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Why Are We Still at War?

February 4, 2009

Published on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

by Norman Solomon

The United States began its war in Afghanistan 88 months ago. “The war on terror” has no sunset clause. As a perpetual emotion machine, it offers to avenge what can never heal and to fix grief that is irreparable.

For the crimes against humanity committed on Sept. 11, 2001, countless others are to follow, with huge conceits about technological “sophistication” and moral superiority. But if we scrape away the concrete of media truisms, we may reach substrata where some poets have dug.

W.H. Auden: “Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.”

Stanley Kunitz: “In a murderous time / the heart breaks and breaks / and lives by breaking.”

And from 1965, when another faraway war got its jolt of righteous escalation from Washington’s certainty, Richard Farina wrote: “And death will be our darling and fear will be our name.” Then as now came the lessons that taught with unfathomable violence once and for all that unauthorized violence must be crushed by superior violence.

The U.S. war effort in Afghanistan owes itself to the enduring “war on terrorism,” chasing a holy grail of victory that can never be.

Early into the second year of the Afghanistan war, in November 2002, a retired U.S. Army general, William Odom, appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program and told viewers: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.”

But the “war on terrorism” rubric — increasingly shortened to the even vaguer “war on terror” — kept holding enormous promise for a warfare state of mind. Early on, the writer Joan Didion saw the blotting of the horizon and said so: “We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of Sept. 11 to justify the reconception of America’s correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war.”

There, in one sentence, an essayist and novelist had captured the essence of a historical moment that vast numbers of journalists had refused to recognize — or, at least, had refused to publicly acknowledge. Didion put to shame the array of self-important and widely lauded journalists at the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post, PBS and National Public Radio.

The new U.S. “war on terror” was rhetorically bent on dismissing the concept of peacetime as a fatuous mirage.

Now, in early 2009, we’re entering what could be called Endless War 2.0, while the new president’s escalation of warfare in Afghanistan makes the rounds of the media trade shows, preening the newest applications of technological might and domestic political acquiescence.

And now, although repression of open debate has greatly dissipated since the first months after 9/11, the narrow range of political discourse on Afghanistan is essential to the Obama administration’s reported plan to double U.S. troop deployments in that country within a year.

“This war, if it proliferates over the next decade, could prove worse in one respect than any conflict we have yet experienced,” Norman Mailer wrote in his book “Why Are We at War?” six years ago. “It is that we will never know just what we are fighting for. It is not enough to say we are against terrorism. Of course we are. In America, who is not? But terrorism compared to more conventional kinds of war is formless, and it is hard to feel righteous when in combat with a void…”

Anticipating futility and destruction that would be enormous and endless, Mailer told an interviewer in late 2002: “This war is so unbalanced in so many ways, so much power on one side, so much true hatred on the other, so much technology for us, so much potential terrorism on the other, that the damages cannot be estimated. It is bad to enter a war that offers no clear avenue to conclusion. … There will always be someone left to act as a terrorist.”

And there will always be plenty of rationales for continuing to send out the patrols and launch the missiles and drop the bombs in Afghanistan, just as there have been in Iraq, just has there were in Vietnam and Laos. Those countries, with very different histories, had the misfortune to share a singular enemy, the most powerful military force on the planet.

It may be profoundly true that we are not red states and blue states, that we are the United States of America — but what that really means is still very much up for grabs. Even the greatest rhetoric is just that. And while the clock ticks, the deployment orders are going through channels.

For anyone who believes that the war in Afghanistan makes sense, I recommend the Jan. 30 discussion on “Bill Moyers Journal” with historian Marilyn Young and former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey. A chilling antidote to illusions that fuel the war can be found in the transcript.

Now, on Capitol Hill and at the White House, convenience masquerades as realism about “the war on terror.” Too big to fail. A beast too awesome and immortal not to feed.

And death will be our darling. And fear will be our name.

Norman Solomon is a journalist, historian, and progressive activist. His book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. His most recent book is “Made Love, Got War.” He is a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign.

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PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Raids on NATO Convoys Crippling – Analysts

December 15, 2008

By Zofeen Ebrahim | Inter Press Service

KARACHI, Dec 14 (IPS) – While NATO and United States forces have downplayed raids in Peshawar by pro-Taliban militants, destroying hundreds of their military vehicles and supply containers destined for Afghanistan, analysts here believe that the damage is significant.

