have been pulling their hair out at the intransigence of Karzai - the corruption surrounding him, the patronage he gives to warlords, the obstinacy of the man who is meant to be president of his own country but who has essentially forgotten that he owes everything to us - while knowing full well that he was going to be re-elected not thanks to but along with massive vote fraud. The hope was despite the ballot box stuffing, Karzai would turn out to have got above the 50% needed to avoid a second round, and while the biased in Karzai's favour Independent Election Commission tried its best, it still had to throw out enough votes to take Karzai below the threshold. A second round of voting suited absolutely no one - Karzai was still going to win, especially as Abdullah and the UN's demands to stem the voting fraud by reducing the number of polling stations were thrown out, and yet more lives would be lost as the Taliban would have again stepped up its attacks for a day. Attempts at getting Karzai and Abdullah to lead a coalition were half-hearted at best, and so we have the utterly half-hearted endorsement of a second Karzai electoral term.
If the Bush adminstration was still in power, hardly anyone would be batting an eyelid. After all, an administration which first came to power not on the popular vote but on the verdict of the supreme court, despite the neo-conservative fervour for the installing democracy elsewhere, wouldn't have had much opposition to a similar installation of another president. Now though we have Obama and Clinton, who if anything have even less influence over Karzai and less idea about what the policy actually is than the last lot. Those who have tried to do things differently have now been humiliated by the very man they secretly wanted rid of, and have been left not only looking stupid but have also undermined support back at home by doing so. Lives were lost in keeping those polling stations which were either unused or where the boxes were stuffed open, and for what? So that the same man could be put back in on the back of a vote now regarded as largely illegitimate?
Afghanistan has been described optimistically by some as "the good war". In terms of lives lost, it almost certainly does so far pale into insignificance with the number killed in Iraq. There is though surely now a case to be made for a full reassessment of just what has took place as a result of the initial overthrow of the Taliban. Justified mainly now on the grounds of the threat which was posed by al-Qaida to the West, a threat which has at every single turn been vastly and outrageously exaggerated, we have through our bull in a china shop approach succeeded in forcing al-Qaida and the Taliban into an uneasy but fruitful alliance, have destabilised Pakistan to such an extent that it now faces daily suicide attacks in its major cities, and attempted to impose a democracy on quite possibly the most socially conservative country in the entire region, with predictable results. The more you look at it, the more ridiculous it becomes: Afghanistan was a safe haven, a base for al-Qaida, but it was one in which they were relatively constrained and mainly useful only for training; the actual planning and training for 9/11 itself took place in Germany and America, not Afghanistan. What we have done is involve ourselves in a civil war which has been going on for decades, and which will most likely continue for decades: it would have done had we not involved ourselves and it will do if we leave tomorrow. The justification for staying is no longer any such high motives as protecting a democracy (it isn't one), keeping the Taliban out (they're already there) or protecting women's rights (always a fantasy to begin with and even more so since the passing of the law involving Shia Muslims), but someone protecting ourselves from attack. It doesn't matter that in the same breath ministers admit that the plots which are directed against us are overwhelmingly planned over in Pakistan (where they fled from us in the first place) and that they involve British citizens rather than foreigners, still they parrot the same lies which even they they must know to be completely false.
The biggest success of the war in Afghanistan is that very few outside of the circle of rabid Trots or the likes of Simon Jenkins actually describe this war for what it really is: neo-colonialism orchestrated by those who are supposed to be horrified and opposed to such control over other nations. This is colonialism where the rulers back in London and Washington can't actually influence anything, and where they can't admit that outside of the colonial capital and indeed increasingly within it, they have absolutely no control whatsoever. This is colonialism where the armies, under the auspices of NATO, are left to provide security to a nation which has never been secured in its existence. Their real role is to act as target practice for when the Taliban feel like launching an ambush and as moving, armoured targets for the increasingly sophisticated IED manufacturers. The entire war is based on the false premise that you can stop an idea from flourishing by dropping over a hundred thousand troops in the place where it briefly had a safe haven. Ideas cannot be beaten militarily; they have to been fought intellectually, and in this case by those inside Islam, not outside it. Our approach has resulted in extremist, takfirist, Salafist Islam being far more disseminated than it would have been otherwise, gaining footholds in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and western Pakistan where it may have existed before but without gaining momentum and allegiance. All of these places are and now could be as dangerous as Afghanistan was between roughly 1998 and 2001, but the ideology also doesn't need a safe haven in any event: all it needs is those dedicated enough and knowledgeable enough.
