Perspective
The invasion of Afghanistan: Never a cakewalk!
Anti-US Afghan forces -- the nationalists, Taliban, al-Qaida and others -- are regrouping and mounting attacks on US troops. There are reports even of their re-opening of the training camps. Taliban are using the same sophisticated early warning system they developed to monitor Soviet forces in the 1980s to warn the American search and attack missions before they leave the base. As a result, the US troops only chase the shadows...The ongoing cost of Afghan operation is a closely guarded secret. Earlier this year the cost of stationing 8000 US troops backed by war planes and naval units was estimated at five billion dollars monthly.
The arid and inhospitable tract of land astride the Hindukush -- mentioned in the ancient scriptures of the Avesta and the Rig-veda as Aryana and now known to the world as Afghanistan -- has aptly been likened to a flowing river. Waves of conquerors, adventures, religious reformers and empire builders went over it leaving behind only sediments from which grew the ethnic and tribal mosaic of the country today. Some incorporated this territory in their expanding empire, a few merely looted and plundered its cities and went their way; yet others tarried for a while and went on to establish kingdoms in green pastures beyond but none indeed stayed or could stay in this hostile clime.
Later the Russians had developed an abiding interest in the land in their southward thrust in quest of warm water only to be stubbornly resisted by the British -- resulting in what had come to be known as the great game between the two imperial powers during the whole period of nineteenth century. In the last quarter of the last century the Soviet Union, a superpower made a faux pas by invading this country of fiercely independent people and became a hoist to its own petard.
On the frigid night of December 24, 1979 the Soviet airborne forces landed in Kabul airport and seized it without any resistance. Their elite group of commandos then stormed the presidential palace and gunned down President Hafizullah Amin. Simultaneously, the Soviet tanks crossed the border and raced south towards Kabul. Within a matter of days the Soviet forces occupied Afghanistan and installed their puppet ruler, Barbak Karmal. Moscow proclaimed that it had invaded Afghanistan to liberate the country from 'feudalism', 'Islamic extremists' and 'nests of terrorists and bandits.' The whole exercise went, as if according to a prepared script, and with no finger raised against the invasion, it was a fait accompli.
To add a human dimension to the brute invasion the Soviet propaganda charred out films of Red Army soldiers playing with Afghan children, building schools and dispensing medical care. The Afghan women were shown to have been liberated from their veil and other 'backward Islamic customs.' The Soviet conquerer and its local allies seemed poised for bringing Afghanistan into twentieth century.
However, within years when the Soviet-conquest was just consolidated the troubles began to crop up. The Afghans had then risen against their Soviet-'liberators' and started a low-intensity guerilla war that gradually made Soviet occupation untenable. Unable to control their pinpricks throughout the country the Soviet brought in more and more troops into Afghanistan. The Soviet-run Afghan Army had poor morale and fighting skill. Turned away from the battlefield, the Soviets, through Khad, the Afghan police trained by them, jailed and savagely tortured tens of thousands of 'Islamic terrorists' -- then called Mujahideen or freedom fighter and cheered by the West. By 1989 a negotiated settlement marked the Soviets' humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan -- and subsequently their collapse and finally the disintegration of Soviet Union itself.
Disregarding the lessons of the history, the history was repeated in Afghanistan a little over two decades later when the Afghans were caught with a sense of deja vu as a new band of 'liberators' had easily occupied their country in the freezing cold of December last year and overthrown 'feudal' Taliban and installed a puppet regime in Kabul. The western media churned out the same rosy agitprop stories the Soviets did -- freeing the women, educating children, providing health care and so on -- to vindicate the conquest of Afghanistan by a Western coalition. The invaders have changed but the propaganda remains the same.
The US-led coalition's invasion of Afghanistan was painted as an epoch-making military victory in Western media. It was also billed as a model of future imperial expedition to pacify Third World malefactors. Nevertheless, since that victory the news about the war-ravaged country has grown scarce -- possibly because the subsequent news is no more thrilling for the audience in the West. Also the American attention has now been focussed elsewhere. However, now one year on it will be in order to pry into Afghan abyss.
As a matter of fact the US Afghan adventure has gotten off to as poor a start as that of the Soviet Union. The US-installed ruler of Afghanistan, veteran CIA 'asset' Hamid Karjai himself is a liability because he has to be protected from the wrath of his own people by upto 200 bodyguards. The country is once again in chaos fought over by warlords and drug barons. There are almost daily attacks on US occupation forces. Even as the CIA is tasked with the assassination of nationalist Afghan leaders of the likes of Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, the US forces are virtually under siege even in their strongholds like Bagram and Shind and from where they retaliate, like the Soviets, against the attackers by heavily bombing nearby villages.
In the meantime, the captured 'terrorists' are routinely tortured by Afghan security forces under American supervision. Last fall, the US troops presided over the murder by Northern Alliance forces of some 3000 captured Taliban soldiers, a major war crime at a time when the UN is trying Serb soldiers for similar grave offences. North of the Hindukush mountains, the US Afghan ally, the Tajik-Uzbek Northern Alliance has long been proxy also of the Russians. The chief of the Russian General Staff and Head of the Intelligence directed the alliance in its final attack on Taliban last fall. Therefore the alliance has at the best a split allegiance to the US, its later-day benefactor.
Taliban, according to the UN drug agency had almost shut down opium-morphine-heroin production. The US ally, the Northern Alliance has revived the illicit trade and since Talibans' overthrow its cultivation has soared from 185 tons a year to 2700 tons. The Northern Alliance which dominate the Kabul's puppet regime, finances its arms buying and operations with drug money. President Bush's war on drugs has now collided his war on terror and the US is now practically colluding in the heroin trade.
Anti-US Afghan forces -- the nationalists, Taliban, al-Qaida and others -- are regrouping and mounting attacks on US troops. There are reports even of their re-opening of the training camps. Taliban are using the same sophisticated early warning system they developed to monitor Soviet forces in the 1980s to warn the American search and attack missions before they leave the base. As a result, the US troops only chase the shadows.
The ongoing cost of Afghan operation is a closely guarded secret. Earlier this year the cost of stationing 8000 US troops backed by war planes and naval units was estimated at five billion dollars monthly. In addition, the CIA spends millions every month to bribe Pushtun warlords. The cost will rise as the US expands bases in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrghystan and Uzbekistan -- all placed along the planned US owned pipeline that would bring central Asian oil south through Afghanistan.
As the Taliban and al-Qaida are again on the offensive, Afghan women still remain veiled and the country is in a terrible mess. In retrospect, declaring victory in Afghanistan, as it seems now, may have been both premature and pre-posterous.
Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments