THE horrendous crime of 9/11 notwithstanding, was the Wests response wise or sensible? The region is far less secure now, in mid-2009, than it was on September 11, 2001. It has become fashionable to say that while the war on Iraq was a war of choice, that on Afghanistan was a war of necessity.
This is sheer nonsense. The prime perpetrator of the crime, Osama bin Laden, enjoyed the protection of the Taliban regime in Kabul. But the Taliban had come close to surrendering its guest. President Bill Clintons attack on Afghanistan by cruise missiles, on August 20, 1998, to eliminate him and also to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, prompted the headstrong ruler Mullah Omar to change his mind.
The parleys are recorded by an eyewitness, the distinguished diplomat S. Iftikar Murshed, who was Pakistans special envoy to Afghanistan, in his memoirs, Afghanistan: The Taliban Years (Bennett & Bloom, London). He records (pages 294-5) the formula that had been worked out. The United States missile attacks wrecked it. The Taliban had been begging for recognition by the U.S.
In the autumn of 1998, the Saudi Arabian mediator, Prince Turki bin Sultan, visited Mullah Omar, who backed out of the understanding after the missile attacks. Hot words were exchanged in Mursheds presence. Omar went out into the courtyard in front of us and poured a bucket of cold water over his head and then rejoined the talk. It requires a certain sensitivity to talk to such persons. It was the fate of Afghanistan to deal with an imperialist power, the U.S., which lacked the qualities that even the British imperialists showed in their depredations decades earlier. Clintons Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, raised issues of gender equality which she dared not raise with Saudi Arabia.
Peter Marsden was Coordinator for the British Agencies Afghanistan Group from 1989 to 2005 and is the author of The Taliban: War, Religion and the New Order in Afghanistan. This book is a survey of three foreign interventions in that country British in the 19th century; the Soviet in 1979; and American in 2001. None succeeded. Each laid the country waste, especially the last two. The book combines research with personal insights. The greater part of it deals with the Wests misadventure.
Only Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates recognised the Taliban regime. In 1996, the U.S. made overtures to the Taliban for a pipeline route to transport gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan. It changed its mind after 1998. The authors comments on 9/11 and its aftermath are sound.
The U.S. government was under pressure to be seen to be doing something, in response to what was seen as a major assault on the U.S. homeland, and was able to build on the fact that Osama bin Laden had, through the U.S. air strikes of August 1998, already been presented, in the public eye, as a serious threat to the West. There was ample evidence that, following the air strikes, Afghanistan had become increasingly used as a base for the training, in military and other skills, of Islamic radicals from across the world. It was therefore easy to provide, to the U.S. public, an argument that the attack on the World Trade Centre was organised from within Afghanistan and that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind.
The evidence for this argument remains difficult to establish, but the political consensus on this question was sufficient to justify a warning to the Taliban that, unless they handed over Osama bin Laden, there would be serious consequences. The USA also presented its intervention as a moral crusade in that it sought to overthrow a regime whose values it expressly criticised and to establish, in its place, a democratically elected government.
The U.S. launched its attack on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, less than a month after 9/11. Even while it was mired in that country, it attacked Iraq. The author records in detail the U.S.-led operation and its imperialist objectives in a lucid and lively style. He has been through a mass of papers, official documents and think tank reports.
The state barely exists in Afghanistan. Corruption is rife. The police also tend not to be trusted by the population because they are seen to have links with local power holders and militia and will often be the perpetrators of criminal activity themselves. The individual citizen therefore feels unprotected from abuse at the hands of power holders. A climate of impunity thus continues to prevail.
The Karzai regimes popularity is in doubt. It is important to stress, in this regard, that, inspite of the apparent legitimacy accorded to its intervention by the U.N., the perception in the public mind in Afghanistan has been that the USA intervened in pursuit of its own interests.
This was common to all the three interventions. In all three cases, there was a tendency for the leading representative of the intervening power to act as an effective viceroy. This was certainly the case with General Roberts in 1879, as it was with the Soviet Ambassador over the 1978-92, and as it has been with the U.S. Ambassador since 2001. All Afghans are regarded as suspects when international forces are conducting house searches.
This pattern has been less in evidence amongst the troops of some of the other countries contributing to international forces in Afghanistan
Those who have been arrested by the USA are not the intellectuals who were actively targeted by the PDPA, the Mujahidin and the Taliban. Rather, it is the rural population which finds itself at risk of arrest, torture and imprisonment during the post-2001 period, on account of its suspected sympathy for the Taliban, Al-Qaida, Hizbe-Islami or other radical elements. As with the Soviet intervention, there has been a tendency to be over suspicious, meaning that people have been taken in for questioning with initial evidence that they represent a threat to the government that is, at best, tenuous.
President Barack Obama was unwise to have plunged into this mess so soon after he entered the White House, especially since he had little experience of foreign affairs.
The authors conclusion based on personal experience is wise. The three major powers which intervened in Afghanistan proved to be unsuccessful in the pursuit of their strategic goals. Their inability to win the support of the Afghan population has been a major factor in their failure to achieve these goals. In fact, their tendency to inflame opinion has been an important characteristic of their interventions.
This is the lot of an occupying power failure in the mission is coupled with the contempt of the people.
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