On Saturday the militants destroyed 11 trucks and 13 containers in the latest of a series of attacks over the past week designed to disrupt supply lines to NATO and U.S. troops fighting the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan

Saturday’s raid defied increased security for some 13 supply terminals around Peshawar, ordered after a major raid last weekend in which hundreds of trucks and containers were torched.

After that raid, the U.S. military in Afghanistan had played down the damage in a statement that said it would have only “minimal effect on our operations’’. U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green was quoted saying: “It’s militarily insignificant.’’

But analysts here think otherwise and say that if the attacks continue they will impact plans to double the strength of NATO troops in Afghanistan from the present 67,000 — nearly half of them from the U.S.

“More troops mean more supplies,” said Ikram Sehgal, a noted defence analyst.

Sehgal does not buy the U.S. dismissal of the attacks as insignificant. “If I’m hurt bad, I’m not going to own up. It is a significant loss whether they (U.S.) admit it or not. It will create horrendous problems.”

If troop deployment is increased as planned then an estimated 70,000 containers of supplies will have to be shipped to Afghanistan annually.

“If the supply lines are cut off, it will have a choking effect on the troops,” said Brig. Mehmood Shah, former home secretary of the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) that borders Afghanistan.

Already NATO has begun looking for alternative supply routes to Afghanistan, even through Belarus and the Ukraine.

Contractors engaged in moving the containers are jittery at the possible loss in business.

Kifayatullah Jan, manager at the Port World Logistics, a contractor that has been ferrying NATO supplies, said last week’s attack on their terminal, in which 106 containers were torched, “must have cost the U.S. millions’’.

“And if the loss to the U.S. is insignificant, for us it may mean we close shop,” said Jan, talking to IPS from Peshawar over telephone. “We can’t do business if the government cannot provide us protection,” he said. According to Jan, the company and its drivers receive regular threats from militants to “stop transporting supplies to the Americans or face the consequences.”

In March, insurgents torched 40-50 NATO oil tankers near Torkham. In April, a military helicopter valued at 13 million US dollars was hijacked. And in July, there were sporadic attacks on the convoys. Last month, some 60 Taliban fighters hijacked a convoy of trucks in broad daylight as it was travelling through the Khyber pass.

Talk of alternative supply routes have been going on since September. According to the Washington Post, the U.S. defence department was seeking safer but longer routes through Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia due to “strikes”, “border delays”, “accidents and pilferage” in Pakistan.

“The Iran route is out. And they simply cannot airlift the supplies because it would be far too costly. But the supplies can come from the north,” suggested Sehgal.

“The supplies can pass through the northern route by rail through Russia and the Central Asian nations to northern Afghanistan,” agreed Mehmood Shah, but added: ” It’s a poor alternative and will take very long to reach southern Afghanistan.’’

About 75 percent of supplies, including food, fuel, equipment and vehicles meant for the allied forces in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan’s Khyber Pass, after being offloaded from ships at the southern port city of Karachi. A second overland route connects Pakistan’s Quetta city with Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Pakistan represents the shortest land route to Afghan cities like Kandahar and Kabul.

In last week’s attack on the Port World terminal, the security guards on duty watched helplessly as around 300 militants blasted their way into two transport terminals and torched vehicles.

“These included APC jeeps, trucks, lifters and fire brigades,” said Jan. “They came through the main gate which they destroyed using a rocket-propelled grenade and set fire to 106 vehicles including 80-90 Humvees. They also shot dead one of the guards.’’

“I was in my village near Charsadda, less than a hour from Peshawar, when the guards telephoned me around 3:15 am. There was no way the dozen or so of our guards could confront the militants who were armed with sophisticated weapons,’’ Jan said.

According to Shah, the attackers were criminal elements and not necessarily the Taliban as they latter have still not entered the settled area. “However, they all work hand-in-glove. And for all we know, they may have carried out the attack at the behest of the Taliban.”

However, Rahimullah Yusufzai, resident editor of English daily, The News thinks otherwise. An expert on the Taliban he said: “These recent attacks show that militants are slowly moving into the settled area; that they have gained strength, and are not afraid,” he said. “It also shows how weak the government is and that it cannot protect anyone.”

Yusufzai told IPS that the earlier hijackings of convoys on the highways were only possible if the drivers, and perhaps even the contractors, were in collusion with the Taliban.

Terming these depots as “soft” targets, Sehgal said it is easier to attack such passive locations than intercept convoys that are protected by Pakistan’s Frontier Constabulary (FC) militia.

While past attacks have been limited to pilfering and sale of the loot in the local markets, the latest attacks were intended to disrupt supplies. “This means they want to sever the supply lines to make it unsustainable for the deployed forces,” said Sehgal.

