Afghanistan - the End of a Delusion

 

How long, I wonder, will the embattled Afghan Republic survive? The Taliban have just taken Ghazni, which is the 10th provincial capital to fall in a week. Some reports have it that the Afghan Army is unpaid, under-equipped and demoralised. Other reports say that the capital city, Kabul, could fall in 90 days. Total Taliban control over Afghanistan could be established by the end of the year. That will take us back to the status quo of 2001, which is when this whole state of affairs began.

To be exact, it began on September 11, 2001, when Al-Qaeda terrorists launched their infamous attacks on the World Trade Centre and The Pentagon. 3 000 people died, and the USA was seething with anger at this horrific act of terrorism on their home soil. Al-Qaeda, under their leader, Osama Bin Laden, were known to be based in Afghanistan, and the seeds were laid for the Afghan (mis)adventure. The Taliban, we were told, refused to hand over Bin Laden and the US and her allies ("The coalition of the willing") invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

I had reservations about this from the beginning. Not that I claim to be an expert, but I knew enough about Afghan history to warn that Afghanistan is known as "The Graveyard of Armies", The British colonial authorities suffered two humiliating defeats, one in 1842, which led to the annihilation of an entire army. and in 1880 at the battle of Maiwand. And the world knows what happened to the Soviet Union's "fraternal" attempt to impose secularism, which ended in a ignominious withdrawal in 1989. This was clearly a people who would fiercely resent any foreign interference in their affairs and would struggle tenaciously against it. I am sure that expert scholars in London and Washington were pointing this out, but they were ignored. In the febrile atmosphere of the time, there was a lust for revenge that could only be slaked by blood.

But were the Taliban guilty of refusing to hand over Bin Laden? In May 2011, I wrote:

"We are told that the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden, but a number of commentators, including Mark Curtis and Michael Moore, claim that the Taliban (and others) DID offer to hand over Bin Laden before 9/11. In 1995, the Sudanese government offered to extradite him, but the offer was refused. Michael Moore gives details of three offers to hand over Bin Laden before and after 9/11:

"They [the Taliban] were saying, 'Do something to help us give
him up.'" – Milton Bearden, former CIA station chief who
ran war against Soviets in Afghanistan

September 21, 2001
U.S. refused to provide evidence of bin Laden's guilt, rejected recommendation
by Afghan clerics that Taliban tell bin Laden to leave Afghanistan

October 14, 2001
Bush rejected Taliban offer to turn bin Laden over to
neutral third country for trial "

 Since 2011, I have seen no refutation of Michael Moore's allegations. Nor was there any refutation of the  minority US Army view that the war was unwinnable. And the latter view has been proven to be correct.

The Afghan invasion was based upon a delusion - the belief that following the installation of a more liberal government and the freeing of Taliban restrictions, the whole population would be transformed into enthusiastic democrats. The old monster of the French Revolutionary Terror, Robespierre, could have repeated his warning from 1789: "No-one loves armed missionaries". Of course, many sectors of the Afghan population did welcome the new freedoms. The fact that those freedoms are soon to be forbidden makes this whole misadventure even more tragic.

The casualty figures of this 20-year conflict point to the scale of the tragedy. Watson Brown puts the figures in total from all sides as about 241, 000, including 71, 000 civilians. I wonder what the supporters of the invasion back in 2001 make of that. And the killing continues today, and it will continue after the Taliban regain control. Anyone who has worked for the Coalition Forces or the Afghan government will be in mortal danger.

They might not be the only ones. As the Taliban see it, they have defeated America and her allies. As Haji Hekmat, a veteran Taliban commander, told the BBC in April: "we have won the war and America has lost". Islamo-terrorist groups around the world will be hugely encouraged by this, and a newly-resurgent Taliban-controlled Afghanistan might well provide these groups with safe havens - which is exactly the situation that existed back in 2001, when the Taliban were harbouring Al-Qaeda. They might well be doing the same thing again soon.

To conclude for now, I would like to say that I have a deep sense of sadness for the Afghan women, artists, musicians, teachers and intellectuals who did benefit from the invasion.  This 20-year incursion has raised their expectations and given them freedoms of which they could only have dreamed pre-2001. I predict a flood of refugees from Afghanistan to rival that from Syria.

All this over a man who was traced and liquidated in Pakistan. And, let's not forget: if the Taliban had handed over Bin Laden in 2001, they would have remained in power.