OMNI
AFGHANISTAN NEWSLETTER #28,
AUGUST 28, 2022.
WITHDRAWAL
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice
(#8 April 15, 2011; #9 June 10, 2011;
#10 July 3, 2011; #11 July 13, 2011; #12
Sept. 5, 2011; #13 Oct. 2, 2011; #14 Oct. 15, 2011; #15 Feb. 14, 2012 ; #16
April 27, 2012; #17 May 3, 2012; #18 Oct. 20, 2012; #19 Jan. 14, 2013; #20
August 17, 2013; #21, Feb. 4, 2014; #22, Feb. 22, 2015; #23, August 22, 2017;
#24, Dec. 27, 2020; #25, August 22, 2021; #26, Oct., 14, 2021; #27, Oct. 23,
2021;)
Contribute
to OMNI: www.omnicenter.org/donate/
What’s at stake: These essays expose “the profound and bipartisan malfeasance of our
government” and the lies used to initiate, perpetuate for 20 years, and justify
our longest war. Together the authors offer strong opposition
to US militarism and empire and to war in general.
CONTENTS Afghanistan
#28
2021: Dying Throes of US
Occupation
Kathy Kelly. Harms Committed and
Profiteers Enriched.
Sam Pizzigati. America’s Merchants Of Death . . .
Ann Jones, “Afghanistan (Again).”
(Author of They Were Soldiers).
Jeremy Kuzmarov. “1979
Assassination… Set Groundwork for America’s Longest War.”
UN News Wire. “UN urges inclusive Afghan government
as crises loom.”
US Might Team
with Taliban v. Caliphate?
AFSC and UN: Afghan
People Need Help.
ANSWER Coalition. “U.S. Drone Massacres
Family in Kabul as Final Act.”
John Pilger.
Brzezinski: “ the great game of smashing countries.”
Mark Leon Goldberg. “An Afghan Human Rights
Activist Speaks Out."
Gregory Shupak. US Media
Disinformation.
PEACE
Susannah
George. “The Leaked U.S. Plan
to end the war in Afghanistan.”
Margaret Flowers.
“The Peace
Movement Must Press For Diplomacy, Not More War…. “
ANSWER Coalition. “Biden Acknowledges that
the US has been defeated in Afghanistan war. “
David
Adams. “AFGHANISTAN IS NOT THE END.”
2022: The War Ends
David
Corn. “The Afghanistan Debacle.”
Tariq Ali. “The
Debacle in Afghanistan.”
Danny
Haiphong. “The
US Legacy In Afghanistan.”
TeleSUR Desk. “Chaos, poverty and hunger – The U.S. legacy in Afghanistan.”
Craig
Whitlock. “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of
the War August 31, 2021.”
Julie Hollar. Two essays on US Media.
Biden
Al Jazeera. Costs of the War: the Withdrawal.
Zachary Scott. “Biden Lies
(Again). . . .
ADG. Pullout starts new U.S.
era, president says.
Jon Rainwater, US Sanctions v. Afghan People
Democracy
Now. “Afghan Activist & 9/11 Mother Condemn
Biden’s Seizure of Afghan Funds.”
UN Wire. ”Further restrictions on Afghan women
draw criticism.”
M. K.
Bhadrakumar. “China’s diplomacy on a roll in Kabul.”
Marge Piercy. “Out of Afghanistan.”
Contents
of #27
TEXTS OF Afghanistan #28
2021: Throes of War Ending
Harms Committed and Profiteers Enriched
Kathy Kelly. “We Are All
Accountable.” The Catholic Worker (Oct.-Nov., 2021). The author expesses her revulsion over the harms
committed by the US against the Aghans during the invasion and long occupation,
and over the enrichment of the war profiteers, the military contractors and all
complicit with them (see her title).
Kathy Kelly is one of our era’s steadiest and most courageous opponents
of US global military’s mass killings in wars of aggression.
US CORPORATE WAR COMPLEX $$
America’s
Merchants Of Death Then — And Now
By Sam Pizzigati, Common Dreams. Popular
Resistance (8-24-21). The tag “merchants
of death” has long since disappeared from our American political lexicon. But
the problem Nye named remains. Our contemporary corporate moguls are continuing
to get rich off the preparations that make wars more likely and massively
multiply death counts when the actual shooting starts. America’s longest war —
the war in Afghanistan — offers but the latest example. We won’t know for
some time the total haul of our corporate executive class off the Afghan war’s
twenty years. But Institute for Policy Studies analysts Brian Wakamo and Sarah
Anderson have come up with... -more-
Tomgram:
TomDispatch via uark.onmicrosoft.com
Ann Jones, “Afghanistan (Again).” October 31, 2021.
Ann Jones
began her remarkable book Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan this way:
"I went to Afghanistan after the bombing stopped. Somehow, I felt obliged
to help pick up the pieces. I was a New Yorker who had always lived downtown,
and for a long time after the towers fell I experienced moments when I couldn’t
get my bearings… Four thousand collateral civilian deaths in Kabul brought no
consolation for the death of thousands from around the world in the fallen
towers of the city that had so long been my home. I thought America had lost
its bearing, too. So I left.”
Fortunately,
in all these years since, Jones, a TomDispatch regular who grimly tracked the
American casualties of that war home from the battlefield in her now-classic
book They Were Soldiers, has never lost her bearings. Perhaps you won't be
surprised to know, in fact, that she began her very first piece for this site
back in 2006 this way: "Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed
Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? In
August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already proclaiming the
new Afghanistan 'a breathtaking accomplishment' and 'a successful model of what
could happen to Iraq.' As everybody now knows, the model isn’t working in Iraq.
So, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s not working in Afghanistan
either. The story of success in Afghanistan was always more fairy tale than
fact -- one scam used to sell another."
And sadly
enough, that scam Jones saw so clearly then was still a scam in August 2021
when the U.S. chaotically withdrew from Kabul, leaving the Taliban (only
faintly) in control of the city and the rest of the country. Back in 2006, she
had, ominously enough, titled the last section of that first TomDispatch piece
of hers, "The Road to Taliban Land" and while she was indeed talking
about a literal road, she also saw, even then, just where this country's
disastrous first war of the twenty-first century was leading. And lead it did.
Today, she returns to Afghanistan in her own fashion to think over just what
really happened there. Brace yourself. Tom
"Now Is the Time to Be Angry’: Remembering Forgotten
Afghanistan “ By Ann Jones.
I
know, I know. It's the last thing you want to hear about. Twenty years of
American carnage in Afghanistan was plenty for you, I'm sure, and there are so
many other things to worry about in an America at the edge of... well, who
knows what? But for me, it's different. I went to Afghanistan in 2002, already
angry about this country's misbegotten war on that poor land, to offer what
help I could to Afghan women. And little as I may have been able to do in those
years, Afghanistan left a deep and lasting impression on me.
So,
while this country has fled its shameful Afghan War, I, in some sense, am still
there. That’s partly because I've kept in touch with Afghan women friends and
colleagues, some living through the nightmare of the Taliban back again and
others improbably here in America, confined in military barracks to await
resettlement in the very country that so thoroughly wrecked their own. And
after all these years, I'd at least like to offer some thoughts on the subject,
starting with a little history that most Americans know nothing about.
So
be patient with me. War is never over when it‘s over. And it would be wrong to
simply leave Afghanistan and its people in the dust of our disastrous departure.
For me, at least, some thoughts are in order.
Starting the War: PEACEMAKER MURDERED
“1979
Assassination of U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs Set Groundwork for
America’s Longest War.” By Jeremy Kuzmarov on Oct 29, 2021 03:07 am.
New evidence links Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
CIA and European fascists who formed the Safari Club to the crime.
Dubs had sought to prevent Soviet and U.S. intervention in Afghanistan,
which made him a target of neoconservatives.
