[R-G] Seven Years in Afghanistan: From "War on Terror" to "War of Terror"

[Anthony Fenton]

October 7, 2008
Seven Years in Afghanistan: From "War on Terror" to "War of Terror"
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp10072008.html

By GARY LEUPP

October 7, 2008. Seven years ago today the U.S. began the assault on  
Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban regime and produced the present  
mess. Abetted by U.S. bombing and commando operations, the Northern  
Alliance took Kabul on November 13, 2001. This was the initial U.S.  
response to 9-11, an assault on the U.S. by Saudi Islamist fanatics  
based in Afghanistan. The al-Qaeda attacks killed 3000 people. By  
March 2002 the U.S. bombing had produced that many Afghan civilian  
fatalities. This was just the beginning.

The invasion produced little change in the daily life of the average  
Afghan. Fanatical Sunni leaders who’d had a genuine social base and  
had been able to control 95 per cent of the country with minimal  
outside help were driven back to their villages. They were replaced by  
other fanatical Sunni leaders---those who had toppled the “leftist”
government in 1993, then been overthrown themselves by the Taliban in  
1996. These Northern Alliance forces had been nurtured in the duration  
by India, Russia and Iran as their idea of the better bet among  
competing Islamist fundamentalists.

But in the seven years since, this collection of tribal-based warlords  
has been unable to stabilize Afghanistan---even though they’re propped  
up by tens of thousands of foreign troops who’re told that they’re  
there to fight terrorism and help create “democracy.”  Indeed, its  
hold on power becomes more tenuous every year, while a resurgent  
Taliban with no foreign government’s support exacts an ever heavier  
price
from the foreigners and their local allies.

According to the United Nations, 1,445 civilians were killed in the  
war from January through August this year---a rise of 39 per cent over  
2007. At least 577 of these deaths were due to the actions of pro- 
government forces. Deaths from air strikes have tripled since 2006.  
“Mistakes by the US and Nato have dramatically decreased public  
support for the Afghan government and the presence of international  
forces providing security to Afghans,” declares Brad Adams, Asia  
director at Human Rights Watch. Francesc Vendrell, a Spanish diplomat  
with eight years’ experience in Afghanistan, recently noted that  
civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces have created “a great  
deal of antipathy” and the situation in the country is the worst it’s  
been since 2001. Members of the Afghan Parliament have staged a one- 
day walkout to protest the civilian casualties.

Puppet president Hamid Karzai has also protested the strikes and    
their “collateral damage” in the last two years in fairly strong  
language. But hand-picked for his post by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad  
in the Loya Jirga of June 2002, he is commonly known as the mere  
“mayor of Kabul.” Why should the U.S. pay any attention to his  
protests? His authority hardly extends beyond the city limits, and  
even Kabul has become insecure. Elsewhere warlords hold sway in  
virtually independent ethnic baronies, issuing their own laws and  
printing their own currency, filling their coffers with the proceeds  
of opium and human trafficking---activities the Taliban had  
effectively banned.
Opium poppy production had been effectively wiped out by 2001. Today  
Afghanistan supplies about 90 per cent of the world’s illegal opium.  
And then there are the sad continuities. The burqa, vilified before  
the attack as the symbol of Taliban misogyny, remains the normative  
female costume and leading political figures insist upon its use.  
Women are still imprisoned for refusing arranged marriages. The  
Supreme Court upholds death sentences for Christian converts. The  
Taliban stoned women to death for adultery and blasted away the  
buddhas of Bamiyan. It was undeniably awful. But it’s not at all clear  
that the current regime has made life better for most Afghans.\
72 per cent (58 per cent of males, 87 per cent of females) were  
illiterate in 2000 and it’s doubtful the number has risen greatly as a  
result of the Taliban’s ouster. A 2005 report stated 50 per cent of  
males and 82 per cent of females remained illiterate, and the figures  
are higher in the rural areas. 80 per cent of the population are  
impoverished farmers, growing in order of  importance opium, wheat,  
fruits and nuts and grazing sheep. According to the online CIA   
Factbook: “Despite the progress of the past few years, Afghanistan is  
extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid,  
agriculture, and trade with  neighboring countries. Much of the  
population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water,  
electricity, medical care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, and the  
Afghan Government’s inability to extend rule of law to all parts of  
the country pose challenges to future economic growth. It will  
probably take the remainder of the decade and continuing donor aid and  
attention to significantly raise Afghanistan’s living standards from  
its current level, among the lowest in the world.” This does not sound  
like a liberated country.

