Details of U.S. victory are a little premature
Eric Margolis
22 December 2002
Toronto Sun
On the frigid night of Dec. 24, 1979, Soviet airborne forces
seized Kabul airport. Elite Alpha Group commandos sped to the
presidential palace, burst into the bedroom of Afghan President
Hafizullah Amin and gunned him down. Columns of Soviet armour
crossed the border and raced south toward Kabul.
It took Soviet forces only a few days to occupy Afghanistan. They
installed a puppet ruler, Babrak Karmal. Moscow proclaimed it had
invaded Afghanistan to "liberate" it from "feudalism and Islamic
extremism" and "nests of terrorists and bandits."
Soviet propaganda churned out films of Red Army soldiers playing
with children, building schools, dispensing medical care. Afghan
women were to be liberated from the veil and other backward
Islamic customs. The Soviet Union and its local communist allies
would bring Afghanistan into the 20th century.
Two years later, Afghans had risen against their Soviet
"liberators" and were waging a low-intensity guerrilla war. Unable
to control the countryside, Moscow poured more troops into
Afghanistan. The Soviet-run Afghan Army had poor morale and less
fighting zeal. The KGB-run Afghan secret police, KhAD, jailed and
savagely tortured tens of thousands of "Islamic terrorists," then
called "freedom fighters" in the West.
Fast forward to December, 2002, and a disturbing sense of deja vu.
A new foreign army has easily occupied Afghanistan, overthrown the
"feudal" Taliban government and installed a puppet regime in
Kabul. Western media churn out the same rosy, agitprop stories the
Soviets did about liberating Afghanistan, freeing women, educating
children. The only real difference is that kids in today's TV
clips are waving American instead of Soviet flags. The invaders
have changed; the propaganda remains the same.
America's invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001, was billed as
an epic military victory and the model of future imperial
expeditions to pacify Third World malefactors. Since then, news
about this war-ravaged land has grown scarce. America's limited
attention has turned elsewhere.
Afghanistan in chaos
In fact, America's Afghan adventure has gotten off to as poor a
start as that of the Soviet Union. The U.S.-installed ruler of
Kabul, veteran CIA asset Hamid Karzai, must be protected from his
own people by up to 200 U.S. bodyguards. Much of Afghanistan is in
chaos, fought over by feuding warlords and drug barons.
There are almost daily attacks on U.S. occupation forces. My old
mujahedin sources say U.S. casualties and equipment losses in
Afghanistan are far higher than Washington is reporting -- and are
rising.
American troops are operating from the old Soviet bases at Bagram
and Shindand, retaliating, like the Soviets, against mujahedin
attacks on U.S. forces by heavily bombing nearby villages. The CIA
is trying to assassinate Afghan nationalist leaders opposed to the
Karzai regime in Kabul, in particular my old acquaintance Gulbadin
Hekmatyar.
North of the Hindu Kush mountains, America's Afghan ally, the
Tajik-Uzbek Northern Alliance, has long been a proxy of the
Russians. The chief of the Russian general staff and head of
intelligence directed the Alliance in its final attack on the
Taliban last fall. Russia then supplied Alliance forces with $100
million in arms, and is providing $85 million worth of
helicopters, tanks, artillery and spare parts, as well as military
advisors and technicians. Russia now dominates much of northern
Afghanistan.
The Taliban, according to the United Nations drug agency, had
almost shut down opium-morphine-heroin production. America's ally,
the Northern Alliance, has revived the illicit trade. Since the
U.S. overthrew the Taliban, opium cultivation has soared from 185
tons a year to 2,700. The Northern Alliance, which dominates the
Kabul regime, finances its arms-buying and field operations with
drug money. President George Bush's war on drugs collided with his
war on terrorism -- and lost. The U.S. is now, in effect,
colluding in the heroin trade.
Anti-American Afghan forces -- the Taliban, al-Qaida, and others
-- have regrouped and are mounting ever larger attacks on U.S.
troops and, reports the UN, even reopening training camps. Taliban
mujahedin are using the same sophisticated early alert system they
developed to monitor Soviet forces in the 1980s to warn of
American search-and-destroy missions before they leave base. As a
result, U.S. troops keep chasing shadows. Canadians fared no
better.
In the sole major battle since the Taliban's overthrow, Operation
Anaconda, U.S. forces were bested by veteran Afghan mujahedin,
losing two helicopters.
The ongoing cost of Afghan operations is a closely guarded secret.
Earlier this year, the cost of stationing 8,000 American troops,
backed by warplanes and naval units, was estimated at $5 billion
US monthly!
The CIA spends millions every month to bribe Pushtun warlords.
Costs will rise as the U.S. expands bases in Afghanistan and
neighbouring Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan and Uzbekistan -- all
placed along the planned U.S.-owned pipeline that will bring
Central Asian oil south through Afghanistan.
The UN reports the Taliban and al-Qaida on the offensive, Afghan
women remain veiled and the country is in a dangerous mess.
Declaring victory in Afghanistan may have been premature.
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