Thegoodbadtruth's Blog

The last act in the Afghanistan drama December 2, 2009

American troops in Afghanistan (Courtesy of wilpf.org)

The upcoming surge in Afghanistan announced by Barack Obama yesterday is not the call to action that many believe it to be. On the contrary, it’s the beginning of the last act of this predictable disaster.

However many troops we throw at the problem, we shall never win the military battle, and Obama knows it. The fact that he is putting in 30,000 more mainly regular combat troops is a clear sign that he accepts that the coalition cannot win militarily, and so all the Taliban have to do, and will do, is to adopt a slightly less high-profile attitude and wait things out.

But they will still be in a position to continue IUD attacks on convoys and patrols. The same goes for suicide attacks and car bombings in Kabul and elsewhere.

What Obama is doing here is preparing the coalition to leave Afghanistan without losing military face. That will be achieved and so much the better.

The telltale sign that we are not there to win the war is that the mix of troops he is sending does not suggest that he seriously envisages taking the battle to the Taliban, which would be the only way to win it. That strategy would involve the heavy and sustained use of special forces and other specialised units, whereas many of the 30,000 are regular troops who are not able to take that kind of advanced combat to the enemy.

Thus it would seem that the coalition will content itself to limiting the damage in terms of territorial and troop losses, shoring up Karzai as best as possible, then leaving in 2012 at the very latest.

That makes good sense.

I was a supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan and its initial, limited goal of defeating the Taliban regime and disrupting Bin Laden’s organisational capacity. I even supported the continuing occupation, though with some reserves, in the hope that maybe the West could at least help establish an effective power seat for Afghani leaders, whilst knowing at the same time that dismantling the tribal system is impossible.

The trouble is that we have done things badly and are now fighting for a country which will most certainly not change many centuries of tradition for the example we have offered as a replacement.

As a Brit, I do not want British – or American or any other – soldiers to die for what is going on there now.

Earlier this year Karzai’s government voted in laws legalising the physical punishment of women, their imprisonment at home, and their obligation to submit to sexual demands – in other words, Karzai legalised rape.

Afghan officials  have diverted unimagined amounts of aid financing to their overseas bank accounts and tribal leaders have used the cash they obtained after promising cooperation to settle deals with other tribal leaders and the Taliban for purely tribal power reasons. Whatever the West does, that will not stop by the very nature of how the aid is used, which is by Afghans. We cannot rebuild Afghanistan using Halliburton.

Afghan army and police units are heavily infiltrated by the Taliban and have shown a marked unwillingness to fight, that which is normal seeing as Afghanis see, and have always seen, foreign troops as being temporary invaders. Most Afghanis only “do it for the money” and do it half-heartedly. Who can blame them? After all, they will still be thre when the coalition has left….

Those are not situations we should be sending troops to die for. It will surely be a terrible blow to women’s rights, human rights, democracy and the fight against fundamentalist Muslim terrorists, but sometimes you have to know when you’re beat.

We’re beat, and Obama wisely knows it.

There’s no need to hang our heads in shame though. After all, Afghanistan has never been brought to its knees for centuries, although many have tried.

These are the words of someone who was reflecting upon the nature of conflict in Afghanistan:

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains and the women come out to cut up your remains just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your god like a soldier.”

Who was he? Rudyard Kipling in “The Young British Soldier.”