As America’s oldest living president, Jimmy Carter is widely revered for his
down-to-earth and folksy manner and for having taken many principled stands on
political issues.
However, during his presidency in the late 1970s, it was Carter who
enmeshed the United States in its longest war in Afghanistan by arming
Islamic fundamentalists. The United States aimed to unseat Afghanistan's
socialist government that came to power in a 1978 revolution and induce a
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in order to give the Soviets their
Vietnam. [...]
Afghanistan was crucial to the designs of the global Right because it provided
an opportunity to strike a blow at the Soviet Union and avenge the lost war in
Vietnam.
But there was one man standing in their way—U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan
Adolph Dubs—who had to be killed […]
The post 1979 Assassination of U.S.
Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs Set Groundwork for America’s Longest War appeared
first on CovertAction Magazine.
General
says teaming with Taliban on strikes ‘possible’ (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette),
Sep 02, 2021
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Thu,
Sep 2, 4:34 PM (15 hours ago) |
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General says teaming with Taliban on strikes ‘possible’
COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
STAFF
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,
Sep 02, 2021
©2014-2021 Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette, All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
[Taliban not so bad after all?
Maybe our leaders have learned some history of the Pashtun. –D]
AFGHANS NEED HELP
AFSC (9-4-21)
Tell
policymakers: Assist Afghans seeking safety: With Afghanistan now under Taliban rule, many people in
Afghanistan continue to fear for their lives, rights, and freedoms. The U.S.
government has a responsibility to assist Afghans wishing to emigrate—while
also working to support humanitarian aid and protection of human rights for
those who remain.
UNITED NATIONS
Officials urge support for Afghans facing crisis
More than a
third of people in Afghanistan are facing acute food insecurity, and World Food
Programme stockpiles in the country are set to run out at the end of this month
without at least $200 million in emergency funding, warns Deputy Special
Representative and Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan Ramiz Alakbarov.
Afghan refugees seeking security elsewhere should have support and safe
admission to other countries to prevent them falling prey to traffickers,
writes Philippe Leclerc, representative for the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees in Turkey.
Full Story: The Hindu (India)/Press Trust of India (9/2), Hurriyet (Turkey) (9/3)
Humanitarian
disaster looms in Afghanistan.
UN WIRE (9-3-21).
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres is pleading for safe, unimpeded access for humanitarian workers in
Afghanistan, urging the global community to support the Afghan people "in
their darkest hour of need." UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore has
voiced alarm over the plight of women and children under Taliban rule in the
country, while a spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs has said UN agencies intend to remain in the region to
provide much-needed aid.
Full Story: Daily Times (Pakistan)/Associated
Press of Pakistan (9/1), CNBC
(8/31), Voice of America (8/31)
THE
OCCUPATION
US Ends
Its 20 Year Posse to Arrest and Extra-Legally Execute a Criminal Al Queda
Leader and Capture His Criminal Saudi Followers Hiding Out in Afghanistan and
Pakistan--another US War Crime.
But
hardly the last:
“U.S.
Drone Massacres Family in Kabul as Final Act.”
ANSWER Coalition via uark.onmicrosoft.com 8-31-21
Dear Dick,
As U.S. forces were preparing to evacuate
Afghanistan after 20 years of war, the Pentagon conducted a deadly drone strike
in a residential area in Kabul that killed all 9 members of a family who lived
next door to the target.
This final act, and perhaps it will not be the
last bombing, is emblematic of what the U.S. war in Afghanistan has meant for
the people of that country. Over 250,000 Afghans have died, including 71,000
civilians, since the U.S. invaded the country on October 7, 2001.
The people of Afghanistan had nothing to do
with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack against the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, but they have paid a heavy price. So too have the thousands
of young U.S. military personnel who were killed or wounded in this senseless
war.
The 20-year long Pentagon operation is
presented to the people of the United States as a noble cause that at some
point went off the rails. Initially justified as an effort to destroy Al Qaeda,
the occupation of Afghanistan was presented as an effort to protect the rights
for girls and women.
As in Vietnam, the people of the United States
were lied to by the government about the war—the causes and motivations for the
war and how it was conducted. For 20 years, the people of the United States
were told that there was a hopeful light at the end of this tunnel. But the
generals and politicians knew otherwise. They knew there was no such thing as
"winning". But they concealed the truth from the public.
This was
not a benign or humane occupation. In December
2014, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a scathing
6,700 page report documenting how the CIA and the Pentagon had engaged in a
massive torture program against people who were arrested or kidnapped. Using
the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, the CIA and the Pentagon
engaged in a program of systematic torture of thousands of people held at
Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and in other Secret prison sites, and at
Guantanamo. Torture methods included beating, binding, in concerted stress
positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep
deprivation, to the point of hallucination, the denial of food, drink, or
medical care for wounds, as well as water boarding, walling, sexual
humiliation, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement to
small coffin-like boxes (report by the United States Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, December 2014).
The United States has frozen all of
Afghanistan’s assets in an effort designed to impose collective punishment on
the people as retaliation for the U.S. defeat in this 20-year long debacle. The
ANSWER Coalition, which has opposed the war since its onset, demands that the
United States government unfreeze all of Afghanistan’s assets and that the U.S.
pay reparations to the people of Afghanistan for the death and destruction
caused by this 20-year long imperial adventure.
Brian Becker
National Director, ANSWER Coalition
More analysis on Afghanistan:
• U.S.
massacres entire civilian family in drone strike as it exits Afghanistan.
Listen to the podcast episode from the Socialist Program with Brian Becker here
• Blood Money: War Veteran Mike Prysner
Breaks Down Who Got Rich Off 20 Year Afghan War. Watch the BreakThrough News
interview here
• ANSWER Coalition's National Director, Brian
Becker, interviews Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army colonel and U.S. State
Department official in Afghanistan. Click here to listen to the interview
Please
make an urgently needed donation to the antiwar and anti-racism movement today.
We can only carry on this crucial work with contributions from supporters like
you.
https://www.answercoalition.org/answer_statement_afghanistan_exit_august_2021
SOVIETPHOBIA
John Pilger: “Afghanistan, the great game of smashing
countries.
Editor.
Mronline.org (8-27-21).
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to
interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew
Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his
grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred
up Muslims”. “Do you have any regrets?” I asked. “Regrets! Regrets! What
regrets?” - John Pilger
Editor.
Mronline.org (8-20-21).
Question: The former director of the CIA,
Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services
began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet
intervention. In this period, you were the national security advisor to
President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this
correct?
|
|
By: Mark Leon Goldberg on August
25, 2021
Zubaida Akbar is an Afghan human
rights activist living in Washington, D.C. She is desperately trying to get
vulnerable people out of the country, including a group of female journalists
who are almost certainly marked for execution by the Taliban.We kick off
discussing what she is hearing from her friends in Kabul as people attempt to
flee the Taliban’s retribution. We then have a very heavy conversation
about the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan.
By and large there is a dearth of
Afghan voices in western media right now – and I am very thankful to Zubaida
Akbar for coming on the show to offer her perspective. I’ll admit that I
had a giant lump in my throat at the end of this conversation, but I think it
is important that we in the media give voice to those who can bear witness to
what is going on right now in Afghanistan.
US MEDIA
DISINFORMATION
As Kabul Is
Retaken, Papers Look Back In Erasure
By Gregory Shupak, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Popular Resistance
(8-24-21). Corporate media coverage of
the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the collapse of the country’s US-backed
government has offered audiences more mystification than illumination.
