During the election campaign of 2008 before he was elected president, Barack Obama
made an artificial distinction between the supposedly “just war” in
Afghanistan and the unjust war in Iraq. In accordance with the flawed
distinction, he pledged that he would withdraw American troops from
Iraq, but at the same time, he indicated that he would increase the
number of US forces stationed in Afghanistan.
The unilateral
intervention in Iraq in 2003 by the Bush Administration was highly
unpopular among the American electorate. Therefore, Obama’s election
pledge of complete withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq struck a chord
with the voters and they gave an overwhelming mandate to the ostensibly
“pacifist” contender during his first term as the president.
In keeping
with the election pledge, President Obama did manage to successfully
withdraw American troops from Iraq in December 2011 during the first
term as the president, but only to commit thousands of American troops
and the US Air Force to Iraq just a couple of years later during the
second term as the president when the Islamic State overran Mosul and
Anbar in early 2014.
The borders
between Iraq and Syria are poorly guarded and highly porous. The Obama
Administration’s policy of nurturing militants against the Syrian
government for the first three years of Syria’s proxy war from 2011 to
2014 was bound to backfire sooner or later.
Regardless,
when President Obama decided to withdraw American troops from the unjust
war in Iraq, at the same time, he pledged that he would commit
additional American troops and resources into the purportedly “just war”
in Afghanistan.
Consequently,
the number of US troops in Afghanistan spiked from 30,000 during the
tenure of the neocon Bush Administration to more than 140,000 during the
term of the supposedly “pacifist” Obama Administration.
No one can
dispute the assertion that the notions of “just wars” and “good
militants” do exist in the geopolitical lexicon; empirically speaking,
however, after witnessing the instability, violence and utter chaos and
anarchy in the war-ravaged countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,
Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, the onus lies on any
interventionist hawk to prove beyond doubt that the wars and militants
that he justifies and upholds are indeed just and good.
More
surprisingly, however, if Afghanistan was perceived as an occupied
country by the gullible audience of the mainstream media during the
years of Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1988, then how did it become an
independent state after the American occupation of Afghanistan since
2001-onward?
Furthermore,
if the Afghan so-called “mujahideen” (freedom fighters) nurtured by the
Reagan administration with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies
and Saudi money constituted a legitimate resistance against the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan, then by what principle of consistent logic,
the resistance against the American occupation of Afghanistan can be
reviled as “terrorism”?
In
international politics, the devil always lies in the definitions of the
terms that are employed by the spin-doctors of the foreign policy think
tanks and the political commentators of the corporate media. And the
definition of the term “terrorism” has been deliberately left ambiguous
by the Western powers to use it as a catch-all pretext to justify their
military presence and interventionist policy in the energy-rich
countries of the Middle East.
After invading
and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and when the American
“nation-building” projects failed in those hapless countries, the US
policymakers immediately realized that they were facing large-scale and
popularly rooted insurgencies against foreign occupation; consequently,
the occupying military altered its CT (counter-terrorism) approach in
favor of a COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy.
A COIN
strategy is essentially different from a CT approach and it also
involves dialogue, negotiations and political settlements, alongside the
coercive tactics of law enforcement and military and paramilitary
operations on a limited scale.
The root
factors that are primarily responsible for spawning militancy and
insurgency anywhere in the world are not religion but socio-economics,
ethnic differences, marginalization of disenfranchised ethno-linguistic
and ethno-religious groups and the ensuing conflicts; socio-cultural
backwardness of the affected regions, and the weak central control of
the impoverished developing states over their remote rural and tribal
areas make them further susceptible to armed insurrections.
Additionally,
if we take a cursory look at some of the worst insurgency-wracked
regions in Asia and Africa, deliberate funding, training and arming of
certain militant groups by regional and global powers for their
strategic interests has played the key role.
Back in the
1980s during the Soviet-Afghan War, the Afghan jihadists did not spring
up spontaneously out of nowhere. The Western powers with the help of
Saudi money and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies trained and armed the
erstwhile “freedom fighters” against their archrival the former Soviet
Union. Those very same Afghan jihadists later mutated into al-Qaeda and
the Taliban.
Similarly,
during the proxy wars in Libya and Syria, the Western powers with the
help of their regional client states once again trained and armed
Islamic jihadists and tribal militiamen against the governments of
Colonel Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad.
And isn’t it
ironic that those very same “moderate rebels” later mutated into Ansar
al-Sharia and Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya; and the
Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and scores
of other jihadist groups in Syria?
Notwithstanding,
on November 9, Russia hosted talks between Afghanistan’s High Peace
Council, the members of the Taliban from its Doha, Qatar office and
representatives from eleven regional states, including China, India,
Iran and Pakistan. The meeting showcased Russia’s re-emergence as an
assertive global power and its regional clout.
At the same
time when the conference was hosted in Moscow, however, the Taliban
mounted concerted attacks in the northern Baghlan province, the Jaghori
district in central Ghazni province and the western Farah province
bordering Iran.
In fact,
according to a recent report by the US Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the US-backed Kabul government only
controls 55% of Afghanistan’s territory. It’s worth noting, however,
that SIGAR is a US-based governmental agency that often inflates
figures.
Factually, the
government’s writ does not extend beyond a third of Afghanistan. In
many cases, the Afghan government controls district-centers of provinces
and outlying rural areas are either controlled by the Taliban or are
contested.
If we take a
cursory look at the insurgency in Afghanistan, the Bush administration
toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance in
October 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack. Since the
beginning, however, Afghanistan was an area of lesser priority for the
Bush administration.
The number of
US troops stationed in Afghanistan did not exceed beyond 30,000 during
George Bush’s tenure as president, and soon after occupying Afghanistan,
Washington invaded Iraq in March 2003 and American resources and focus
shifted to Iraq.
It was the
Obama administration that made the Afghanistan conflict the bedrock of
its foreign policy in 2009 along with fulfilling then-President Obama’s
electoral pledge of withdrawing American forces from Iraq in December
2011. At the height of the surge of the US troops in Afghanistan in
2010, the American troops numbered around 140,000 but they still could
not manage to have a lasting effect on the relentless Taliban
insurgency.
The Taliban
are known to be diehard fighters who are adept at hit-and-run guerrilla
tactics and have a much better understanding of the Afghan territory
compared to foreigners. Even by their standards, however, the Taliban
insurgency seems to be on steroids during the last couple of years.
The Taliban
have managed to overrun and hold vast swathes of territory not only in
the traditional Pashtun heartland of southern Afghanistan, such as in
Helmand, but have also made significant inroads into the northern
provinces of Afghanistan which are the traditional strongholds of the
Northern Alliance comprising the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups.
The main
factor behind the surge in Taliban attacks during the last couple of
years appears to be the drawdown of American troops which now number
only 14,000, and are likely to be significantly scaled back after Donald
Trump’s announcement of withdrawal of American forces from Syria and
the reports of Trump’s decision – which hasn’t been officially announced
yet – that the Trump administration has decided in principle to reduce
the number of US troops in Afghanistan by at least several thousand.
*
Note to readers: please click the share
buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on
your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Nauman Sadiq
is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst
focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions,
neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a frequent contributor to
Global Research.
Featured image is from 21st Century Wire
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Nauman Sadiq, Global Research, 2019
