NATO withdraws – Afghanistan’s disasters

–

Harold Macmillan (British Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963) is said to have said that there is one law in politics; never invades Afghanistan. He knew what he was talking about. In just 100 years, from 1839 to 1919, Britain – the empire where the sun never set – had lost three wars in the country. The wars were part of the “big game”, and the battle with Russia over Central Asia. When the United States and NATO withdraw from the country on September 11, there will have been a continuous war in Afghanistan for more than 40 years, and no one will play any more. Not with Western life at stake.

President Joe Bidens decision ends the United States’ longest war, which has lasted for nearly 20 years. 2,216 American soldiers have died, while somewhere between 50 and 100,000 Afghans have died as a direct result of the war. Most of them were civilians. And the United States will leave Afghanistan to itself, which is confusingly similar to the country they invaded. In the beginning, the government army, backed by Western money, will probably try to oppose the Taliban. But through terror, talks, and military force, they will likely soon re-establish their terror regime, at least parts of it. And the world will be about the same distance. Because there is one law in politics.

11. september 2001 was a shock. The terror against New York and the United States was organized from Afghanistan, where the Taliban had given altercation to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the world’s terrorist leader who organized the attack. A united West was full of anger, US President George W. Bush was the Sheriff of the Good, and bin Laden was being hunted wild. He should be taken, Dead and Alive, preferably the latter.

It all was largely emotion-driven. For reason always said something other than war. Forces in the Taliban – which was primarily a national force driven by the largest ethnic group of Pashtuns – said they would overthrow bin Laden on their own. He and his international terrorism had become a national security risk for Afghanistan and the Taliban.

In 1989 had The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan after ten years of catastrophic warfare. Before the US-led invasion in early October 2001, I met Soviet veterans of that war in Russia. They shook their heads and said that the United States would become embroiled in an impossible war. A war they could never win. The official Russia warned of war, while Russian nationalists rejoiced at the thought of the West entering the disaster with open eyes.

Bush stressed the lack of a long-term perspective in emphasizing that the United States should never pursue “nation-building.” On the second part of the scale for misunderstood warfare, the leader of the Storting’s defense committee, Marit Nybakk, justified Norway’s participation in the war by saying that it was, among other things, women – liberating.

It went like that it had to go, and as it had always done before in Afghanistan in the age of imperialism. The Americans fired first, and asked afterwards. Weddings that were celebrated with shooting salutes against the sky – as is often the custom – were attacked with rockets by American soldiers. At most, there were 100,000 there, without it doing much better.

The Afghan government struggling to have control, even with 10,000 NATO soldiers in place, as it is now. The Taliban no longer have any reason to negotiate, they already control the roads to the big cities, and will soon have much freer passage to occupy them. For Afghanistan’s middle class in the big cities, new terror from the Taliban will be a disaster. And for women, and girls who get to get an education, the future can be a particular disaster.

Afghanistan was both the beginning, and will be the end of, “the good war” – war to promote democracy – in the Middle East. From Afghanistan in the east, to Libya in the west, and especially in Iraq, this has failed. But Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was wrong. Iraq did not become the “mother of all wars”. It became Afghanistan.

–