The Boston Globe, LA
Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. The editorial
boards of these papers consistently trivialized South Asian lives, erased US
responsibility for lethal violence, and made untenable assertions about
Washington’s supposedly righteous motives in the war. The editorials
evince a callous indifference to the toll of the war on... -more-
The Crimes Of The
West In Afghanistan
By Fabian Scheidler, Common Dreams. Popular Resistance.org
(8-22-21). The headless flight
of NATO troops from Afghanistan and the havoc they leave behind are only
the last chapter in a devastating story that began in October 2001. At that
time, the US government, supported by allies including the German
administration, announced that the terror attacks of September 11 should be
answered by a war in Afghanistan. None of the assassins were Afghan. And the
Taliban government at the time even offered the US to extradite Osama bin
Laden—an offer the US did not even respond to. Virtually no word was said about
the country of origin of 15 of the 19 terrorists... -more-
PEACE
Comprehensive analysis followed by
bits and pieces of the US disarray.
The leaked U.S. plan to
end the war in Afghanistan
March
10, 2021 at 1:26 p.m. CST
ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — A leaked State Department document presents
the clearest picture yet of a political settlement to the Afghan conflict that
would satisfy the Biden administration and pave the way for the complete
withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.
The United
States delivered the document to the Taliban and Afghan government
last week as frustration grows in Washington over long-stalled talks between
the two Afghan sides and as violence rises across
the country. It comes as the Biden administration is conducting a review of
U.S. Afghanistan policy and the agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban,
which calls for the full withdrawal of U.S. troops by May 1 if the militants
met specific conditions.
The Washington Post obtained the eight-page proposal and
verified its authenticity with two senior Afghan officials, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to comment on a sensitive policy proposal. The State Department
did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the document.
The years-long
U.S. diplomatic strategy behind the push to end the conflict in
Afghanistan has largely been shrouded in secrecy. Under the Trump
administration, only a four-page summary was
released after the United States and the Taliban reached a peace deal in
February 2020.
In contrast,
sections of the draft peace agreement go into detail, especially in the
suggested structure of Afghanistan’s future government. In some instances, the
number of people on powerful councils and commissions is specified. Afghan news
organization TOLO first published the document on Sunday.
U.S. proposes interim power-sharing government with
Taliban in Afghanistan
Overall, the
document calls for Afghanistan’s current government to be replaced with
temporary leaders, a new constitution to be drafted and a cease-fire to be
brokered. Within those proposals are elements both sides have described as
nonnegotiable, so the plan is unlikely to be implemented in its current form.
Below are some
of the most important issues raised by the proposal.
Who will govern Afghanistan
One of the key
stumbling blocks in talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban is the
militant group’s claim that President Ashraf Ghani’s government is illegitimate
— an issue that is addressed in the latest U.S. peace proposal with the
establishment of an interim government.
After eking out a slim election victory for
a second term, Ghani has repeatedly refused to step down despite the Taliban’s
unwillingness to negotiate with him or his administration.
And while
Ghani’s government has expressed openness to amending the Afghan constitution,
it opposes rewriting it. Language in the U.S. proposal does set parameters for
how the constitution can potentially be rewritten, stating that Afghanistan’s
“2004 constitution will be the initial template.”
Afghan
government officials and supporters of democratic structures fear that a new
constitution could pave the way for the Taliban to secure
significant power in a future government. Such authority could give the
militants the ability to roll back women’s rights, curb civil liberties such as
freedom of speech and craft an archaic justice system.
The role of Islam and the question of elections
The draft
agreement appears to attempt to balance the Taliban’s demand that Afghanistan
be ruled by Islamic law and the Afghan government’s appeal for the country to
be governed democratically.
The U.S.
proposal calls for elections to be held after the formation of an interim
government. While it does not specify when, this could be viewed as a
compromise to the leaders in Kabul because the Taliban has described elections
as a red line in the past, deeming them a Western-imposed construct.
Islam also
plays a prominent role in the draft peace plan. According to the document, a
“High Council for Islamic Jurisprudence” would provide guidance and advice “to
all national and local government structures.” But in cases where the council
disagrees with the country’s judiciary, the position of the country’s Supreme
Court would be “final and binding.”
How to end the fighting
The proposal
calls for a cease-fire to begin with hours of the deal signing. The end of
hostilities is described as similar to the successful temporary reduction in violence that
preceded the signing of the U.S.-Taliban agreement, but this move would be “permanent
and comprehensive.”
The United
States and the international community for months have called for violence
levels to be reduced. Afghanistan remains the most violent conflict in the
world, with the Taliban and Afghan forces clashing across the country as the
militants look to expand their territory.
The U.S. draft
also calls on the Taliban to “remove their military structures and offices from
neighboring countries,” a reference to Pakistan.
The Taliban
deny the existence of such sanctuaries outside of Afghanistan and would
probably refuse to agree to a document calling for their elimination. But
reports including from the Pentagon claim
Pakistan has long hosted Taliban leaders and their families and provided
medical treatment to the movement’s fighters. The longtime relationship would
be complicated to untangle. Pakistan denies supporting the Taliban. [Here and far too frequently in this and
other Afghan War reporting the huge reality of the Taliban’s ethnic Pashtun
roots is overlooked. Present eastern
Afghanistan and western Pakistan are ancient Pashtun, whom the British empire divided
in half better to control them. –D]
Sharif
Hassan in Kabul and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this
report.
Updated March
10, 2021
What you need to know about the Afghan peace
process:
Latest: U.S. proposes interim
power-sharing government with Taliban in Afghanistan
The leaked U.S. plan to end the
war in Afghanistan
U.S. forces in Afghanistan cut
to 2,500, lowest level since 2001
How life under Taliban rule in
Afghanistan has changed — and how it hasn’t
U.S. to resume processing
thousands of stalled visas for Afghans who aided Americans
Susannah George
is The Washington Post's Afghanistan
and Pakistan bureau chief. She previously headed the Associated Press’s Baghdad
bureau and covered national security and intelligence from the AP’s Washington
bureau. Follow
The Peace
Movement Must Press For Diplomacy, Not More War, In Afghanistan. By
Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG.
Popular Resistance (8-24-21). Col. Ann
Wright was in Afghanistan to open the US Embassy in 2001. She recounts how the
recommendation then was to get the US military out as quickly as possible.
Instead, the Pentagon spent 20 years lying to the public and causing great
suffering to the Afghan people. Wright
exposes the truth about why the US stayed in for so long and explains the
politics of the country. She has started a campaign to push for maintaining
diplomatic relations with the new Taliban government and is calling for the CIA
to cease involvement with local militias that could evolve into a civil
war. -more-
Biden
acknowledges that the US has been defeated in Afghanistan war.
ANSWER Coalition via
uark.onmicrosoft.com Mon, Aug 16, 5:40
PM (15 hours ago)
Dear Dick --
The lightening fast collapse of the
Afghan government and the panicked evacuation currently being carried out by
U.S. forces in Kabul caps two decades of brutal and arrogant occupation of the
country. In the end, the political situation in Afghanistan today is the same
as it was before the invasion -- with the Taliban in control. It is important
to note that prior to the 9/11 attacks the U.S. government had no problem
dealing with the Taliban despite their repression of basic rights, including
banning girls from receiving an education.
The ANSWER Coalition was among the first
organizations in the United States to mobilize in opposition to the war at its
onset in 2001, and has consistently protested this senseless occupation that
has inflicted death and suffering on millions. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans
have died over the course of the war, and millions have been forced to flee
their homes.
For 20 years, hundreds of thousands of
foreign troops cycled through the country while a ferocious air war waged by
U.S. bombers and drones took a grave toll on Afghan civilians. Those
responsible for these war crimes and the entire criminal enterprise of the war
should be held to account.
The frenzied evacuation of Kabul has
dealt a blow to the image of U.S. imperial might around the world. Members of
the military, political and media elite are engaged in a blame game over who is
responsible, with many essentially adopting the position that the withdrawal
was a blunder and the U.S. occupation should have gone on literally forever.
But all those who initiated, managed and profited off of the war -- and those
who sold the war to the public -- share blame for the immense suffering it has
caused.
The following statement originally
published by Liberation News provides
addition details and analysis.
