Afghanistan remains in deep turmoil and the situation appears to be deteriorating with every passing day. Two recent events should crystallize the evermore deleterious situation which is currently unfolding. First, is the most recent of assassination attempt on the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, at the end of April, in which he barely escaped with his life. And second, last week’s assault by Taliban forces on a prison in Kandahar , which the authorities were helpless to thwart and resulted in the return to the dusty and forlorn battlefields of southern Afghanistan of some 400 hardened Taliban fighters.[i] These events mark the most recent in a string of incidents which have dogged the Afghan government and its beleaguered president since its inception and the situation seems only to be getting worse, not better as the sanguine analysts and pundits had predicted.
Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 Afghanistan has received by comparison a dearth of media coverage, financial aid and international support. The usual response proffered for the stark discrepancy which separates the two cases, the U.S. spends $720 million a day in Iraq,[ii] is that the fact that Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is rich in that much coveted commodity: ‘black gold’, otherwise known as oil. However much we might like to gloss over this point, it remains compelling and needs to be seriously taken on board.
In the aftermath of the terrorist atrocities of 9/11 the U.S. was able to marshal a broad coalition in support of the bombing campaign of putative al-Qaeda strongholds and the ousting of the Taliban regime. Back in the States it was largely viewed as ‘pay back’ and news anchors cheered in concert as the bombs fell. Osama bin Laden, the presumed mastermind behind the attacks, had been sheltered by the Taliban since his ejection from Sudan in 1996, and a great many argued, they therefore shared more than a measure of culpability for the attacks on the World Trade Center . The Bush administration decided quickly that both had to go. Moreover, with perhaps only a few objections on the margins, Afghanistan was championed at the paradigm of a ‘just war’.
Bin Laden’s capture and the destruction of his organization were put forward as the chief objectives of the invasion. Though with the onset of bombing bin Laden’s cohorts were rapidly dispersed, many of whom would live to fight another day, and have gone on to do just that. The elusive leader of al-Qaeda would escape due to what some interpreted as a strategic blunder and others viewed as plain indifference on the part of the administration, since the protracted bombing campaign, which preceded the ground assault allowed bin Laden and his supporters to disappear into the labyrinthine reaches of Tora Bora.[iii] Bin laden along with his small coterie have been on the move ever since and knowledge of their whereabouts has rarely exceeded the most sketchy of hunches and ‘educated’ guesses.
A concerted effort to catch the perpetrators of 9/11 was briskly put to one side as resources were immediately and without much ado diverted to the new target lining the horizon, Iraq and the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein, which even die hard partisans of the war have in later years come to acknowledge never furnished a base of operations for al-Qaeda. Seven years later bin Laden and his vociferous Number 2. Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large and there seems little hope of finding either one of them.
Seven years post-invasion and largely as a result of neglect and indifference on the part of the international community, Afghanistan is witnessing a resurgence of the Taliban, who are gaining ground all the time, and bit-by-bit eliciting the support and confidence of a large swathe of the ethnic Pashtun population.[iv] Though little love is lost between the peoples of Afghanistan and the Taliban, it seems that after several years of occupation, and a perceived lack of improvement in the average Afghan’s standard of living, that a gradual coalescing around a common enemy has evolved into a war of attrition which is steadily gathering pace. British colonialists discovered for themselves that the Afghan’s have little tolerance for foreign occupiers in their midst when they were driven from Afghanistan in the 19th century, as did the Soviets in the 1980s while the Carter and later Reagan administrations siphoned untold quantities of money and arms to the Afghan mujahedin, inducing the Soviet’s very own Vietnamese quagmire.
Hamid Karzai’s position can only be described as tenuous. There were three coup attempts against him in 2002-2003 alone and as has been pointed out, last month he barely escaped yet another assassination attempt.[v] He his perceived as a U.S. installed ‘stooge’ and therefore has little credibility or legitimacy in the eyes of his compatriots. Fully aware of his precarious grip on power he explicitly requested an American as opposed to Pashtun security detail in order to assure his safety.
Though it certainly might sound strange to some in light of the many abhorrent and horrific acts committed by the Taliban in the course of their fairly short time in power, there has emerged a nostalgia in some quarters for the days when Mullah Omar ruled with an iron fist over Afghanistan. The preponderance of a foreign occupation and the apparent relaxation of the religious strictures previously imposed, (most likely to assuage people’s memories of the many egregious acts they had committed, above all against women) has for the moment united enemies and erstwhile foes against a common enemy. Even supporters of the NATO effort have observed the troops’ prolific alcohol consumption and frequenting of local brothels has aroused much public anger, distress and resentment. A recent estimate concluded that the largest number of Taliban recruits emanates from communities ‘antagonized by the local authorities and security forces’.[vi]
The number of casualties as a result of suicide bombings has increased by 50% and has become a staple of life in Afghanistan. In 2006 there were 1,100 casualties due to suicide bombings. This number increased to 1,730 in 2007. The number of suicide attacks rose from 21 in 2005 to 137 in 2007, an increase of more than six-fold.[vii] Some might be further surprised to hear that during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s, not a single suicide attack occurred.[viii] Today, by contrast, a strand of militant jihadism unapologetically advocating suicide bombing and attacks on civilian targets has taken hold where it was hitherto non-existent. It seems that foreign intervention exacerbates radicalism instead of allaying militant tendencies.
