By Eric Margolis, The Toronto Sun, Sep 20, 2009
“We should hang a huge neon sign over Afghanistan: “CAUTION: DEJA VU.”
Afghanistan’s much ballyhooed recent election staged by its foreign occupiers turned out to be a fraud wrapped up in a farce — as this column predicted a month ago. It was as phony and meaningless as U.S.-run elections in Vietnam in the 1970s.
Canada played a shameful role in facilitating this obviously rigged vote.
Meanwhile, American and NATO generals running the Afghan war amazingly warn they risk being beaten by Taliban tribesmen in spite of their 107,000 soldiers, B-1 heavy bombers, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, Apache and AC-130 gunships, heavy artillery, tanks, radars, killer drones, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, rockets, and space surveillance.
Washington has spent some $250 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. Canada won’t even reveal how many billions it has spent. Each time the U.S. sent more troops and bombed more villages, Afghan resistance sharply intensified and Taliban expanded its control, today over 55% of the country.
Now, U.S. commanders are begging for at least 40,000 more U.S. troops — after President Barack Obama just tripled the number of American soldiers there. Shades of Vietnam-style “mission creep.” Ghost of Gen. William Westmoreland, rattle your chains.
The director of U.S. national intelligence just revealed Washington spent $75 billion US last year on intelligence, employing 200,000 people. Embarrassingly, the U.S. still can’t find Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar after hunting them for eight years. Washington now fears Taliban will launch a Vietnam-style Tet offensive against major cities.
This week, in a wildly overdue observation, U.S. military chief Adm. Mike Mullen told Congress, we must rapidly build the Afghan army and police.”
‘Vietnamization’
But the U.S. record in foreign army-building is not encouraging. Remember “Vietnamization?” That was the Pentagon’s effort to build a South Vietnamese army that could stand on its own, without U.S. air cover, supplies, and “advisers.” In early 1975, it collapsed and ran.
Any student of Imperialism 101 knows that after invading a resource-rich or strategic nation you immediately put a local stooge in power, use disaffected minorities to run the government (divide and conquer), and build a native mercenary army. Such troops, commanded by white officers, were called “sepoys” in the British Indian Army and “askaris” in British East Africa.
America’s attempts to build an Afghan sepoy army of 250,000 failed miserably. The 80,000 men raised to date are 95% illiterate and only on the job for money to feed their families. They have no loyalty to the corrupt western-installed government in Kabul. CIA’s 74,000 “contractors” (read mercenaries) in Afghanistan are more reliable.
But the biggest problem in Afghanistan, as always, is tribalism. Many of the U.S.-raised Afghan army troops are minority Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara who used to collaborate with the Soviets. They are scorned by the majority Pashtun tribes as enemies and foreign stooges. These U.S.-paid troops also know they will face death when the U.S. and its western allies eventually quit Afghanistan.
The Soviets had a much better understanding of Afghanistan than the American military, which one senior British general recently called, “culturally ignorant.” Moscow built an Afghan government army of around 240,000 men. Many were loyal Communists. They sometimes fought well, as I experienced in combat against them near Jalalabad. But, in the end, they smelled defeat and crumbled. The Soviet-backed strongman, Mohammad Najibullah, was castrated and slowly hanged from a crane.
The American command, deprived of men and resources by the Bush administration, only managed to cobble together an armed rabble of 80,000 Afghans. The Afghan army, like the post-Saddam Iraqi army, is led by white officers — in this case, Americans designated “trainers” or “advisers.”
Afghanistan keeps giving me deja vu back to the old British Empire, and flashbacks to those wonderful epic films of the Raj, Drums, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and Kim. The British imperialists did it much, much better, and with a lot more style. Many of their imperial subjects even admired and liked them.
Copyright © 2009 Toronto Sun
Peace and Justice Post 
Afghan War and the German Peace Movement
September 23, 2009Reider Braun, Foreign Policy In Focus, Sep 18, 2009
On September 4, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force conducted an airstrike on a fuel tank hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. The attack killed dozens of people including civilians, according to NATO sources. However the German Minister of Defense, Franz Josef Jung, has stubbornly denied that the attack harmed civilians, insisting instead that “only Taliban were killed.” Jung even verbally attacked NATO and EU statements on the topic, saying that “other countries should not interfere.”
Because of this unjustifiable military strike German citizens, who have never forgotten the two world wars, have finally begun to realize that Germany is at war. A majority continues to demand the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, a demand that has only become amplified by the obvious fraud in the recent Afghan elections. According to a September 12 poll, 59% of the Germans were in favor of a withdrawal. Although Germans have rejected their government’s rhetoric and policies toward Afghanistan the resistance is largely passive, with no massive uproar on the streets.
This latest attack has revealed the reality of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. It is not a “stabilization effort” (as the speaker of the Minister of Defense called it on September 4). Nor is the German Bundeswehr providing “development aid.” Germany is engaged in an authentic military action that has led to many civilian deaths.
World War II lasted less than six years. The war of the West in Afghanistan, however, has been going on for eight years as of this October. In this war, 40 nations have provided soldiers and modern military gear. But despite this large-scale effort, NATO has been unable to defeat the Taliban, eradicate drug cultivation or rebuild the economy in apparently calm areas. The toll on the Afghan population, especially in light of the previous two decades of war, has been immense.
Minister of Defense Jung and the German government should stop pretending that Germany is involved in a humanitarian operation. There can be no development assistance as long as foreign soldiers occupy the country. For years humanitarian aid organizations such as Caritas, Welthungerhilfe, Medico, and Kinderhilfe Afghanistan have complained that “civil-military co-operation” undermines civil aid to the point that it becomes useless. Echoing these criticisms, the organization Developing Politics of German Non-Government Organizations has demanded a strict separation of military actions and humanitarian aid.
For Germany to play a true humanitarian role in Afghanistan, it must withdraw German troops from the country. Supporters of Germany’s military involvement argue that chaos will reign after the military troops withdraw and the Taliban will take over power. But the Taliban enjoy greater support now because it is fighting against foreign occupation. Remove the foreign occupiers and Taliban support will dwindle.
The Germany peace movement is currently conducting many actions to end the war in Afghanistan, most recently several regional public meetings on September 9. It will continue these actions even after the presidential elections on September 27. Die Linke, the only party in Germany that supports immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, has seen its support rise from 10% to 14% in the wake of the bombing. It is time for Germany to withdraw its troops and for the minister of defense to step down.
Reiner Braun is the executive director of the German International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, program director for International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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Tags:Afghanistan, civilians killed, Die Linke, German Minister of Defense Franz Josef Jung, German withdrawal, Germans, ISAF airstrike, Reider Braun, wars
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