U.S.-backed Afghan government surrenders
to the Taliban
The unopposed entrance of Taliban forces
into Kabul marks the bitter conclusion of a 20-year long military adventure by
U.S. imperialism that senselessly inflicted death and suffering on an enormous
scale. The fact that the U.S.-backed Afghan government surrendered without a
fight is the clearest indication that it was nothing more than an extension of
U.S. imperialist power. The stark reality showed itself: either the U.S.
imperialist occupation that began 20 years ago would be sustained literally
forever, or this government would collapse upon the exit of U.S. military
forces. The Taliban coming to power in the mid-1990s was the consequence of the
CIA war against the socialist government of Afghanistan that had come to power
in 1978 during the Saur Revolution. The U.S. was perfectly willing to do
business with the Taliban prior to September 11 in spite of their odious
policies including their prohibition on the education of girls. The hope and
promise of the earlier socialist period was crushed by U.S. intervention and
the later collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, the people of Afghanistan
have lived under one reactionary government after another.
The complete and almost instantaneous
military and political collapse of the Afghan government has led to a situation
where the Taliban is presiding over the panicked evacuation of its opponents
from inside the capital city. Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October
2001, hundreds of thousands of Afghans died, millions were forced to flee their
homes, tens of thousands of working class enlisted soldiers from the United
States were killed or injured — and in the end the political situation in the
country is returning to a situation where the Taliban dominates the country.
The U.S./NATO invasion of Afghanistan
began October 7, 2001 in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks
against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Bush administration
refused the Taliban government’s offer to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial
in a Muslim country if the United States would present evidence showing that
al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack. Instead, Bush declared “no
negotiations with terrorists” and launched the invasion. The Bush
administration used the September 11 attack as a pretext to launch a sweeping
assault against Iraq and other Middle Eastern governments. The invasion of
Afghanistan was simply conceived of as a box-checking endeavor by the
neo-conservative government to wage a new round of aggression under the banner
of the “war on terror”. This imperialist wave of aggression toppled the
government in Iraq and Libya and hoped to topple the governments in Syria and
Iran as well. It has been a disaster for the people of the Middle East and
South Asia.
The pace of the Taliban’s advance was
stunning. In just nine days, the group took over every major city in the
country and then marched into Kabul without firing a shot. This was possible
because the Afghan government’s forces in most cases put up virtually no
resistance. Where fighting did occur, it frequently was carried out by elite
special forces or local militias. When the moment of truth arrived and it
became clear that the U.S. military really was leaving the country, the Afghan
National Army did not fight.
After the 2001 invasion, the United
States spent hundreds of billions of dollars creating and supporting the Afghan
government’s military. But this military served a government that had no
political legitimacy. Its source of authority was the U.S.-led foreign occupation
of the country, corruption was rampant and it failed to develop an appreciable
base of support among the country’s people. It was clear that the government
would not be able to hold out for long against the Taliban, so rather than
fight and die to prolong the inevitable the security forces mostly chose to
step aside.
Read more here
Please make an urgently needed donation
to the antiwar and anti-racism movement today. We can only carry on this
crucial work with contributions from supporters like you.
AFGHANISTAN IS NOT THE END
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Dear Friends,
I have just posted my culture of peace blog for
September, entitled :
AFGHANISTAN IS NOT THE END
You will find it at https://decade-culture-of-peace.org/blog/?p=1254
In case you have not already received it, this
month's CPNN bulletin is
entitled, AFGHANISTAN AND HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI.
You may find at
https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=24810.
If you wish to make a comment on the blog or
bulletin, you may write to
me at coordinator@cpnn-world.org and I will put your comment on line.
Thank you for your interest in the culture of
peace.
David Adams
David Corn. “The Afghanistan Debacle:
How Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Bamboozled the American Public.” An essential read
from David Corn’s This Land
newsletter. Mother Jones. August 16,
2021. DAVID CORN Mojo’s Washington, DC, Bureau ChiefBio | Follow.
Editor’s note: This must-read essay from David Corn appears in his new
newsletter, This Land. We’re still piloting the project, but given
the gravity of what’s happening in Afghanistan and David’s spot-on analysis, we
wanted to make sure as many readers as possible have a chance to read it. This Land is a new paid newsletter written by David three times a week to get
behind-the-scenes updates and his unvarnished take on the stories of the day,
and more, and subscribing costs just $5 a month—but we’re giving everyone a
sneak peek today for this important story. (You can sign up for a free 30-day
trial of This Land to
get more from David here.)
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and the calamitous collapse of
Kabul are the result of years of American failure to understand that nation and
that war—an immense failure that was covered up by the administrations of
George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
It was Bush and Dick Cheney who led the United States into what
would be the longest-running quagmire in American history. And they did so with
little strategic thought about what to do after chasing Osama bin Laden out of
Afghanistan and running the al-Qaeda-friendly Taliban out of power. Most
notoriously, before figuring out how to proceed in Afghanistan after the
initial attack, they launched the even more misguided war in Iraq on the basis
of lies and, in similar fashion, without a clear plan for what would come after
the fall of Saddam Hussein. As a result, over 4,400 American soldiers would
perish there, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians would die in the
years of post-invasion fighting. Meanwhile, nearly 6,300 American GIs and contractors
would lose their lives in Afghanistan. The arrogance and ineptitude of Bush,
Cheney, and their henchmen have led to the horrible images and tales we have
seen reported from Afghanistan in the past few days—which themselves are the
continuation of many years of horrible images and tales from the double-debacle
of these two wars.
But the Obama and Trump administrations were complicit in the Afghanistan
catastrophe, particularly for perpetuating the national security
establishment’s delusions—and lies—about the war. In 2019, the Washington
Post obtained access to a trove of confidential
US government documents about the Afghanistan war that were produced as part of
an inspector general’s project that investigated the root failures of the war
by conducting interviews with 400 insiders involved with the effort, including
generals, White House officials, diplomats, and Afghan officials. The findings
were damning. As the Post put it, “senior U.S. officials
failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year
campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding
unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”
That was a helluva secret to keep from the public. A sharp
indictment came from Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who was the White
House Afghan war czar for Bush and Obama. In 2015, he told the project’s
interviewers, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan—we
didn’t know what we were doing.” The guy in charge of Afghanistan
remarkably added, “We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were
undertaking.” Lute also observed, “If the American people knew the magnitude of
this dysfunction.” Yes, imagine if we did—though the vast corruption that
undermined the massive US rebuilding endeavor was well reported repeatedly over
the years. As were the continuous failures within the war itself. Yet Congress,
the media, and the citizenry paid insufficient attention to this never-ending,
going-nowhere conflict.
Several officials interviewed noted the US government—military HQ
in Kabul and the White House—consistently hoodwinked the public to make it seem
the US was winning in Afghanistan when it was not. Remember the steady stream
of assurances the Afghan military was becoming more capable of beating back the
Taliban? That was BS. A senior National Security Council official said there
was pressure from the Obama White House and the Pentagon to concoct stats
showing the American troop surge was succeeding: “It was impossible to create
good metrics. We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of
territory, and none of it painted an accurate picture. The metrics were always
manipulated for the duration of the war.”
John Sopko, who headed the office of the Special Inspector General
for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which ran the project, bottom-lined
this for the Post: “The American people have constantly been lied
to.”
Think about that. Americans have paid about $1 trillion for the
war in Afghanistan. Thousands have given their lives; many more have suffered
tremendous injuries. And the public was not told the truth about this venture.
It was bamboozled by successive administrations. The Post had
to twice sue SIGAR to force the release of these papers under the Freedom of
Information Act. The Trump administration preferred to keep this material under
wraps.
