War

Canada stuck in Afghanistan  

We’re either guilty of abandonment or of war crimes, and still no better future for the war-torn nation 

by Michael Nenonen  

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Books about the occupation of Iraq are everywhere, but books about the occupation of Afghanistan are difficult to find. Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls, the co-ordinators of the Afghan Women’s Mission, have begun correcting this imbalance with Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories Press, 2006). This is required reading for anyone whose country’s troops are on Afghan soil.

The authors place the occupation within a solid historical context, starting in the 1970s. US involvement in Afghanistan dates back to the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979. The Carter administration planned to use the Soviet aggression to America’s advantage, turning Afghanistan into a Vietnam-like quagmire that would catastrophically drain the Soviet’s military and economic strength. Towards this end, the US and its allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided money, training, arms, and other assistance to the most brutal elements of the resistance, a policy continued by the Reagan administration. The US chose these elements because they were the best killers: the Americans weren’t interested in supporting more moderate and less lethal factions within the resistance, and they didn’t care about what would happen to the Afghan civilians caught between the warlords and the Soviet army.

Once the Soviets withdrew from the rubble of Afghanistan, the US abandoned the country to the now heavily-armed warlords. A coalition of warlords that would later be known as the Northern Alliance formed the brutal Mujahadeen government of Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996. Another group of warlords known as the Taliban became the Mujahadeen’s foremost rivals, and eventually succeeded in overthrowing the Mujahadeen government. Following 9-11, the US and its allies re-established their connections with the Northern Alliance in order to topple the Taliban, who had allowed Al Qaeda to operate freely in Afghanistan. The US did this primarily to demonstrate American power in the aftermath of a humiliating terrorist attack, and to lay the ideological groundwork for an attack on Iraq, and secondarily to justify a continuing role for NATO in a post-Cold War world, to establish a military presence in Central Asia, and to establish and control strategic oil pipelines in the region. Once the Taliban were defeated, the Northern Alliance resumed their role as proxies of American power.

From a human rights perspective, there’s no difference between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Both are rabidly fundamentalist, draconian, and misogynistic, both have committed innumerable atrocities against civilian populations, and both are despised by the Afghan people. The authors remind us that it was the Mujahadeen government that instituted Afghanistan’s now-infamous edicts regarding religion and women’s behaviour. When the Taliban defeated the Mujahadeen and established their own government, they simply maintained these edicts largely unchanged. Now that the Northern Alliance is back in power, there’s no reason to believe that they’ll be any more receptive to secular democracy and women’s liberation than the Taliban were.

And indeed, the occupation hasn’t created a functioning democracy in Afghanistan. The authors discuss four factors undermining Afghan democracy. First, Afghanistan’s leaders were chosen by foreign powers, rather than by the Afghan people, and they were kept in power through manipulated elections. Second, the warlords who dominate the parliament and control all of Afghanistan except for Kabul savagely block any attempts by women and secular forces to become politically organized. Third, while the constitution states that men and women are equal, it also upholds the supremacy of Islamic law, which is used by the ultra-fundamentalist justice ministry to repress women, activists, and journalists, thereby quashing dissent and perpetuating human rights abuses. Fourth, because the constitution guarantees a strong presidency and a weak parliament, and because President Karzai requires US assistance in order to preserve his regime, the US has far more power over Afghanistan than the Afghans. “Furthermore,” the authors write, “US troops still have free reign in the Afghan countryside, allying themselves with abusive warlords, committing grave abuses themselves, and weakening the sovereignty of the Afghan people.”

Bleeding Afghanistan provides quite a few examples of these “grave abuses.” The authors summarize them in the following way: “In many Afghan villages the US either bribes or terrorizes the people into siding with them or turning over anti-US fighters. The US threatens and cajoles villages to provoke attacks, deliberately earning the enmity of Afghans. The US engages in arbitrary and indefinite detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings.”

The occupation isn’t doing much to rebuild Afghanistan, either. The occupation’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are both inefficient and unethical. While a PRT may build several schools that are each worth about $10,000 in a given year, each PRT requires $10 million dollars a year in personnel and support costs. Agencies providing foreign aid do the same work for far less money. While those agencies give their help free of charge, the PRTs use reconstruction to blackmail the populace. For example, in spring 2004, the coalition air-dropped leaflets that read, “In order to continue the humanitarian aid, pass over any information related to Taliban, al-Qa’eda or Gulbuddin organizations to the coalition forces.” By militarizing aid, the occupation forces make it very dangerous for foreign aid organizations to continue their work. These agencies have lost their aura of impartiality, and are now at risk of becoming military targets by the insurgency. Doctors Without Borders, an organization that provided vital service to Afghanistan for 24 years, pulled out of the country for exactly this reason. The authors believe that the actual purpose of the PRTs is to manipulate “poor and starving civilians by dispensing aid in exchange for information and good behaviour,” and “to enhance the image of the US army as a benevolent force in the lives of Afghan people.”

The authors conclude the book with a series of recommendations. They believe that the warlords have to be disarmed and brought to justice. Disarmament should occur as part of the UN’s Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration project. Thus far, this project hasn’t received adequate funding or support, and disarmament efforts have at best been piecemeal and inadequate. Before the warlords can be brought to justice, the US must stop supporting them. Once the warlords are disarmed, the occupation should end. NATO should withdraw, and UN peacekeeping operations should expand throughout Afghanistan. UN peacekeepers should be drawn from nations that haven’t sponsored violence in Afghanistan. The international community should support secular, democratic Afghan groups, rather than the fundamentalists now in charge of the country. The countries that have funded the wars that have ravaged Afghanistan in the last quarter-century, such as Russia, Iran, India, and the United States and its allies, should pay sizable reparations sufficient to pay for the country’s reconstruction. Media coverage of Afghanistan should improve, and antiwar activists should give Afghanistan the same attention they give to places like Iraq and Palestine.

The authors worry that if the occupation ends before the warlords are disarmed, then the country will be thrown back into a bloodbath like the one that followed the Soviet withdrawal. While I share their fear, I have my doubts about their recommendations. The UN can be both biased and brutal, as its actions in Haiti so clearly demonstrate. A UN occupation of the country may be just as bad as an occupation by the US and NATO. I also wonder about what we can realistically expect of the US. While the US may be forced to withdraw from Afghanistan, it’s hard to imagine that it would willingly relinquish its geopolitical and economic interests in the country, or that it would betray the warlords who serve those interests. And who can imagine the US agreeing to pay reparations to anyone for anything?

If the US refuses to comply with these recommendations, then, as citizens of Canada, an occupying power, we’ll have to make a difficult choice. If we advocate the complete withdrawal of the occupying forces, then we may well abandon Afghanistan to pandemonium. If, on the other hand, we continue supporting the occupation, then we will remain complicit in the occupation’s savageries. One thing seems certain: if the occupation continues on its present course, then the people of Afghanistan, who have been waiting for the occupiers to reconstruct their country and bring the warlords to justice, will soon lose patience. When that happens, the occupation will crumble, and chaos will reclaim the country.

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