The entire political class in the U.S., l Deocratic candidate Obama in  
the vanguard, , unites in proclaiming the war in Afghanistan the  
“good” war, the reasonable and appropriate response to 9-11. It’s seen  
as the foil to  the “strategic error” of Iraq. But how, at this point,  
is it connected to 9-11? The Taliban didn’t attack the United States.  
They sent envoys to talk to former State Department official, then  
UNOCAL executive Khalilzad about oil pipeline construction in the late  
1990s. (Afghan-American neocon Khalilzad had actually editorialized in  
the Washington Post in favor of the Taliban!) While not recognized by  
the U.S. government, it received U.S. funds from Colin Powell’s State  
Department in 2001 to eradicate opium poppy production. The U.S. drove  
the Taliban from power to affirm the principle that it would not  
distinguish between terrorists and the regimes that harbor them. Maybe  
that sounded good at the time, macho and simple, but that mentality  
and policy has produced an expanding disaster.

The Taliban is Not the Same Thing as al-Qaeda
To review some history: the Taliban did not create al-Qaeda or invite  
it into Afghanistan. The U.S.-led effort to drive the Soviets out of  
Afghanistan in the 1980s boosted young Osama bin Laden into  
prominence, as an anticommunist CIA ally. The U.S. establishment of  
bases in Saudi Arabia in 1990 turned him against the U.S. and Saudi  
regime, and ultimately resulted in his return to Afghanistan before  
the Taliban even took power. The Taliban allowed his presence, and the  
operation of his training camps, although it apparently sought to  
restrain his activities after 1998. It’s not at all clear that Mullah  
Omar and other Taliban leaders were in on al-Qaeda’s 9-11 plans.  
(Wasn’t their principal international backer, aside from Pakistan,  
Saudi Arabia? And haven’t Riyadh and al-Qaeda been mortal enemies  
since 1990?) But they paid the price for not capitulating to  
Washington’s demand immediately after 9-11 that they turn over bin  
Laden to U.S. authorities. That would have meant turning their backs  
on the Pashtunwali honor code (requiring hospitality and protection of  
guests), the same honor code operative in North and South Waziristan  
(in Pakistan) which the U.S. administration either does not understand  
or provocatively exploits to create pretexts for widening war.


So in late 2001 the U.S. and allies overthrew the Taliban, a secondary  
goal, while botching the primary goal which was to annihilate al- 
Qaeda. The multinational, primarily Arab al-Qaeda forces were bombed  
and driven over the border into Pakistan. No one seems to have any  
idea about how many al-Qaeda members were in Afghanistan in late 2001.  
Bush administration references to “tens of thousands” have been  
questioned by intelligence specialists. We may be talking, in fact,  
about hundreds, some of whom, including bin Laden and Ayman al- 
Zawahiri, clearly got away and continue to lead a very flexible and  
loosely structured movement of militants inspired by, but only  
tenuously connected to, bin Laden’s isolated circle. That movement has  
bourgeoned globally as a result of U.S. actions that seem virtually  
calculated to incite Muslim outrage.

The War Spreads to Pakistan
Nowhere is this the case more than in Pakistan. The flight of al-Qaeda  
and Taliban members into Pakistan, and Washington’s blithe expectation  
that Pakistan could or would force the local people to fight them and  
cooperate in their suppression, has produced the predictable blowback.  
There is now a substantial Pakistani chapter of the
Taliban, while those in Pakistan most disposed to cooperate with  
Washington meet with the contempt of their own people who see the U.S.  
as a vicious anti-Muslim bully.

Pakistanis have long perceived the U.S. as Israel’s enabler, as the  
backer of dictators in power in Muslim countries, as the heartless  
force behind the decade of sanctions on Iraq. But now they see the  
U.S. as an aggressor on their own soil. Because it is!  According to  
the New York Times, the CIA “has for several years fired missiles at
militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft.”  
There were three such strikes in 2007, over a dozen so far this year.  
One in June killed 12 Pakistani soldiers. Recent orders from President  
Bush now also allow the military’s Special Operations forces to  
conduct “raids on the soil of an important ally without its  
permission.” So in addition to drone attacks the Pakistani border  
faces commando raids supported by gunships. Highlights of last month’s  
provocations of Pakistan:

Sept. 3: 40 U.S. Special Operations Forces including Navy SEALs swoop  
down on the village of Musa Nika in Angoor Ada in South Waziristan,  
killing 15-20. First known ground assault of U.S. troops in Pakistan.
Sept. 8: U.S. drones attack a madrassa in North Waziristan, killing at  
least 23. (The next day George W. Bush announces that Pakistan, Iraq  
and Afghanistan are “all theatres in the same overall struggle.”)
Sept. 12:  U.S. drone strikes a home and a former government school  
near North Waziristan town of Miramshah, killing at least 14 and  
injuring 12. (Waziristan tribal leaders meet the next day and declare  
if attacks continue “we will prepare an army to attack U.S. forces in  
Afghanistan” in cooperation with Afghan tribal leaders. Ahsan Iqbal, a  
leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N party, declares, “If [this]  
continues, then Pakistan can consider pulling out completely from this  
war on terror.”)
Sept. 15: U.S. helicopters land near village in Angoor Ada, returned  
toward Afghanistan after troops or tribesmen fired warning shots.

Sept.17: U.S. drone attack kills 7, injures 3 in South Waziristan.  
This occurs just hours after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint  
Chiefs of Staff, visits Pakistan to assure military leaders the U.S.  
would respect Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Sept. 21: Pakistani troops and tribesmen open fire on two U.S.  
helicopters flying into Pakistani airspace from Pakistan, force them  
to retreat.

Sept. 24: Wreckage of U.S. spy drone found in South Waziristan;  
anonymous Pakistani military officials say it was shot down by  
tribesmen.

Sept. 25: Pakistani forces fire on U.S. helicopters along Afghan- 
Pakistan border; U.S./NATO claims choppers were within Afghan airspace.

Sept. 27: Two U.S. jetfighters enter airspace over Angoor Adda, Baghar  
and Momin Tangi area of South Waziristan for about 25 minutes.

Sept. 30: Tribesmen fire on four drones over North Waziristan; missile  
fired from drone strikes house, killing four and wounding nine.

Add to these the Oct. 1 U.S. drone attacks house in North Waziristan,  
killing at least 6. And the Oct 4 drone missile attack on a house in  
Mohammad Khel, North Waziristan, killing 20, reputedly including “Arab  
militants,” women and children.

Pakistani civilian and military authorities have repeatedly expressed  
their indignation of these violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty. On  
Sept. 20, in his first speech to Parliament since becoming president,  
Asif Ali Zardari warned, “We will not tolerate the violation of our  
sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of  
combating terrorism.” Earlier, Army  chief  Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani  
had declared the attacks would not be tolerated, and soon after the  
commando raid of Sept. 3 Islamabad cut supply lines to NATO troops in  
Afghanistan. Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar explained, “we  
have stopped the supply of oil and this will tell how serious we are.”  
Although the suspension was temporary, it indicates a mounting sense  
of impatience.

“Reckless actions,” observed Kayani, “only help the militants and  
further fuel the militancy in the area.” Rand Corporation analysts are  
saying the same thing: the counter-insurgency efforts are in fact  
stoking the insurgencies. U.S. officials claim the attacks are all  
part of a legitimate “War on Terror.” But former Pakistani Prime  
Minister Nawaz Sharif no doubt speaks for most Pakistanis in averring  
that “it is unacceptable that while [supposedly] giving peace to the  
world we make our own country into a killing
field.”

“The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country,” says  
Kayani, “will be defended at all cost and no external force is allowed  
to conduct operations inside Pakistan.” National Security Advisor  
Mahmud Ali Durrani said on Sept. 21, “The bottom line is that the  
message is loud and clear and the Americans know it.” On October 2  
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani went so far as to declare, “These  
[drone] attacks are a form of terrorism.”

Yet “senior U.S. officials” have told the New York Times that  
(unnamed) Pakistani officials have approved ground raids. Is this not  
the arrogance of the rapist who insists he had his victim’s permission?

On the other hand, one unnamed government official quoted by National  
Public Radio isn’t bothering to suggest the U.S. has permission.  
“Definitely, the gloves have come off,” he declared, “This [Sept. 3  
attack] was only Phase 1 of three phases.” While Mullen assures  
Pakistan the U.S. respects Pakistan’s sovereignty, U.S. Defense  
Secretary Robert Gates tells BBC the U.S. will take whatever action  
necessary to “protect our troops” and  a Senate panel hearing Sept. 29  
that international laws allow the U.S. to take unilateral actions  
inside Pakistan. What are the Pakistani people to make of these mixed  
signals?

Army spokesmen General Athar Abbas told the Associated Press Sept. 16  
that field commanders have been ordered to fire on any forces crossing  
the border with Afghanistan. That plainly includes U.S. forces. A  
council of 3000 tribesman in South Waziristan enraged by the recent  
attacks then vowed to join the Pakistan Army to “take up arms against  
the US.” “We will take the war to Afghanistan to confront the  
Americans,” they vowed.