These documents were somewhat akin to the Pentagon Papers, the
7,000-page long history of the Vietnam War that was leaked to the media by
Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 and showed that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations
had routinely deceived the public about supposed progress in that war. (The
Afghanistan papers, unlike the Vietnam study, were not classified.) Yet
the Post’s big get did not detonate a major controversy, as the
Pentagon Papers did. This holy-shit scoop was duly noted, and then, as is often
the case, we all moved on. The Afghanistan war had long since become a
non-story, relegated to p. A15, if covered at all.
Now we are worried, perhaps angered, by the fall of Kabul, and we
fear for the Afghans—especially the women and girls, the human rights
activists, and those who aided US forces and Western journalists—who are about
to become inhabitants of the Taliban’s fundamentalist hellscape. But however we
reached this point—and whether or not President Joe Biden committed a grave
error with the US troop withdrawal and its management—one thing is clear: US
presidents, military officials, and policymakers were not straight with the
American public about Afghanistan. We never had an honest debate about what was
being done there and what could—and couldn’t—be accomplished. (For a snapshot
of the absurdity of the Afghanistan war, see this recent thread from Sen. Chris Murphy, a
Connecticut Democrat.)
As Afghans in Kabul, including President Ashraf Ghani, fled the
incoming Taliban this past weekend, the blame game kicked in. Who lost
Afghanistan? Well, it wasn’t ours to lose in the first place. But everyone is
to blame, for everyone lied or got it wrong: Bush and Cheney, Obama and Biden,
Trump and Pence, and now Biden and Harris. When Trump in February 2020 signed a
“peace deal” with the Taliban obligating the US troop withdrawal that has just
occurred, he told Americans that he expected the Taliban would act responsibly.
He claimed the Taliban was “tired of war.” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
called it a “hopeful moment.” Months later, there was intensified fighting. In
July, President Joe Biden, who had the choice of abiding by this deal or
confronting an anticipated expansion in Taliban attacks, presented a false
impression of what to expect with the troop pullout Trump had negotiated: “The
jury is still out, but the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban
overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
Ending the US military involvement in Afghanistan is a noble goal.
But while it was too easy for the United States, in the wake of 9/11, to launch
a forever war in the land that previously defied the British Empire, the Soviet
Union, and other outsiders, extrication was never going to be smooth and
cost-free. History doesn’t lie. And with no honest dialogue about the war, this
brutal finish is even more shocking.
The American public has been conned about Afghanistan for two
decades by successive administrations. Did any of those lies do the Afghan
people any good? That’s a tough question to answer this week. The 20 years of
fighting did keep the Taliban at bay, and for many Afghans that was a true
benefit. But the lies certainly were an offense against the American public and
the Constitution. The war in Afghanistan—prosecuted in ignorance and sold with
hubris and falsehoods—has been a scandal of the highest order, a fundamental violation
of the national trust. An awful aspect of this fiasco is that the perpetrators
and protectors of the Afghanistan fraud have not been held accountable, while
the Afghans now suffer. This is their tragedy. But it was built upon the profound and bipartisan malfeasance of
our government.
DEFEAT,
AUGUST 15, 2021
Tariq Ali, “The Debacle in Afghanistan.”
TARIQ ALI, 16 AUGUST 2021,
HTTPS://NEWLEFTREVIEW.ORG/SIDECAR/POSTS/DEBACLE-IN-AFGHANISTAN Sonny San Juan via uark.onmicrosoft.com Sat, Aug 21, 10:04 PM
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban on 15
August 2021 is a major political and ideological defeat for the American Empire.
The crowded helicopters carrying US Embassy staff to Kabul airport were
startlingly reminiscent of the scenes in Saigon – now Ho Chi Minh City – in
April 1975. The speed with which Taliban forces stormed the country was
astonishing; their strategic acumen remarkable. A week-long offensive ended
triumphantly in Kabul. The 300,000-strong Afghan army crumbled. Many refused to
fight. In fact, thousands of them went over to the Taliban, who immediately
demanded the unconditional surrender of the puppet government. President Ashraf
Ghani, a favourite of the US media, fled the country and sought refuge in Oman.
The flag of the revived Emirate is now fluttering over his Presidential palace.
In some respects, the closest analogy is not Saigon but nineteenth-century
Sudan, when the forces of the Mahdi swept into Khartoum and martyred General
Gordon. William Morris celebrated the Mahdi’s victory as a setback for the
British Empire. Yet while the Sudanese insurgents killed an entire garrison,
Kabul changed hands with little bloodshed. The Taliban did not even attempt to
take the US embassy, let alone target American personnel.
The twentieth anniversary of the ‘War on
Terror’ thus ended in predictable and predicted defeat for the US, NATO and
others who clambered on the bandwagon. However one regards the Taliban’s
policies – I have been a stern critic for many years – their achievement cannot
be denied. In a period when the US has wrecked one Arab country after another,
no resistance that could challenge the occupiers ever emerged. This defeat may
well be a turning point. That is why European politicians are whinging. They
backed the US unconditionally in Afghanistan, and they too have suffered a
humiliation – none more so than Britain.
Biden was left with no choice. The
United States had announced it would withdraw from Afghanistan in September
2021 without fulfilling any of its ‘liberationist’ aims: freedom and democracy,
equal rights for women, and the destruction of the Taliban. Though it may be
undefeated militarily, the tears being shed by embittered liberals confirm the
deeper extent of its loss. Most of them – Frederick Kagan in the NYT, Gideon Rachman in the FT – believe that the drawdown should
have been delayed to keep the Taliban at bay. But Biden was simply ratifying
the peace process initiated by Trump, with Pentagon backing, which saw an
agreement reached in February 2020 in the presence of the US, Taliban, India,
China and Pakistan. The American security establishment knew that the invasion
had failed: the Taliban could not be subdued no matter how long they stayed.
The notion that Biden’s hasty withdrawal has somehow strengthened the militants
is poppycock. MORE HTTPS://NEWLEFTREVIEW.ORG/SIDECAR/POSTS/DEBACLE-IN-AFGHANISTAN
The fact is that over twenty years, the
US has failed to build anything that might redeem its mission. The brilliantly
lit Green Zone was always surrounded by a darkness that the Zoners could not
fathom. In one of the poorest countries of the world, billions were spent
annually on air-conditioning the barracks that housed US soldiers and officers,
while food and clothing were regularly flown in from bases in Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait. It was hardly a surprise that a huge slum grew on the
fringes of Kabul, as the poor assembled to search for pickings in dustbins. The
low wages paid to Afghan security services could not convince them to fight
against their countrymen. The army, built up over two decades, had been
infiltrated at an early stage by Taliban supporters, who received free training
in the use of modern military equipment and acted as spies for the Afghan
resistance.
This was the miserable reality of
‘humanitarian intervention’. Though credit where credit is due: the country has
witnessed a huge rise in exports. During the Taliban years, opium production
was strictly monitored. Since the US invasion it has increased dramatically,
and now accounts for 90% of the global heroin market – making one wonder
whether this protracted conflict should be seen, partially at least, as a new
opium war. Trillions have been made in profits and shared between the Afghan
sectors that serviced the occupation. Western officers were handsomely paid off
to enable the trade. One in ten young Afghans are now opium addicts. Figures
for NATO forces are unavailable.
As for the status of women, nothing much
has changed. There has been little social progress outside the NGO-infested
Green Zone. One of the country’s leading feminists in exile remarked that
Afghan women had three enemies: the Western occupation, the Taliban and the
Northern Alliance. With the departure of the United States, she said, they will
have two. (At the time of writing this can perhaps be amended to one, as the
Taliban’s advances in the north saw off key factions of the Alliance before
Kabul was captured). Despite repeated requests from journalists and
campaigners, no reliable figures have been released on the sex-work industry
that grew to service the occupying armies. Nor are there credible rape
statistics – although US soldiers frequently used sexual violence against
‘terror suspects’, raped Afghan civilians and green-lighted child abuse by
allied militias. During the Yugoslav civil war, prostitution multiplied and the
region became a centre for sex trafficking. UN involvement in this profitable
business was well-documented. In Afghanistan, the full details are yet to
emerge.