Yusufzai observed that the Taliban were adopting the age-old strategy of cutting off supply lines from the south. “It also signifies that the capacity and numbers of the militants have grown despite the army’s claim of annihilating entire villages in the tribal areas.”

“This war on terror has unleashed more horrors than one can imagine. The Pakistan army, by its own act has steered civilians towards militancy. In a bid to capture one Talib, entire villages have turned into Talibans,” said Yusufzai.

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Karzai Demands ‘Timeline’ for End of Occupation

November 26, 2008

Karzai Grows Impatient as US General Warns War Has a “Long Way to Go”

Antiwar.com,  November 25, 2008

Seven years into the war in Afghanistan, Major General Robert Cone sought to tout the “great progress” made in readying Afghanistan’s own security forces, but rather wound up giving the impression that little has really been accomplished and the US mission has, in his words, “a long way to go.”

After five years of US training, only about a third of the Afghan Army is actually ready to operate on its own. The Afghan police are in even sorrier shape, with fully none of the 433 assessed units capable of performing its duties, and the vast, vast majority of them having the lowest possible rating of readiness.

The seemingly open-ended war is not sitting well with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose ambition for re-election in the fall is put in growing peril by the spiraling death toll and public perception of an inept government dependent on a foreign occupation for even the modicum of control they exert over the nation.

Rather than hoping the promised “surge” will set things right, President Karzai is petitioning the United Nations Security Council to put an end to the civilian casualties caused by the international forces, which operate under a UN mandate. Karzai also asked them to end house searching and unnecessary detentions.

But perhaps most tellingly, the president is asking the international community for a timeline on how much longer the war is going to take. Pakistani Senator Nisar Memon asked NATO the same thing yesterday, but was apparently rebuffed on the notion of an exit strategy for the ever-worsening war. Whether Karzai will get any answer remains uncertain.

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compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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Disaster in Afghanistan

September 10, 2008

John W. Warnock | Global Research,  September 9, 2008

It is difficult to find out what is really going on in Afghanistan. The focus of the mass media is almost entirely on the military activities of the Canadian and NATO forces. There is absolutely no coverage of political developments.  The news on the economy is limited to the state of the poppy industry. This is no accident. The North American media, including the CBC, has strongly supported the U.S./NATO strategy and the administration of President Hamid Karzai. Contrary to the mainstream message, things are not going well.

Rise in civilian casualties

Over the past few weeks NATO forces have killed civilians in a number of incidents, and popular opposition to the western military effort is increasing. On August 22 the United States bombed the village of Azizabad in Herat province; the result was the death of 91 civilians, including over 60 children. Rockets and missiles were also used. Many homes were destroyed. Local citizens stoned the Afghan army when they tried to distribute supplies. NATO forces in Paktika province launched an artillery attack on a village on September 1 as part of a general sweep-and-destroy mission against Taliban forces. Three children were killed and seven injured. That same day U.S. and Afghan forces carried out an overnight raid in Hud Kheil, east of Kabul. A family of four, including two children, were killed when hand grenades were thrown into their house. In Kabul hundreds blocked the main road out of town protesting the military practices of the international forces.

Afghan government and NATO attacks In response to the steady increase of civilian deaths this year, the Afghan parliament passed a resolution in August calling on the Karzai administration to negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement with NATO and United States, making it consistent with Afghan and international law. President Karzai’s cabinet demanded “an end to air attacks in civilian areas, illegal detentions and unilateral house searches.” There is growing opposition to the presence of the occupying forces. The Senlis Council reported in June 2008 that in their most recent recent public opinion survey “more than six out of ten of those interviewed … said that foreign troops should leave.” This is the position taken by many of the democratic parties in Afghanistan. Malalai Joya, the outspoken critic of the Karzai government, has called for all foreign troops to leave the country. She argues that Afghans can settle this dispute better on their own.