Moreover, the abundance of financial means as a consequence of the booming opium market has allowed the patrons of suicide bombers to ‘amply compensate’ families for their loss. And with unemployment at over 60% and many more on a barely subsistent wage, the tragic reality is that many young Afghan men believe such a fate to be amongst the better options of which they can avail themselves to support their families. One of the few, and there were few, redeeming features of Taliban rule, was their explicit proscription of the cultivation of opium. Since the invasion, Afghanistan’s opium production has flourished and accounts for an incredible 93% of the world’s extant heroin, and 53% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The revenue raked in by provincial warlords and the Taliban allows them to purchase guns for hire to man checkpoints across Afghanistan and thereby amplify their reach at the expense of the central government, perpetuating a convoluted and vicious circle.
Individuals with intimate ties to the government are also openly indulging in this illicit trade. In fact, Ahmad Wali Karzai the brother of Afghanistan’s president has become one of the country’s richest drug barons. Funnily enough, when President Karzai lampooned the Pakistani’s inability to prevent cross-border smuggling, Musharraf curtly replied that Karzai should perhaps set an example by reining in the activities of his own brother first. The mutual dislike of these two Washington allies is common knowledge.
Government corruption and incompetence, as well as the profligate waste of funds by the multitude of NGOs which have flooded the country since the invasion have meant that much of the $19 billion that was supposed to be channeled into aid and reconstruction projects has done little to alleviate the plight of ordinary Afghans. Also, basic necessities such as electricity and running water continue to be missing in action. The upshot is that hundreds of Afghans have no choice but to freeze to death each winter.
The country is dominated and divvied up into the respective fiefdoms of local warlords, who regularly partake in skirmishes and tit-for-tat- violence, in between which innocent civilians invariably get caught, while all the government can do is play the role of spectator and from time to time mediate disputes. Those warlords who allied themselves with the “coalition”, are also part of the government. They have private armies, raise private funds, pursue private interests and control private treasuries. Some assessments contend that Karzai’s government exercises a fragile grip over perhaps a mere 20% of the country, a lamentable figure that continues to dwindle. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that in an interview at the beginning of the month with Spiegel Online, the Afghan president confessed, ‘I wish I had the Taliban as my soldiers’.[ix] Again, to many who thought that the situation in Afghanistan was going swimmingly such statements are something of a wake up call.
The resurgence of the Taliban and creeping neo-Talibanization of Pashtun tribal areas, some 63% of the population, is now undeniable and the effects are definitely being felt. In 2003, there were 20,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan and by 2007, this number had trebled to 60,000. This number was then given a further boost with the recent arrival of another 3,200 U.S. Marines and a further 1,000 French soldiers. Rather than quell the resurgence the increased presence of troops on the ground appears to be fuelling resentment and the number of attacks. Last week saw the 100th U.K. military death in Afghanistan, and the spiral of violence shows no signs of abating. Violence and deaths have increased steadily over the past five years, with attacks on foreign troops now running at a rate of 500 a month.[x] This is bound to increase further if the current trend is anything to go by.
The problem is not cultural, nor is it an inherently anti-democratic or violent impulse latent in either Islam or Afghani culture. The problem, despite the undeniable reality of Afghani nationalism, is that much like present-day Iraq, Afghanistan suffers from weak central governance, hampered by a severe legitimacy deficit deriving from its perceived status as being little more than a U.S. client. In addition to this, there is the fact that Afghanistan, again like Iraq, was partially fashioned after the vision and vested interests of the colonial powers. Many Afghani and Pakistani Pashtuns view the porous Durrand Line separating them as an artificial creation of the British and so quite consciously try to undermine its efficacy.
The prevailing situation in Afghanistan where we observe an enfeebled central state, the periodic ascendancy of one tribal or ethnic group at the expense of others, a faint adumbration of what one might conceive as ‘Western style national identity’ predicated on the Westphalian model, and finally an occupying army, and you have an explosive cocktail ripe for disaster. This is not merely an academic debate over whether the ‘Western democratic model’ can be straightforwardly packaged and exported like any other commodity, to a country in which those values are perceived as alien to indigenous values and traditional practices, but rather that the ‘Western democratic model’ is masking a situation in which both Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s sovereignty is emaciated beyond repair and both nations have been reduced to clients of the United States, with visible and often exasperating foreign military occupations.
Afghans and Iraqis are fully cognizant of the fact that the latter is the effective ‘endgame’ of both Western interventions. The notion that either Afghanistan or Iraq can once and for all be pacified is a pipedream with little resemblance to facts on the ground. The U.S.-Afghanistan basing agreement signed by a U.S. appointee in May 2005, much like the treaty currently trying to be pushed through vis-à-vis Iraq, endows the Pentagon with a carte blanche to maintain a huge and obtrusive military presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity: the question however is what are they going to do with it? The battle for hearts and minds is clearly lost for the moment, perhaps indefinitely.
©Sadegh Kabeer
[i] Manhunt Follows Taliban Jail Attack, Al-Jazeera English, June 14, 2008
[ii] , Kari Lydersen, Washington Post, September 22, 2007 [iii] How Bin Laden Got Away, Philip Smucker, Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2002 [iv] Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Seth G. Jones, RAND Counterinsurgency Study, Vol. 4, RAND Corporation 2008 [v] Karzai escapes Kabul parade attack, Al-Jazeera English, April 27, 2008 [vi] Afghanistan: Mirage of the Good War, Tariq Ali, New Left Review, 50, March/April, 2008, p16 [vii] Jihadi Suicide Bombers: The New Wave, Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books, Vol. 55, Number 10, June 12, 2008 [viii] Ibid [ix] , Spiegel Online, June 2, 2008 [x] , Partrick Seale, Gulf News, April 4, 2008
