Fact Sheet |
The War in Afghanistan and Pakistan: A Brutal War for Empire—not a “Good War” |
Many have considered whether the wars of the last 6 years are really behind us, and if they are so different from the wars of today and of the months and years ahead. Has the war in Afghanistan become a “good” war? It is useful to look at recent developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan:
· In February, President Obama ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the 38,000 U.S. soldiers and marines already there.
· There are 22,000 NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. Adding 5,000 armed “civilian” contractors like Blackwater, there are over 80,000 US-NATO forces in Afghanistan now, with more to come.
· The Afghan war is now a regional war, having expanding into Pakistan. In the past year, there have been 3 dozen [MSOffice1] missile attacks by unmanned CIA Predator and Reaper (as in “Grim Reaper”) drones based in northwest Pakistan, resulting in numerous civilian casualties—most recently 11 civilians were killed this week, as the Obama administration continues the Bush regime practice. Protests across Pakistan have become very broad and rebellious.
| · Since 2005, thousands of [MSOffice2] Afghan civilians have been killed by US-NATO forces, mostly by air strikes. · On August 22, 2008 in the village of Azizabad, 91 civilians were killed in a 6-hour air and ground assault by US forces, including 61 children and 15 women. |
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· US aerial attacks on wedding parties have been a hallmark of the occupation, since the US-NATO forces consider any large gathering of Afghans inherently hostile.
· The Obama administration is going on a diplomatic offensive. It has floated the idea of uniting “good” sections of Taliban against the “extreme” sections and Al Qaeda. It has met covertly with Iran in Europe in recent weeks, and it will attend a summit on Afghanistan in Moscow, along with China and Iran. Clearly, a re-tooling and re-alignment of the imperialist project is in the works.
· In Iraq, Obama plans to reduce US combat forces gradually over the next year and a half—sending many of them to Afghanistan. The US plan is to leave 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. US intentions regarding the 100,000 “civilian” contractors have not yet been announced. Similarly, there is no indication that the scores of US military installations across Iraq will be reduced.
Some History
The US government’s stated goals have changed over the years, but they all differ greatly from their actual strategic interests in the region. The key spin arguments for their wars and occupations of Afghanistan over many decades have included opposing communism; defeating anti-US Islamic forces; liberate the people particularly women from fundamentalist rule; eliminating terrorists (Al-Qaeda); wage and win a modern “Crusade”-like “clash of civilizations”; and, finally, bring “peace and stability” to the country.
In reality, the war in Afghanistan is not a “good war,’ but is about defending and expanding US imperialist interests in the Middle East and Central Asia using the pretext of the “war on terror.” The central goals of the US and its NATO partners , include ensuring imperialist control of the region, controlling the region’s abundant oil and other energy supplies and pipelines, and overthrowing or disarming states which oppose or resist imperialist power relations and control.
The roots of the current war in Afghanistan go back to the decision of the Carter administration in 1979 to secretly start supplying the mujahadeen in Afghanistan with weapons and military equipment, with the intent of drawing the Soviet Union into a Vietnam-style quagmire. During the 1980s, the US, through Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, poured tens of billions into building up anti-Soviet Islamic fundamentalist forces, including the Taliban in the southern Pushtun area and the warlords of the Northern Alliance. During these years, the Afghan people were pawns on the strategic chessboard of the imperialist US and the imperialist USSR.
After the defeat of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Taliban as victors in a civil war that ended in 1996, the US worked closely with the Taliban, trying to negotiate pipeline deals with Unocal and other oil companies connecting the former Soviet Central Asian republics with the Indian Ocean. The US started to turn against the Taliban after the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 by al-Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan. Plans to intensify opposition to the Taliban were on Bush’s desk in September 2001.
The US government was waiting for the opportunity to restructure the whole region—starting with Afghanistan and then Iraq—when the September 11 attacks took place. When US military forces failed to achieve a decisive victory in Afghanistan, their attention turned to more strategic, oil-rich Iraq.
With the lowering of the insurgent threat in Iraq and the reduction (by elimination and dispersal) of the Sunni population in Shia areas, the US is now focusing once more on Afghanistan under a new Democratic president.
Like the Bush strategy, the Obama approach is military in scope, but it involves new regional political components. These include placing renewed pressure on the NATO forces to increase their troop levels and send them into combat areas, trying to isolate sections of the Taliban by sending out feelers to Russia (which has its own imperialist interests in the region) and Iran, strengthening ties with Pakistan’s ISI and splitting the Taliban. However, each of these approaches has built-in contradictions and may blow up in the face of the US government.
The Karzai Government
The US government has invested billions in economic and military assistance and substantial political capital in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, headed by Hamid Karzai, an Afghan businessman formerly based in the U.S. In reality, while the US touts the Karzai regime as “democratic,” the US has replaced the Taliban with another brutal fundamentalist state of its own design. This government has grown more unstable and isolated, and its reach is limited to no more than a third of the country.