The approaching famine

However, the most important current issue in Afghanistan is the drought, the crop failure, and the prospect of famine. This story has received no coverage in the North American media. Over the last winter Afghanistan received well-below normal rainfall and mountain snow pack. The spring runoff was light, and crop yields from irrigated agriculture have been significantly reduced. There are conditions of drought throughout the country. In many areas there are no crops and livestock has perished from lack of pasture. Wheat provides the staple food, and production is 60 percent below average. Recent rains have brought flooding, as the land has been hardened by the drought. Floods are more common because over the past few decades 60% of the woodland has been removed by the population seeking fuel for cooking and winter heating. The jump in fuel prices has raised the cost of the delivery of food from neighbouring countries. Food prices are rising. The price of a 50 kg bag of wheat flour is now $35. One half of the population in Afghanistan lives on less than $2 per day. The government of Afghanistan reports that 42% of the population lives in “extreme poverty”, defined as a per capita income of less than $120 per year. The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan reported in August that “at least four million most vulnerable people have already been pushed into the ‘high-risk food-insecurity ‘ category.” Children are the most vulnerable. One in five children die before the age of five, mainly due to malnutrition. In response, the United Nations and other food agencies have called for an emergency fund of $404 million in order to purchase food. To date less than 20% has been forthcoming from donor countries.

What is happening to women’s rights?

Supporters of the U.S. project in Afghanistan always point to how many girls are now going to school. But as Ann Jones points out, the number cited (5 million) is fewer than half the children of school age. In Kabul 85% are in school; in the Pashtun south, less than 20% and “near zero for girls.” Radio Free Afghanistan’s Jan Alekozai recently toured eastern Afghanistan. He noted that there were schools but no teachers, no chairs and tables, no electricity or water, no books, and no labs. “The participation of women is zero in the provinces,” he argued. While some are going to school “they cannot walk, for example, in a park – or with their families.” In February 2008 Womankind Worldwide (UK) released a survey of the status of women in Afghanistan. They found that 87% of Afghan women report domestic violence, 60% of all marriages are still forced, and 57% of all recent marriages involved girls under the age of sixteen, which is contrary to the law. Ann Jones, who spent a number of years in Afghanistan working for women’s rights, is not surprised. President Karzai’ wife is a qualified gynecologist but does not practice her skills. She remains locked up in the presidential fortress, the Arg, and is not seen by the general public. Since the onset of the 20th century, she is the first wife of a state leader who has not publicly championed women’s rights.

Change of regime in Afghanistan

Few Canadians would know that there is a presidential election scheduled for Afghanistan in 2009. Hamid Karzai has announced that he will run again. After his tour of eastern Afghanistan, Jan Alekozai reported strong opposition to the local warlords and the Karzai government. He judged that Karzai would have a hard time getting 20% of the votes in the 2009 election. The people blame the Americans and NATO for the increase in the power of the warlords. The main opposition to Karzai will come from the United National Front, which is largely a coalition of the warlords and Islamist leaders based in the parliament. They have demanded a change in the constitution to bring in a parliamentary system of government with political parties and elections by proportional representation. The Front is dominated by the Islamist forces from the Northern Alliance. The Front has called for a new international meeting to settle the ongoing civil war in Afghanistan. This would be hosted by the United Nations and include all neighbouring states as well as representation from Afghanistan’s political groups, including the armed opposition. In late August Fazel Sangcharaki, speaking for the Front, stated that many foreign envoys have supported this proposal. But the problem is the opposition of the U.S. government.

Canadian government stresses militarism

The policy of the Canadian government since 2001 has been to put the highest priority on its military role in Afghanistan. In support of the Afghan “war on terrorism”, the Canadian government has been spending around $1 billion per year on the military and only $100 million on humanitarian assistance and economic development. Much of the military budget has been spent on acquiring new military hardware, needed for counter-insurgency warfare.. Just before Stephen Harper forced a fall election, polls emerged which showed that Canadians remain skeptical of the role in Afghanistan. A poll by Ipsos Reid for the Department of National Defence revealed that the majority of Canadians still want Canada to emphasize peacekeeping. A CBC poll done by Environics reported that 56% of Canadians disapprove of Canada’s military role in Afghanistan. Since the March 2008 agreement by the Conservatives and Liberals to extend Canada’s mission to 2011, Afghanistan has largely disappeared from political discussion. The challenge for Canadians is to make this disastrous war in Afghanistan an issue in the current election.

John W. Warnock is a Regina political economist and author of Creating a Failed State: the US and Canada in Afghanistan. (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, May 2008).

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The Afghan fire looks set to spread, but there is a way out

August 21, 2008
Far from being a noble cause, the occupation of Afghanistan is poisoning the region and will never bring peace or security

The war in Afghanistan is running out of control. The multiple attacks mounted by Taliban guerrillas on Nato occupation troops on Monday and Tuesday – in which 10 newly arrived French soldiers were killed near Kabul and a US base hit by suicide bombers – are the most daring since the US-led invasion of 2001. More than 100 people have been killed in fighting in the past three days, as the war against foreign occupation has spread from the south to the east and the area around the capital.