Over 775,000 US troops have fought in
Afghanistan since 2001. Of those, 2,448 were killed, along with almost 4,000 US
contractors. Approximately 20,589 were wounded in action according to the
Defense Department. Afghan casualty figures are difficult to calculate, since
‘enemy deaths’ that include civilians are not counted. Carl Conetta of the
Project on Defense Alternatives estimated that at least 4,200–4,500 civilians
were killed by mid-January 2002 as a consequence of the US assault, both
directly as casualties of the aerial bombing campaign and indirectly in the
humanitarian crisis that ensued. By 2021, the Associated Press were reporting
that 47,245 civilians had perished because of the occupation. Afghan civil
rights activists gave a higher total, insisting that 100,000 Afghans (many of
them non-combatants) had died, and three times that number had been wounded.
In 2019, the Washington Post published a
2,000-page internal report commissioned by the US federal government to
anatomise the failures of its longest war: ‘The Afghanistan Papers’. It was
based on a series of interviews with US Generals (retired and serving),
political advisers, diplomats, aid workers and so on. Their combined assessment
was damning. General Douglas Lute, the ‘Afghan war czar’ under Bush and Obama,
confessed that ‘We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan –
we didn’t know what we were doing…We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what
we’re undertaking…If the American people knew the magnitude of this
dysfunction.’ Another witness, Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy Seal and a White
House staffer under Bush and Obama, highlighted the vast waste of resources:
‘What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion? … After
the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his
watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.’ He could have
added: ‘And we still lost’.
Who was the enemy? The Taliban,
Pakistan, all Afghans? A long-serving US soldier was convinced that at least
one-third of Afghan police were addicted to drugs and another sizeable chunk
were Taliban supporters. This posed a major problem for US soldiers, as an
unnamed Special Forces honcho testified in 2017: ‘They thought I was going to
come to them with a map to show them where the good guys and bad guys live…It
took several conversations for them to understand that I did not have that
information in my hands. At first, they just kept asking: “But who are the bad
guys, where are they?”’.
Donald Rumsfeld expressed the same
sentiment back in 2003. ‘I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in
Afghanistan or Iraq’, he wrote. ‘I read all the intel from the community, and
it sounds as though we know a great deal, but in fact, when you push at it, you
find out we haven’t got anything that is actionable. We are woefully deficient
in human intelligence.’ The inability to distinguish between a friend and an
enemy is a serious issue – not just on a Schmittean level, but on a practical
one. If you can’t tell the difference between allies and adversaries after an
IED attack in a crowded city market, you respond by lashing out at everyone,
and create more enemies in the process.
Colonel Christopher Kolenda, an adviser
to three serving Generals, pointed to another problem with the US mission.
Corruption was rampant from the beginning, he said; the Karzai government was
‘self-organised into a kleptocracy.’ That undermined the post-2002 strategy of
building a state that could outlast the occupation. ‘Petty corruption is like
skin cancer, there are ways to deal with it and you’ll probably be just fine.
Corruption within the ministries, higher level, is like colon cancer; it’s
worse, but if you catch it in time, you’re probably okay. Kleptocracy, however,
is like brain cancer; it’s fatal.’ Of course, the Pakistani state – where
kleptocracy is embedded at every level – has survived for decades. But things
weren’t so easy in Afghanistan, where nation-building efforts were led by an
occupying army and the central government had scant popular support.
What of the fake reports that the
Taliban were routed, never to return? A senior figure in the National Security
Council reflected on the lies broadcast by his colleagues: ‘It was their
explanations. For example, [Taliban] attacks are getting worse? “That’s because
there are more targets for them to fire at, so more attacks are a false
indicator of instability.” Then, three months later, attacks are still getting
worse? “It’s because the Taliban are getting desperate, so it’s actually an
indicator that we’re winning”…And this went on and on for two reasons, to make
everyone involved look good, and to make it look like the troops and resources
were having the kind of effect where removing them would cause the country to
deteriorate.’
All this was an open secret in the
chanceries and defence ministries of NATO Europe. In October 2014, the British
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon admitted that ‘Mistakes were made militarily,
mistakes were made by the politicians at the time and this goes back 10, 13
years…We’re not going to send combat troops back into Afghanistan, under any
circumstances.’ Four years later, Prime Minister Theresa May redeployed British
troops to Afghanistan, doubling its fighters ‘to help tackle the fragile
security situation’. Now the UK media is echoing the Foreign Office and
criticising Biden for having made the wrong move at the wrong time, with the
head of the British armed forces Sir Nick Carter suggesting a new invasion
might be necessary. Tory backbenchers, colonial nostalgists, stooge-journalists
and Blair-toadies are lining up to call for a permanent British presence in the
war-torn state.
What’s astonishing is that neither
General Carter nor his relays appear to have acknowledged the scale of the
crisis confronted by the US war machine, as set out in ‘The Afghanistan
Papers’. While American military planners have slowly woken up to reality,
their British counterparts still cling to a fantasy image of Afghanistan. Some
argue that the withdrawal will put Europe’s security at risk, as al-Qaeda
regroups under the new Islamic Emirate. But these forecasts are disingenuous.
The US and UK have spent years arming and assisting al-Qaeda in Syria, as they
did in Bosnia and in Libya. Such fearmongering can only function in a swamp of
ignorance. For the British public, at least, it does not seem to have cut
through. History sometimes presses urgent truths on a country through a vivid
demonstration of facts or an exposure of elites. The current withdrawal is
likely to be one such moment. Britons, already hostile to the War on Terror,
could harden in their opposition to future military conquests.
What does the future hold? Replicating
the model developed for Iraq and Syria, the US has announced a permanent
special military unit, staffed by 2,500 troops, to be stationed at a Kuwaiti
base, ready to fly to Afghanistan and bomb, kill and maim should it become
necessary. Meanwhile, a high-powered Taliban delegation visited China last
July, pledging that their country would never again be used as a launch pad for
attacks on other states. Cordial discussions were held with the Chinese Foreign
Minister, reportedly covering trade and economic ties. The summit recalled
similar meetings between Afghan mujahideen and Western leaders during the
1980s: the former appearing with their Wahhabi costumes and regulation
beard-cuts against the spectacular backdrop of the White House or 10 Downing
Street. But now, with NATO in retreat, the key players are China, Russia, Iran
and Pakistan (which has undoubtedly provided strategic assistance to the
Taliban, and for whom this is a huge politico-military triumph). None of them
wants a new civil war, in polar contrast to the US and its allies after the
Soviet withdrawal. China’s close relations with Tehran and Moscow might enable
it to work towards securing some fragile peace for the citizens of this
traumatised country, aided by continuing Russian influence in the north.
Much emphasis has been placed on the
average age in Afghanistan: 18, in a population of 40 million. On its own this
means nothing. But there is hope that young Afghans will strive for a better
life after the forty-year conflict. For Afghan women the struggle is by no
means over, even if only a single enemy remains. In Britain and elsewhere, all
those who want to fight on must shift their focus to the refugees who will soon
be knocking on NATO’s door. At the very least, refuge is what the West owes
them: a minor reparation for an unnecessary war.
By Danny Haiphong, Black
Agenda Report. Popular Resistance.org (8-26-22). The mid-point of August is an important
moment in history for Afghanistan and the world. It marks the anniversary of
the Taliban’s ouster of large portions of the U.S. military from Afghanistan,
putting a formal end to a two-decade occupation. U.S. forces left Afghanistan
just as murderously as they came in. Joe Biden’s administration oversaw
numerous war crimes during its haphazard “withdrawal” on August 15th 2021. This
included a drone strike that killed ten civilians and at least seven
children. The cost of the twenty-year total siege of Afghanistan is well
documented. -more-
“Chaos, poverty and hunger – The U.S. legacy in Afghanistan.”
teleSUR Desk.
