Even in impoverised Afghanistan
U.S. occupiers face sea of hostility
By Leslie Feinberg
Gen. John P. Abizaid, top gun in charge of
Pentagon forces in the Middle East, has summoned his senior
commanders to a meeting the week of Nov. 18 at Central Com mand
headquarters in Tampa, Fla. He's bringing together Army, Navy,
Air Force and Marine Corps generals and admirals to discuss
strategy for combating resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Abizaid admitted at a Pentagon media briefing a week earlier
that daily combat operations in Afghanistan "are every bit as
much and every bit as difficult as those that go on in Iraq."
(Inter Press Service, Nov. 18)
Clashes between U.S.-led forces and insurgents reportedly
take place daily in the south and east of the country.
At least one U.S. Special Forces soldier was killed and
another injured on Nov. 14 when their vehicle was hit by
explosives in northeastern Afghanistan. The same day, at least
three U.S. soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a
mine in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar.
U.S. military bases in the southeastern provinces of Paktia
and Paktika have been hit with repeated rocket attacks. The
outgoing Pentagon spokesperson in Afghanistan, Col. Rodney
Davis, said that on Nov. 14 alone two U.S. military bases were
under siege more than six times in 24 hours from long-range
rocket fire. David declined to discuss possible casualties.
A U.S. military base near the city of Khost in eastern
Afghanistan was hit with a barrage of rocket and machine gun
fire on Nov. 16. While the number of dead or wounded was not
announced, "Witnesses reported seeing helicopters landing
inside the base, possibly to airlift casualties." (Deutsche
Press-Agentur, Nov. 16)
And U.S. soldiers on patrol in the center of Kandahar, the
country's main southern city, came under fire on Nov. 16.
Many of the roughly 11,000 Pentagon troops stationed in
Afghanistan are highly trained Special Forces commandos. Eleven
soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since August--almost
a third of the 35 shot down since the Pentagon unleashed war
against this impoverished country in October 2001.
"The situation is much more serious than a year ago,"
concluded Vikram Parekh, a Kabul-based senior analyst with the
International Crisis Group, in an interview in the Washington
Post on Nov. 16.
United Nations packs up
and leaves
The United Nations has pulled most of its staff out of
Afghanistan after three attacks on the organization's employees
and officials over the period of one week. The withdrawal
followed the killing of a French offi cial of the UN refugee
agency in the city of Ghazni, 60 miles southwest of the
capital.
The same day, a bomb blew up a UN vehicle in eastern Paktia
province. And on Nov. 11, a car bomb detonated outside UN
offices in the southern city of Khandahar as a delegation from
the Security Council was visiting Afghanistan.
A Western security official who spoke to the Associated
Press on condition of anon y mity said there were strong
indications the three attacks were coordinated, marking a sea
change in resistance. (Nov. 18)
The 15-member UN Security Council voted unanimously in
mid-October to authorize deployment of the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) beyond the capital city of
Kabul, to which its jurisdiction has been restricted since the
Taliban's ouster two years ago.
"But the North Atlantic Treaty Organiz ation, which is
leading ISAF, has failed to persuade member countries to add to
the 5,500-strong force," according to Asia Times Online.
Germany and Norway have agreed on paper to send troops to a
few specific areas outside Kabul. But the fragile Karzai
government, hunkered down in Kabul, is still dependent on U.S.
combat troops to keep it from being overwhelmed by the
insurgency.
Who turned back the clock?
The Pentagon is still relying on sheer terror and
overwhelming high-tech force to maintain its strategic position
in Afghanistan.
The most recent casualties of U.S. Special Forces resulted
during the second week of an offensive in the eastern province
of Kunar and neighboring Nuri stan province that includes
searching homes.
Six Afghan civilians, including children, lost their lives
Nov. 16 when a U.S. warplane bombed their home in eastern
Afghanistan.
U.S. troops also killed six Afghan men in eastern
Afghanistan on Nov. 15. Provincial Police Chief Dawlat Khan
said the men were unarmed and died when U.S. aircraft bombed
their truck.
U.S. military commanders have begun to acknowledge that,
despite this brutal campaign, the Taliban and other anti-occu
pation forces have made significant gains in recent months.
(Asia Times Online, Nov. 18)
Despite the military and political challenges that its
occupation faces, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell vowed
that the United States would "stay the course" in Afghanistan,
as well as in Iraq.
Powell charged that supporters of the Taliban "want to turn
the clock back" in Afghanistan.
Actually, it was the CIA that "turned back the clock."