The assault on the French reinforcements follows the killing of nine US soldiers in a single attack last month, and the freeing of hundreds of Taliban prisoners from Kandahar’s main jail in a night-time raid in June. As Afghanistan experiences its own Iraq-style surge of US and other Nato forces, the death toll is rising inexorably. The number of occupation troops killed in Afghanistan overtook the Iraqi level in May. Attacks on US-led forces are up by 50% on last year, Nato air attacks have increased 40%, and more than 2,500 have already reportedly lost their lives in the conflict since January – getting on for half of them civilians.

In a damning indictment of the impact of Nato’s occupation on Afghanistan, aid agencies reported earlier this month that insecurity was spreading to previously stable areas and the killing of civilians by all sides rising sharply. The US air force seems to have developed a particular habit of attacking wedding parties – last month 47 civilians were killed in one strike – while British troops, who lost 13 soldiers in June alone, killed a woman and two children last weekend, which the high command naturally blamed on the Taliban.

This is the conflict western politicians have convinced themselves is the “good war”, in contrast to the shame of Iraq. Britain’s defence secretary, Des Browne, recently declared it “the noble cause of the 21st century”. Nicolas Sarkozy, who faces a similar level of domestic opposition to the Afghan imbroglio as in Britain, insists that France is fighting for “democracy and freedom”. Barack Obama calls it the “central front” in the war on terror and, like Gordon Brown, is committed to transferring troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to bolster the fight.

That will certainly jack up the killing and suffering still further. As Zbigniew Brzezinski – the former US national security adviser who masterminded the early stages of the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan – argues, putting more troops in is not the solution: “We run the risk that our military presence will gradually turn the Afghan population entirely against us.”

The original aims of the invasion, it will be recalled, were the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and the destruction of al-Qaida in the aftermath of 9/11. None of those aims has been achieved. Instead, the US and its friends brought back to power an alliance of brutal and corrupt warlords, gave them new identities as democrats with phoney elections, and drove the Taliban and al-Qaida leaderships over the border into Pakistan.

Far from reducing the threat of terrorism, this crucible of the war on terror has simply spread it around the region, bringing forth an increasingly potent campaign of resistance and giving a new lease of life to a revamped Taliban as a champion of Pashtun nationalism. And as mission creep has detached the Afghan war from its original declared target of al-Qaida – let alone the claims made about women’s rights, which have been going into grim reverse again in much of the country under Nato tutelage – it has morphed into the kind of war of “civilisation” evoked by Sarkozy and Browne, a certain recipe for conflict without end. No wonder British politicians have talked about digging in for decades.

Meanwhile, the long-term cost of the west’s shameless support for Pakistan’s military dictatorship as the linchpin of its war on terror, while forever preaching democracy, became clearer this week. General Musharraf’s welcome departure has left the country in political crisis and exposed the contradictions at the heart of the US relationship with the nuclear-armed state.

Even while the Pakistani military has relied on the US alliance to underpin its strategic position with India, its intelligence arm, the ISI, has maintained links with the Taliban as a long-term regional investment – at the same time as the Pakistan army has fought the local Taliban under American pressure. Now the threat of full-scale US incursions against Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan’s border areas risks profoundly destabilising one of the most combustible states in the world.

Afghanistan was supposed to be a demonstration of Nato’s expanded horizons in the post-Soviet new world order. Instead, as with Nato’s disastrous engagement with Georgia, it has underscored the dangers of giving the cold war alliance a new imperial brief. The growing conflict must also be added to the litany of US foreign policy failures that have been overseen by George Bush – from Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Lebanon to Latin America and now the Caucasus – and the evident necessity of a new direction.

That is likely to be a mountain to climb, even under an Obama presidency. The Afghan war certainly cannot be won, but the bitterly unpopular 2005 agreement for indefinite bases in the country left no doubt that the US is planning to stay for the long haul. Nato’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, made clear in a speech to the Brookings Institution in Washington earlier this year that western interests in Afghanistan went well beyond good governance to the strategic interest in having a permanent military presence in a state that borders central Asia, China, Iran and Pakistan.

The only way to end the war is the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of a political settlement negotiated with all the significant players in the country, including the Taliban, and guaranteed by the regional powers and neighbouring states. A large majority of Afghans say they back negotiations with the Taliban, even in western-conducted opinion polls. The Taliban themselves insist they will only talk once foreign troops have withdrawn. If that were the only obstacle, it could surely be choreographed as a parallel process. But given the scale of commitments made by the US and Nato, the fire of the Afghan war seems bound to spread further.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

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