Mronline.org (12-30-21). The U.S.-led mission fled the Afghanistan front of their
so-called "war on terror," leaving nothing but trash, extreme poverty
and universal unemployment.
Craig
Whitlock. “The Afghanistan
Papers: A Secret History of the War August 31, 2021.”
Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were
straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet
soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the
mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original
objectives.
Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable
guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted
to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the
Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan
and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was
no realistic prospect for an outright victory.
Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of
Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The
New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played
a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to
soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they
admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building
project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a
stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account
is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US
government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated,
version of the facts on the ground.
Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush
didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet
with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no
visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We
didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.”
The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders,
and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon
Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went
wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.
‘The Afghanistan Papers’ leaves a critical question
unanswered
Editor.
Mronline.org (5-17-22).
Craig Whitlock. The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. 2021. While Afghanistan may finally be free of
outside military occupation, Afghans are still suffering the deadly
consequences of 40 years of U.S.-led subversion and war.
MEDIA COVERAGE
Julie Hollar. “Media Concern for Afghans
Vanishes as US Sanctions Threaten Mass Famine.” Extra!
(March 2022). US tv interest
spiked during the Afghan withdrawal, and then, despite the humanitarian hunger
crisis, “due in no small part to US sanctions, ‘where is the outrage’?”
Julie
Hollar. “Biden’s multi-Billion Afghan theft gets scant mention
on TV News.” Mronline.org
(2-18-22).
Two months ago (FAIR.org, 12/21/21), I noted the striking
contrast between vocal media outrage—ostensibly grounded in concern for Afghan
people—over President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan,
and the relative silence over the growing humanitarian crisis in that country,
which threatens millions with life-threatening levels of famine.
COSTS OF WAR
US WITHDRAWAL (no planning for invasion, no planning
for defeat, but waste everywhere)
COSTS OF
WAR: WITHDRAWAL August 2021
The
withdrawal from the devastating war on Afghanistan
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From: Sadanand,
Nanjundiah (Physics and Engineering Physics) <sadanand@ccsu.edu>
Date: Sat, Apr 30, 2022 at 9:53 PM
Subject: The withdrawal from the devastating war on Afghanistan
No Gun Left
Behind? April 29, 2022, Al Jazeera
Almost 80
U.S. aircraft—with control panels smashed out—were left abandoned at
Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport when the United States pulled out
last August. The United States left behind nearly 42,000 pieces of night vision, surveillance, biometric, and positioning
equipment in the Taliban-controlled country.
By the time the last U.S. transport aircraft
left Afghan airspace on Aug. 30, 2021, 70 percent of U.S. weapons given to the
Afghan forces over the past 16 years were left in the country as well as nearly
$48 million worth of ammunition.
In all, the United States left behind more than $7 billion worth of weapons and equipment
when it left Afghanistan last year, according to a congressional-mandated
Defense Department report first seen by CNN. The equipment was transferred to
the Afghan government, which collapsed even before the U.S. withdrawal last
year.
The detritus is another hidden cost of the U.S. and NATO military withdrawal that
ended two decades of Western involvement in the war-torn country.
The news comes as the Taliban have been on a
killing spree against perceived opponents of the regime in recent weeks, and a
spate of terrorist groups that the United States promised to monitor from “over
the horizon” in bases in the Persian Gulf have also made a resurgence. The
Taliban have also cracked down on human rights in the war-torn country,
recently moving to ensure girls don’t go to school.
“With these weapons, the Taliban are feeling
power to implement their barbaric rules on the people of Afghanistan,” said
Zelgai Sajad, the former Afghan consul general in New York. “They are holding
many military shows with these weapons in the cities and trying to convince
people to obey them.”
In recent weeks, the Taliban have been seen parading
through the streets of Afghanistan in U.S. armored vehicles that were first
provided to the Afghan army. The United States left 23,825 Humvees in Afghanistan, including armored gun truck
variants, and nearly 900 combat vehicles, officials familiar with the report
said. “These weapons are potentially in the service of crushing human rights,”
said Aref Dostyar, Afghanistan’s former consul general in Los Angeles.
The Defense Department insists that it’s
unlikely the Taliban could use the American weapons left behind because they
require specialized maintenance and technical support that was once provided by
U.S. contractors.
But officials familiar with the report are
concerned that the Taliban could use the small arms, at least. There are more than 250,000 automatic rifles, 95
drones, and more than a million mortar rounds that require little training
to use. And if the Taliban don’t use the systems, the cash-starved militant
group could pass them on to American adversaries or they could find their way
into the hands of terror groups.
The Pentagon insists that U.S. forces were able
to destroy or render inoperable much
of the equipment and weapons provided to Afghanistan before the troop
withdrawal, a figure that amounted to $18.6
billion.
“It is important to remember that the $7.12
billion figure cited in the department’s recent report to Congress corresponds
to [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] equipment and not U.S.
military equipment used by our forces,” said Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Defense
Department spokesperson. “Nearly all equipment used by U.S. military forces in
Afghanistan was either retrograded or
destroyed prior to our withdrawal and is not part of the $7.12 billion
figure cited in the report.”
And the Pentagon has tried to get some of the
money back. In April, the Pentagon told the Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction that it had tried to get back money previously
provided to the Afghan government to build up its military but had failed due
to the collapse of the Afghan banking system.
Sajad, the Afghan
diplomat, doesn’t believe that the Taliban can use the weapons for long. “In
the long term, I am not sure that the Taliban have the capacity to protect and
repair these weapons,” he said. [But the best news of all is the
envigoration of the US MIC by renewed military contracts.]
Zachary Scott. “Biden Lies
(Again) as He Covertly Continues the U.S. Forever War Against the Afghan People.” CovertAction Magazine, Jan 18, 2022, 09:19 am.
Over the past few months, U.S. lawmakers, the Afghan government,
and the international community have called on Washington to stop strangling
the Afghan economy as its people continue to suffer from a U.S.-created
humanitarian crisis.
On December 22nd, the Biden administration effectively rejected
those calls, opting instead
for half-measures that
will do little to counter the effects of stringent economic sanctions imposed
on the Taliban or to improve the material well-being of the Afghan people.
Contrary to the narrative of U.S. politicians and journalists, the August 2021
withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan did not mark the end of the
United States’ so-called “forever war” but rather a shift in U.S. policy—from
direct military intervention and occupation to one based on economic sanctions
and indirect political subversion. Although the tactics changed, the goal is
the same: the accumulation of wealth and power through class warfare against
the Afghan people. […]
The post Biden Lies (Again) as He Covertly
Continues the U.S. Forever War Against the Afghan People appeared
first on CovertAction Magazine.
BIDEN AND AFGHAN
TREASURY
“‘Adding Insult to Injury’:
Afghan Activist & 9/11 Mother Condemn Biden’s Seizure of Afghan Funds.” FEBRUARY
15, 2022
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/15/afghanistan_assets_joe_biden_executive_order
GUESTS
Masuda Sultan Afghan
American women’s rights activist, part of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council and a
founding member of Unfreeze Afghanistan.
Phyllis Rodriguez member of
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows whose son Greg was killed in the
World Trade Center attack.
Medea Benjamin co-founder
of CodePink and Unfreeze Afghanistan.