Afghanistan had a progressive revolution in 1978 that tried to
carry out land reform and free women from feudal bondage. In
the early summer of 1979 the CIA began covertly financing and
arming landlord bands against it, according to admissions by
former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Then, in December 1979, the Afghan government asked the
Soviet Union for troops. Washington could now claim it was
helping the Afghans against a "Soviet invasion," and forked out
billions of dollars to create an army of fundamentalists,
including Osama bin Laden, that finally overturned the
revolutionary government in 1992. After four years of warfare
among competing Afghan factions, the Taliban won out in 1996.
Now these former allies of Washington are in its
crosshairs.
Today, as winter strengthens its grip on Afghanistan, two
years of U.S.-led war have left the country ravaged. Hunger,
homelessness and disease are rampant. Its infrastructure is
destroyed. Some 2.5 million refugees have returned to Afghani
stan--an estimated 1 million more are still in Pakistan--and an
estimated 500,000 people are still classified as "internally
displaced."
Sovereigns, not sovereignty
The European Union on Nov. 17 publicly welcomed the adoption
of a draft constitution in Afghanistan, saying it was
"essential that the international community continue fully to
support the Afghan authorities and enable them to exercise
effective power over the entire Afghan territory and to meet
the immense challenge of reconstruction and peace."
(eubusiness.com, Nov. 18)
Afghanistan enjoys no independence.
When 500 delegates from the grand assembly meet in Kabul on
Dec. 10 to debate the draft constitution, Canadian troops will
provide their security. (paktribune.com, Nov. 18)
The hand-picked president, Hamid Karzai, doesn't rely on
Afghan bodyguards--it's the job of U.S. private military
contractor DynCorp to keep him alive.
Karzai is a former consultant with Unocal, the U.S.-based
energy giant, that had planned a multi-billion-dollar,
890-mile-long natural gas pipeline project across Afghanistan
from Central Asia to Pakistan.
Karzai is a royalist from the same clan as the country's
former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. "Mr. Karzai's critics have
accused him of being an American stooge," observed a Nov. 18
BBC report, "particularly after the way in which the U.S.
intervened ahead of the recent loya jirga (grand council) to
announce that the former king would not oppose Mr. Karzai as a
candidate for head of state." That announcement was made by
Zalmay Kha lil zad--at that time the special U.S. envoy, and
today the U.S. ambassador to the country--the "Paul Bremer" of
the imperial occupation of Afghanistan, and another former
Unocal consultant.
"As things stand now," a Nov. 17 New York Times editorial
laments, the draft constitution "is no more than the Kabul City
Charter."
Who will keep the boot heel on the necks of 25 million
people who do not want to be U.S. colonial "possessions"?
Some 11,000 U.S. troops with unlimited firepower haven't
been enough. Nor have some 5,000 NATO troops huddled in
Kabul.
The Pentagon brass say they and their allies are training a
national Afghan army and police force. But that "national" army
still numbers little more than 5,000.
"The army's first U.S.-trained battalion, meant to have
about 600 soldiers, has shrunk to just over 200," reported the
Nov. 18 hollandsentinel.com. Low pay and poor equipment and
morale have been cited.
Meanwhile, a UN-backed program is attempting to disarm
former combatants or mujahideen. But there are an estimated 1
million weapons among the population. (msnbc.com, Nov. 18)
And powerful Afghan narco-landlords all have their own
well-trained, heavily armed local militia.
In the two years since the 2001 invasion began raining
ordnance on the cities and countryside, opium production has
skyrocketed 19-fold and the country has become the major source
of the world's heroin. (Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times,
Nov. 15) After the Taliban banned opium production in 2000, the
2001 crop was only 185 metric tons. The UN estimates that this
year's crop weighed in at 3,600 tons--the second largest in the
country's history.
The Karzai government is a fig leaf for the colonial-style
occupation of Afghanistan.
Gary Leupp, an associate professor in Tufts University's
Department of History, offers a lesson on imperial design. "Way
back in 1857," he wrote, "Friedrich Engels (who made some very
interesting observations about Afghanistan, then central to
'the Great Game' played out in Central Asia between Britain and
Russia) described 'the attempt of the British to set up a
prince of their own making in Afghanistan' in 1842, linking its
failure to the Afghans' 'indomitable hatred of rule, and their
love of independence.'
"Like most of Marx and Engels' stuff," Leupp concluded,
"it's probably on the net now; in his leisure time, in his
Kabul office, surrounded by his Swiss Guard, Mr. Karzai might
want to peruse it."
Reprinted from the Nov. 27, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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