The argument against getting out of Afghanistan now would be that we would abandoning the country to the Taliban when they Afghan people themselves still overwhelmingly reject their return to power. Others would argue that such a move could be just the catalyst needed for those in pursuit of a global caliphate as their ultimate goal to establish the country as the first outpost, the attempt to make it Iraq having failed. The reality however is that the Taliban themselves never successfully conquered Afghanistan, just as no outsiders ever have. They would not immediately overrun the Karzai government, nor would we let them. The best alternative is to draw back now from frontline duties and to concentrate on building up the Afghan army and police as a matter of the utmost imperative. Just as we gave up our old colonies, we have to give up our new ones as well.
There certainly is in any event a satire to be written about the complete gibbering lunacy of our Afghanistan policy, a policy which has never been more exposed that with the reappointment of Hamid Karzai as president after Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of a second round of voting. To get just a flavour of the insanity of our current policy, you have to know that despite this being the absolute nightmare scenario, it is at the same time the one which was most favoured given the circumstances. For months the Americans and our own representatives have been pulling their hair out at the intransigence of Karzai - the corruption surrounding him, the patronage he gives to warlords, the obstinacy of the man who is meant to be president of his own country but who has essentially forgotten that he owes everything to us - while knowing full well that he was going to be re-elected not thanks to but along with massive vote fraud. The hope was despite the ballot box stuffing, Karzai would turn out to have got above the 50% needed to avoid a second round, and while the biased in Karzai's favour Independent Election Commission tried its best, it still had to throw out enough votes to take Karzai below the threshold. A second round of voting suited absolutely no one - Karzai was still going to win, especially as Abdullah and the UN's demands to stem the voting fraud by reducing the number of polling stations were thrown out, and yet more lives would be lost as the Taliban would have again stepped up its attacks for a day. Attempts at getting Karzai and Abdullah to lead a coalition were half-hearted at best, and so we have the utterly half-hearted endorsement of a second Karzai electoral term.
If the Bush adminstration was still in power, hardly anyone would be batting an eyelid. After all, an administration which first came to power not on the popular vote but on the verdict of the supreme court, despite the neo-conservative fervour for the installing democracy elsewhere, wouldn't have had much opposition to a similar installation of another president. Now though we have Obama and Clinton, who if anything have even less influence over Karzai and less idea about what the policy actually is than the last lot. Those who have tried to do things differently have now been humiliated by the very man they secretly wanted rid of, and have been left not only looking stupid but have also undermined support back at home by doing so. Lives were lost in keeping those polling stations which were either unused or where the boxes were stuffed open, and for what? So that the same man could be put back in on the back of a vote now regarded as largely illegitimate?