President
Biden is facing mounting criticism for seizing $7 billion of Afghanistan’s
federal reserves frozen in the United States. Biden is giving half of the money
to families of September 11 victims while Afghanistan faces a humanitarian
catastrophe. We speak to two of the founders of a new campaign called Unfreeze
Afghanistan, a women-led initiative to lift sanctions and other economic
restrictions on Afghanistan, and a woman who lost her son in the World Trade
Center attack, who says the money should stay in Afghanistan. “The suffering of
the Afghan people at the hands of the United States and its allies is
reprehensible. This is adding insult to injury,” says Phyllis Rodriguez, a
member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, whose son Greg was
killed in the World Trade Center attack and who says 9/11 families want
“information, not remuneration.” Afghan American activist Masuda Sultan says
continued lack of access to money and basic services in Afghanistan will
inspire a new wave of underground terrorism in the country, “endangering the
entire world.” Biden’s order is gravely hypocritical, adds Medea Benjamin,
critiquing the administration for “putting themselves forward as these great
saviors of Afghanistan” for releasing Afghan-owned assets as “aid” while taking
no punitive action against Saudi Arabia, whose citizens led the 9/11 attack.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy
Now!, democracynow.org, The
War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Afghanistan’s
central bank is condemning President Biden’s decision to seize $7 billion of
Afghan assets frozen in U.S. banks. On Friday, Biden signed an executive order
to split the money between the families of 9/11 victims and humanitarian
assistance for Afghanistan. The United States froze the money after the Taliban
seized power six months ago today. The United Nations and many aid groups had
been calling on the Biden administration, as well as the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, to unfreeze all Afghan funds in order to stem
Afghanistan’s growing economic and humanitarian catastrophe.
Congressmember
Ilhan Omar blasted Biden’s decision. She tweeted, “There wasn’t a single Afghan
among the hijackers. Meanwhile, we are giving BILLIONS of dollars to
the governments of Saudi Arabia & Egypt who have direct ties to the 9/11
terrorists. Even if this weren’t the case, punishing millions of starving ppl
for these crimes is unconscionable,” she said.
Former
Afghan President Hamid Karzai also criticized Biden’s decision. MORE https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/15/afghanistan_assets_joe_biden_executive_order
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much, all, for being
with us. Phyllis Rodriguez of September 11th Families
for Peaceful Tomorrows lost her son Greg Rodriguez on the 100th
floor of the World Trade Center. He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. And Masuda
Sultan and Medea Benjamin, who have just formed the group Unfreeze Afghanistan. Masuda Sultan, Afghan American, lost 19
members of her family when the U.S. first invaded Afghanistan and bombed a
farmhouse they had taken refuge in outside of Kandahar. Of course, Medea
Benjamin with CodePink.
Pullout
starts new U.S. era, president says (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), Sep 01, 2021
Pullout starts new U.S. era, president says Biden calls end to remaking nations
using military force. COMPILED
BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Sep
01, 2021 Read more...
Forwarded by Pat Snyder.
|
2:00
PM (8 minutes ago) |
|
Or
will he follow Obama's "pivot" to China?
The
Dems/Repugs War Party and MICCWH Complex think the China enemy will
fuel the militarized jobs program and win elections.
Dick
US SANCTIONS V. AFGHAN PEOPLE
Call
Today: US Policy & Afghan Famine
Peace
Action 12-9-21
Dick,
A couple of weeks ago I
wrote to you about the "human-made" famine in Afghanistan that U.S.
policy is contributing to.[1] Many of you responded to our call to action.
Thank you! Our campaign is building momentum, and reaching key policymakers,
because of our members' efforts.
Thanks to the hearing from
you, along with other concerned constituents, some progressive members of
Congress are speaking out on the issue. That's critical because most people in
the U.S. -- and even some members of Congress -- know very little about this
issue.
The United States, seeking
to punish the Taliban for their takeover in Afghanistan, is using its power to
freeze critical aid and funds including the funds in the Afghanistan Central
Bank. Humanitarian relief providers and human rights groups are calling on the
U.S. to end this practice as the economy in Afghanistan crumbles and many
Afghans go hungry.
This is partially a
continuation of the chronic U.S. overuse of sanctions. As you know, too often
the U.S. seeks to target an authoritarian government and ends up punishing
civilians. But in this case the U.S. is actually not just sanctioning
Afghanistan, it is freezing $9.5 billion dollars of Afghan funds at a time that
the Afghan people need resources and the Afghan economy is failing.
Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) has issued a
Congressional letter calling on the Biden administration to end the U.S.
policies doing the most harm in Afghanistan.
Please call your Representative today and urge them to add their
name as a signer to this critical letter on Afghanistan's famine.
Here’s all you need to do -
1. Dial the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121.
2. Ask to speak to your Representative.
3.Once connected, say (in your own words as much as you can):
“Hello, my name is (your name) and I am a constituent from (your
city) and I am a member of Peace Action. I am calling because I want to ask
__________ [name of Representative] to sign on to the Congressional sign-on
letter Representative Jayapal is circulating regarding Afghanistan and the
humanitarian crisis there. The letter asks President Biden to end the harsh
economic sanctions, asset freezes, and other measures that are creating an
economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
I am happy that the U.S. has pulled U.S. troops out of
Afghanistan after 20 years, but I am disturbed by the reports of severe hunger
and economic collapse coming out of Afghanistan. We should be supporting the
Afghan people with aid, not causing more suffering after many years of war.”
Thank you to all of you who can make this call. I've been
writing a lot lately, but that's because peace issues are being voted on in Congress
a lot these days!
By blocking transfers from the roughly $9.5 billion in
Afghanistan Central Bank accounts in the U.S. the Biden administration is
starving the Afghan economy of oxygen. The Taliban are brutal and oppressive,
and the administration may need to map out a strategy to deal with that. But
destroying the entire nation's economy is not the way to address that. Many
Afghans and aid organizations on the ground are asking the U.S. to take a more
compassionate path. Cratering the Afghan economy, which is what many economists
worry is happening, doesn't just target the Taliban. It destabilizes the entire
country and harms the health and wellbeing of millions.
Winter can always be harsh in Afghanistan. But the pictures of
suffering and deprivation coming out of Afghanistan right now are
heartbreaking. U.S. foreign policy should not include holding a whole nation
hostage because we have issues with the government that took over when we left
Afghanistan.
Please call your Representative today.
Thank you for all you do for a more peaceful world,
Jon Rainwater
Peace Action
[1] Afghanistan Facing Famine, UN, World Bank, US Should Adjust
Sanctions, Economic Policies, Human Rights Watch, November 11, 2021
|
|
China in New Afghanistan
M. K. Bhadrakumar. “China’s diplomacy on a roll in Kabul.”
Mronline.org
(4-1-22)
Last Thursday, the Acting Foreign Minister of
the Taliban interim government Amir Khan Muttaqi made a stunning remark to
greet the visiting Chinese Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Kabul when
he said, “This is the most important high-level delegation received by
Afghanistan.”
Marge Piercy.
“Out of Afghanistan.”
Mronline.org (11-29-21).
This long bloody madness has
ended. Can we learn to love peace at last?
CONTENTS #27
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/omni-afghanistan-newsletter-27-october.html
John
Potash, CovertAction Magazine. Purpose of the US invasion and Occupation.
David
Adams, Beyond Afghanistan….Afghanistans.
Transcend Media Service.
Richard
Falk, Crimes in Kabul and Washington, D.C.
Transcend MS.
Ed
Rampell, US Defeat a Wakeup Call to US Leaders and Public?
CovertAction Magazine.
Alba
Ciudad, US Massacres of Civilians in Afghanistan. Orinoco
Tribune.
TomDispatch,
Vijay Prashad, US Purposes and Results.
Brian
Becker, US Empire and Afghanistan 1978 to Present. ANSWER Coalition and
The
Intercept.
As’ad
Abu Khalil, US and Soviet Occupations and Defeats in Afghanistan Compared.
Rabbi Waskow v. “most media coverage.”
UNAC,
“we have not been told the truth throughout the 20 year occupation and war.”
Scott
Ritter, “It Was All Based on Lies,” Popular
Resistance.
ANSWER
Coalition, Biden Acknowledges Defeat and Return to Taliban of 20 Years
Ago.
Contents #26.
END
AFGHANISTAN ANTHOLOGY #28: US DEFEATED
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