Afghanistan: Flawed occupation

By Andrew Small

September 2009

 

There’s not much to show for the last eight years of Western presence in the country and there’s little time to turn things around.

Hamid Karzai's inevitable election results ground towards an inevitable outcome last month the real verdict on his governance was being played out on the streets and the dusty hamlets of Afghanistan.

In the official tally Karzai was showing a modest plurality but the more important figures were the horrendous body counts among innocent Afghan citizens and the Western soldiers sent to 'rescue' the country from what has been its destiny over the centuries — a faction-ridden melange of tribes and warlords all of whom seem to have little interest in the rest of the world unless their intervention helps them pursue their own interests.

 

The West is bent on replicating the model of democracy in Afghanistan that it has already tried to apply in both Pakistan and Iraq — find a moderate figure to act as leader and attempt to wrap a unified nation around their chosen one before taking the fight to the perceived foe. The problem is that once the chosen figure establishes some sort of a following in said state, with or without Western help, then that leader tends to pursue a nationalist agenda — not surprisingly — that is not necessarily in accord with the original game plan. That has already happened to some degree with the Maliki government in Baghdad. In Pakistan there remains a good deal of doubt over whether the Americans are really in control of what is happening in the northern reaches of the country where the fight is being taken to the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements there.

         

The same two bogey organisations hang over the elections in Afghanistan. But here the West's chosen instrument, Karzai, seems to be out of control even before he has been 'anointed' electorally. Reports have it that some Western diplomats would like the polling to go to an October runoff to try and establish a broad base of support for their man who has been playing politics the only way he knows how, through deal-making across the country with characters who would have to look up the word democracy in a dictionary.

But, much like the Viet Cong, it is surely difficult to tell apart Taliban and ordinary, disaffected Afghans who are just sick and tired of having their country rent asunder by Western armies. Remember, the Afghans have been here before. This is Britain's fourth Afghan war, the others being in 1839-42, 1878-80 and 1919 and none was a victory for the Britons.

 

In those conflicts the British Empire was trying to extend its influence and attempt to secure lines of communication to India. It is hard to imagine that every man involved did not fully understand the mission and its objectives. The difficulty this time is that the objective appears to keep shifting and political leaders, both in Washington and London, only seem to recognise what they want when they are not getting it.

Western forces first went in to combat Al Qaeda in 2001. That seemed to be largely ineffective and the remnants of Al Qaeda nipped smartly across the border into Pakistan, which almost ever since has been seen as the major base for the projection of international terrorism across the world. When British combat forces were first deployed in 2006 the mission was billed as being an effort to provide security for development projects, instead that morphed into an all-out battle with the Taliban, which resulted in the British deploying heavy weapons to defend themselves at grievous cost to the Afghan population getting caught not only in the crossfire but being at the butt of search and interrogation techniques deeply offensive to their culture. Thousands were turned into internal refugees.

 

Towns and villages have been occupied, lost and re-occupied all in the name of the new counter-insurgency rubric of the new American and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal. The latest iteration of that has been the bloody fighting in Helmand province and the infamous Operation Panther's Claw, which has seen close to 50 British troops lose their lives. As usual in these instances no one seems to be able to put a figure on the casualty role of Afghan civilians.

When the British first moved into Helmand it was to support reconstruction. Other politicians have spoken of the need to support the Afghan government or to help the country rise to higher economic heights. Whatever the reason, Helmand has gone from being a quiet opium-growing backwater to a major conflict area under the new explanation that the troops are there to protect the country from an Al Qaeda revival and, by extension, the British public back home from the threat of more terror on the streets. Since the most recent terrorist incidents and investigations have been very much home-grown affairs this is a very hard sell with a sceptical public which has largely lost faith with the war though not with the men sent to fight it. It is also likely that the fighters they face in Helmand are there to protect the warlords' economic interest in the opium more than an esoteric creed that has little to do with the daily grind of poverty.

 

If Karzai gets the mandate that he is after it will be at the cost of the credibility of the exercise with reports of low levels of support for him before polling day, widespread reports of fraud ahead of the election and low voter turnout for him on the day. The fear is that the popular image of democracy will become similar to that in Iraq: a strong association with violence, foreign interference and chaotic conditions sharply contrasting with the relative peace of life under warlords where, at least, the majority of people are left to get on with their lives unhindered. Democracy at the point of a gun — but not only one set of guns; democracy in the crossfire between two sets.

 

There is not much to show for the last eight years of the Western presence in Afghanistan and little time to turn things around either for the West or the poor, benighted people of that country. The fifth Anglo-Afghan 'war' looks likely to end pretty much as the others have unless new policies more in the interests of Afghans are implemented.

Source: http://asianaffairs.in/september2009/afghanistan.html

URL: https://newageislam.com/war-terror/afghanistan-flawed-occupation/d/1777