Meanwhile some forces angered at the U.S. aggression targeted the  
Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, possibly because CIA agents and Marines  
were known to stay there. The blast on Sept. 20 produced the highest  
death toll (at least 54 including two U.S. military personnel) of a  
terrorist attack in Pakistan since 2001.  Some analysts attribute it  
to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, although a hitherto unknown  
organization, Fedayeen Islam, claimed responsibility.


“We’re Not Going to Win This War”

In Afghanistan, on the other hand, al-Qaeda is largely defeated. Syed  
Saleem Shahzad, writing in the Asia Times, estimates there were only  
about 75 Arab fighters in Afghanistan as of April (many more Uzbek  
jihadis, however), and recent U.S. intelligence reports allude to al- 
Qaeda in Afghanistan only in passing. They depict Iraq as the most  
active al-Qaeda theater, and even there, the so-called “al-Qaeda in  
Iraq” is a homegrown copy-cat operation likely lacking operational  
ties to any international headquarters. It is a creation of the U.S.  
invasion, and in any case, on the decline for months.

The Taliban has regained control of much of the Pashtun south, and  
gets ever more sophisticated in its guerrilla tactics against the U.S.  
and NATO forces. ISAF and U.S. deaths have risen from 130 in 2005 to  
191 in 2006 to 232 last year. This year’s toll, already at 236, sets a  
new record. (More U.S. troops---134---have died than in any prior year  
in Afghanistan.)

This year Taliban fighters bombed Kabul’s only five-star hotel,  
killing six; opened fire on an Independence Day observance in  
Kandahar, killing three; attacked a prison in Kandahar, freeing 400  
inmates; unsuccessfully attacked Camp Salerno, one of the largest U.S.  
bases in Afghanistan; and killed or wounded 31 French special forces  
near Kabul. According to RAND analyst Seth Jones, “It is generally  
accepted now across all [U.S.] government agencies that the situation  
in Afghanistan has significantly worsened and has become quite dire.”  
Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told Congress recently,  
“I’m not convinced we’re winning it in Afghanistan.” That’s despite an  
increase in U.S. troop strength from 21,000 in 2006 to 31,000 today.

In a recent New York Times interview, newly appointed CENTCOM  
commander Gen. David H. Petraeus stated, “Obviously the trends in  
Afghanistan have been in the wrong direction, and I think everyone is  
rightly concerned about them…Certainly in Afghanistan, wresting  
control of certain areas from the Taliban will be very difficult… In  
both [Afghanistan and Pakistan], in certain areas, the going may be  
tougher before it gets easier.”

British officials present an even bleaker picture. Sir Sherard Cowper- 
Coles, British ambassador to Afghanistan, reportedly told the duputy  
French ambassador to Kabul François Fitou last month, “The foreign  
forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse  
without them . . . They are slowing down and complicating an eventual  
exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic… In the short  
term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from  
getting more bogged down in Afghanistan . . . The American strategy is  
doomed to fail.” These are observations by a top diplomat of the  
nation most deeply invested alongside the U.S. in the Afghan War. He  
proposes replacing Karzai with “an acceptable dictator.” The top  
British military commander in Afghanistan agrees; Brig. Mark Carleton- 
Smith stated last week, “We’re not going to win this war.”
A recently completed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on  
Afghanistan is apparently so grim its contents won’t be made public.

Hard to believe that on May 1, 2003 Defense Secretary Donald H.  
Rumsfeld confidently declared that “major combat activity” had ended  
in Afghanistan. Mission accomplished, the Bush administration  
frenziedly prepared to invade and occupy Iraq.

“The People Support the Taliban”

The dirty little secret suppressed by the mainstream press is that the  
Taliban, like it or not, has considerable popular support. Afghan  
senatorAbdul Wali Ahmadzai, who was captured and held by the Taliban  
two months, now says, “The important point is that the people support  
the Taliban. This is the main problem: now the people do not like the  
government and they support the Taliban.” Support for Karzai has  
plummeted due to corruption (including accusations credited by the  
State Department that Karzai’s brother is involved in heroin  
smuggling) and his association with the foreigners who continue to  
bomb the country. Aware of resurgent Taliban support, Karzai has urged  
Mullah Omar to return to the country (from his presumed sojourn in  
Pakistan); invited the Taliban to join the government; and sought the  
aid of the Saudis, the Talibs’ former ally, aid in arranging  
negotiations.
Meanwhile public opinion in the nations contributing to the occupation  
of Afghanistan is now overwhelmingly against continued deployment.  
Majorities or pluralities in the U.K., Canada, Italy, France, the  
Netherlands, Australia, Poland, and Spain all want out. Maybe they  
don’t see fighting Afghan resistance fighters as a “war on terror” but  
something more prosaic and depressing: an unwinnable counterinsurgency  
effort like the Algerian or Vietnam wars. Washington’s reported bid to  
take over sole command of the Afghan war, cutting NATO out of the  
command structure, will likely fuel European and Canadian opposition.