Afghanistan has been described optimistically by some as "the good war". In terms of lives lost, it almost certainly does so far pale into insignificance with the number killed in Iraq. There is though surely now a case to be made for a full reassessment of just what has took place as a result of the initial overthrow of the Taliban. Justified mainly now on the grounds of the threat which was posed by al-Qaida to the West, a threat which has at every single turn been vastly and outrageously exaggerated, we have through our bull in a china shop approach succeeded in forcing al-Qaida and the Taliban into an uneasy but fruitful alliance, have destabilised Pakistan to such an extent that it now faces daily suicide attacks in its major cities, and attempted to impose a democracy on quite possibly the most socially conservative country in the entire region, with predictable results. The more you look at it, the more ridiculous it becomes: Afghanistan was a safe haven, a base for al-Qaida, but it was one in which they were relatively constrained and mainly useful only for training; the actual planning and training for 9/11 itself took place in Germany and America, not Afghanistan. What we have done is involve ourselves in a civil war which has been going on for decades, and which will most likely continue for decades: it would have done had we not involved ourselves and it will do if we leave tomorrow. The justification for staying is no longer any such high motives as protecting a democracy (it isn't one), keeping the Taliban out (they're already there) or protecting women's rights (always a fantasy to begin with and even more so since the passing of the law involving Shia Muslims), but someone protecting ourselves from attack. It doesn't matter that in the same breath ministers admit that the plots which are directed against us are overwhelmingly planned over in Pakistan (where they fled from us in the first place) and that they involve British citizens rather than foreigners, still they parrot the same lies which even they they must know to be completely false.
The biggest success of the war in Afghanistan is that very few outside of the circle of rabid Trots or the likes of Simon Jenkins actually describe this war for what it really is: neo-colonialism orchestrated by those who are supposed to be horrified and opposed to such control over other nations. This is colonialism where the rulers back in London and Washington can't actually influence anything, and where they can't admit that outside of the colonial capital and indeed increasingly within it, they have absolutely no control whatsoever. This is colonialism where the armies, under the auspices of NATO, are left to provide security to a nation which has never been secured in its existence. Their real role is to act as target practice for when the Taliban feel like launching an ambush and as moving, armoured targets for the increasingly sophisticated IED manufacturers. The entire war is based on the false premise that you can stop an idea from flourishing by dropping over a hundred thousand troops in the place where it briefly had a safe haven. Ideas cannot be beaten militarily; they have to been fought intellectually, and in this case by those inside Islam, not outside it. Our approach has resulted in extremist, takfirist, Salafist Islam being far more disseminated than it would have been otherwise, gaining footholds in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and western Pakistan where it may have existed before but without gaining momentum and allegiance. All of these places are and now could be as dangerous as Afghanistan was between roughly 1998 and 2001, but the ideology also doesn't need a safe haven in any event: all it needs is those dedicated enough and knowledgeable enough.
The argument against getting out of Afghanistan now would be that we would abandoning the country to the Taliban when they Afghan people themselves still overwhelmingly reject their return to power. Others would argue that such a move could be just the catalyst needed for those in pursuit of a global caliphate as their ultimate goal to establish the country as the first outpost, the attempt to make it Iraq having failed. The reality however is that the Taliban themselves never successfully conquered Afghanistan, just as no outsiders ever have. They would not immediately overrun the Karzai government, nor would we let them. The best alternative is to draw back now from frontline duties and to concentrate on building up the Afghan army and police as a matter of the utmost imperative. Just as we gave up our old colonies, we have to give up our new ones as well.
Labels: Afghanistan, foreign policy, insurgency, jihadists, madness, Pakistan, terror, terrorism
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The reality however is that the Taliban themselves never successfully conquered Afghanistan, just as no outsiders ever have
Not too sure what you mean by this, I think the Taliban did manage to control a very large proportion of the country at least 70% and have their rule accepted in this area by the local population. They also faced little or no domestic threat from any serious group able to dislodge them from power and certainly in many places, such as the cities they were able to impose a hiterto unprecendented level of Islamic legal norms - all this would not have been possible if they didn't exert enough control and dominance in most of the country. Where I agree with you, is that much of their success depended on co-opting many local commanders and swaying local milita to either join their cause or not fight against them - which is one reason why their regime fell relatively quickly and easily, the core supporters were not very many. But this is different from saying that they didn't control much of Afghanistan pre-2001. I can tell since I visited Afghanistan during that period, they very much did.
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Conrad Barwa |
Thursday, November 05, 2009 7:46:00 am
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