- The Northern Alliance and other warlords on which the Karzai regime is based have kept many Taliban-era restrictions on women. In the rural areas, women are still forced to wear the sack-like burqa and cannot travel without male escorts.
- According to the UN, 70-80% of Afghan women are forced into marriage, and 57% are married before they are 16 years old.
- After a 4-minute trial, a journalism student was sentenced to death for “blasphemy”—for showing classmates a downloaded article critical of Islam.
- Afghan civilians are subject to arbitrary arrests, rape, home invasions, land occupation and severe press restrictions. Many prominent Afghan commanders, officials and former mujahedeen are implicated in these abuses.
- Along with US forces, the Karzai regime is carrying out torture of suspected insurgents and dissidents at the Bagram air force base.
- Important government officials and one of Karzai’s brothers are heavily involved in drug smuggling. In 7 years under US occupation, Afghanistan has become the source of 93% of the world’s opium, from which heroin is made. Today, the Afghan economy is mainly composed of drugs and foreign aid.
- In this country of 32 million people, life expectancy is 44 years. 70% of the Afghan people live on less than $2 per day.
- The Afghan government today is a “democracy” of corrupt compradors and opium warlords. The people of Afghanistan are powerless in such democracy.
Feeding off popular hatred of the US-NATO forces, the Taliban is establishing their medieval theocratic dictates over more of southern Afghanistan. Faced with this reality on the ground, the Karzai government, the US, and the UK have been making overtures to Taliban commanders through Saudi Arabian contacts. This creates the possibility that the Taliban, or some parts of it, will be brought into the Karzai regime, creating a consolidated fundamentalist government that will bring increased oppression and misery to the people of Afghanistan.
At the same time, popular opposition to the Karzai regime, particularly in the cities, has been growing. Demonstrations have been held against land grabs, torture, and especially protesting the US air raids and ground assaults that killed over 800 Afghan civilians, mainly women and children, in 2008.
The imperialist project for domination is not going well. Now the Obama Administration is revealing the details of their new strategy, designed to (1) prevent the political disintegration of Afghanistan; (2) prevent the victory of the Taliban; and (3) avoid the impression that the US has established a colony in Afghanistan. How to do this? By militarizing the situation many times over, and “Afghanistan-izing” the military force to do it--but making sure that this force is more tied to US imperialists and military than to the “democratic” (and untrustworthy) government in Kabul. This plan will only lead to the peace of the graveyard, and the people will resist it, in wave upon wave.
The Pakistan Connection
The Afghan war is expanding to Pakistan. Under great pressure from the US, the Pakistani army has dispatched 120,000 troops to the areas bordering Afghanistan to confront the Taliban and Pakistan’s home-grown Taliban. The close coordination between the two militaries can be seen in the establishment of a US Special Forces camp into Pakistan, training Pakistani commandos to join the war in the border areas.
Islamic fundamentalist forces in Pakistan are gaining more support in reaction to the Predator strikes and to brutal measures employed by the Pakistani government in the border areas and throughout the country. Most Pakistanis are opposed to the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan and to US incursions into Pakistan.
Whether a military government (until recently), or civilian under President Zardari, Pakistan’s government is heavily dependent on US military and economic aid.
At the same time, elements in the Pakistani government and military, particularly its intelligence apparatus, have close ties to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. This is in part an “insurance policy” for Pakistan should the Taliban come to power again. The Indian government--which is the Pakistani government chief antagonist, and is the US’ main strategic ally in the region-- has established close contacts with the Karzai government. A sign of the difficulties the US is facing in bringing the Pakistani government fully on board is a recent truce it negotiated with a fundamentalist group in the northwest that allowed it to start imposing strict Sharia law in the area it controls.
Support the People’s Struggles Against Imperialism
From the beginning days of global imperialism to the invasions and missiles today, this region has been caught between contending colonialists and all manner of repressive forces. The US government and its allies have wrapped themselves in the fantasy that has driven all empires which have gone before—that they can conquer and suppress and own these lands and peoples. That quest has brought generation after generation of the people through horrible suffering and devastation, but even in their darkest hours they have continued to resist and fight for a new day. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, democratic and revolutionary forces will have openings, due to the reactionary nature of both these regimes and the fundamentalists, to develop the struggle for national and social liberation. And the prospects for today’s imperialists will prove no more successful than the earlier would-be conquerors.
Our opposition to the US war is based on solidarity with the Afghan and Pakistani peoples. Once the US-NATO militaries have been forced out, the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan will have the job of dealing with their own oppressors. International solidarity against imperialism is the key to the future.
March 19, 2009
International League of People’s Struggle, (Bay Area Grassroots Organizing Committee)
ilpsbayareagrassroots@gmail.com
Collision Course Media, San Francisco
Posted on the Grassroots Anti-Imperialist Network (GRAIN) blog:
http://grain-tools.blogspot.com/