This war in Afghanistan’s not about avenging the 9-11 attacks or  
preventing new ones. It’s about killing local fighters, who fight not  
to create some “Emirate” from Indonesia to Spain or establish a base  
of operations against America as George W. Bush (shamelessly fear- 
mongering and exploiting Islamophobia) would have you believe. They  
fight to rid Afghanistan of unwelcome foreigners from Christian- 
majority countries that always seem to be attacking faithful Muslims  
for no good reason. Countries where, they’re told by their mullahs,  
cartoonists mock the Prophet and the Holy Qur’an. They fight to avenge  
the civilian victims---the wedding party celebrants, the madrassa  
students---of bombing attacks. In August a U.S. air strike in Herat  
killed 90, mostly women and children.

The guerrillas’ numbers seem to grow even as the U.S. and NATO  
announce more and more impressive Taliban casualty figures. They are  
not all veterans of the Mujahadeen struggle against the pro-Soviet  
regime of the 1980s. Some are too young to recall it; the median age  
in Afghanistan is 18. The new Taliban is largely the creation of 2001  
invasion and the bombing campaign ever since. But President Bush sees  
them as terrorists enraged by the blessings of occupation, such as  
improved health care, education and transportation (the same things  
the Soviets said they were bringing in the 1980s). “Killers,” Bush  
declares, “can’t stand this progress.”

Today as this war enters its seventh year, there are 53,000 foreign  
troops including 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, backing up what is  
supposed to be a democratically-elected regime and training its  
military forces. The Afghan National Army is 76,000-strong and well- 
equipped with billions of dollars’ worth of M-16s, Humvees, jeeps and  
mortars. It has NATO behind it. Why can it not defeat a guerrilla army  
dependent on the drug trade and international black market in weapons?  
Why are there plans to vastly expand the Army in the next few years?  
Why must U.S. officials predict a presence of the “International  
Security Assistance Force” (ISAF) until at least 2014?

Maybe the effort’s not succeeding because the foreign forces do not  
understand the first thing about the society they’ve invaded,  
including the natural inclination of the people to want them out of  
their country. Maybe it’s not succeeding because the Taliban, however  
unpopular their religious fanaticism, in key areas commands greater  
respect from the masses than those who’ve signed on to the U.S.  
payroll. Maybe it’s not succeeding because in Afghanistan (like Iraq)  
scared soldier-kids shoot up civilians in a country they see as enemy,  
alien territory, inhabited by people whose languages and culture they  
don’t understand. A people whose lives don’t seem as precious as  
western ones, in a country the foreign soldiers don’t want to and  
shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s not succeeding because the Afghan Army it’s  
trying to create consists of people with conflicting loyalties who  
meet with the contempt of family and friends because they work with  
the invaders.

What began as a “War on Terror” with waves of bombing attacks on  
Kandahar and Kabul October 7, 2001 has long since become a War of  
Terror, inflicted on the peoples of Southwest Asia, generating and  
strengthening resistance movements (“insurgencies”), enraging local  
allies and even alienating regimes of Washington’s own creation. The  
Canadians and Europeans have long since tired of it. So have the  
American people, despite the failure of the corporate media to expose  
the Big Lies that Cheney and Bush continue to promote in order to  
justify their Terror War.

Despite the popular war-weariness, both presidential candidates while  
praising the surge in Iraq unquestionably support the expanding war in  
Afghanistan. The attack on Afghanistan, used by the neocons as the  
bridge to an occupied Iraq, has committed the entire political class  
to an impossible project. Barack Obama talks tough about strikes in  
Pakistan to shore up the Afghan effort. Once the hope of a wing of the  
anti-war movement, the senator from Illinois has shown himself as much  
a spokesman for imperialism as McCain or any other mainstream  
politician.  Seven years down the road, there’s no end in sight. No  
hope except for the “fool’s hope” that public opinion in the  
imperialist countries, plus the inevitable resistance of the Afghans  
to foreign control, plus the military judgment that the war is not  
winnable will bring this “good war” to an end.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct  
Professor of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and  
Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The  
Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial  
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is  
also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars  
on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp at granite.tufts.edu