"Side
effects" of the war
While the U.S.
assumed an easy victory, events did not develop as they planned or expected.
The mass discontent against the occupiers, the increasing ability of the
Taliban and other reactionary opposition forces to make use of that discontent,
and the help provided them by the Pakistani army were the main factors that
caused the U.S. to get stuck in a long war that Washington could not abandon.
The deterioration of the situation forced the U.S. and its allies to increase
their troop strength to more than 150,000, not counting private military
contractors. This meant a huge increase in the financial cost of the war. The
imperialists might have been prepared to pay that price, seeing it as an
investment for their long-term interests. It is estimated that the Afghan war
cost the U.S. 100 billion dollars a year at its peak. That is a huge expense,
especially in view of the financial crisis world capitalism is sunk in.
U.S. forces have
lost nearly 2,100 soldiers so far, while almost 20,000 were injured in the
Afghanistan war. According to The New York Times,
"45 percent of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are claiming
disability benefits. A quarter of those veterans – 300,000 to 400,000,
depending on the study – say they suffer from some form of post-traumatic
stress disorder." (13 October 2012)
Since American
soldiers have been trained to treat the masses of ordinary people as the enemy
or "terrorists" and do not show mercy even to children and elderly,
many of those who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq have been mentally reshaped
and disfigured to become eager killers. A few may now be employed as
"security contractors" or in higher ranking positions, but others are
simply left to fester.
Some reports on
the "side effects" of such horrible wars actually unveil the
terrifying nature of these wars themselves. For example, a report a few months
ago disclosed the rape and murder of a 65 year-old woman in Delaware, whose
naked body was found in a wooded area. She was murdered by a combat veteran,
Staff Sgt. Dwight L. Smith Jr., 25 years old, with no previous conviction. A
letter he wrote to his father explains much more:
"I am going
to be honest with you dad. I have killed a lot of men and children. Some that
didn't even do anything for me to kill them. Also some that begged for mercy. I
have a problem. I think I got addicted to killing people. I could kill someone
go to sleep wake up and forget that it ever happened. It got normal for me to
be that way. I never wanted to be this way. I just took my job way to serious.
I took things to the extreme. Anyone can tell you that I changed. It is like
being a completely different person." (NYT,
9 November 2012)
When the
imperialists invaded Afghanistan, they were in a situation of covering up their
real and vicious plans for the region, and falsely claim that they wanted to
liberate the country from the fundamentalists. They claimed they wanted to free
women, reconstruct Afghanistan based on democratic principles and achieve peace
They pronounced an endless list of promises. But the people of Afghanistan did
not have to wait to see the real results. The reality of the imperialist war
became apparent right away. The occupiers raided houses in the middle of night,
stopped and searched ordinary people, killed women and men, children and
elderly and whole families in cold blood. Soldiers shot and blew up people on
the ground and air bombardments and missile strikes murdered them from far
away.
The people soon
saw the rule of warlords and other Islamic fundamentalists, and their
overlords, the U.S. and its imperialist allies. People soon saw the destruction
of their economy and their livelihoods, and many became homeless. And they soon
witnessed an economy based on the drug trade and imperialist
"donations". Women soon saw the return of Islamic laws and
restrictions that increased the level of violence against women in all aspects
of the society.
Through the twelve
years of war so far tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and many
more injured. The latest International Amnesty report released on 23 May says
that more than 2,700 civilians were killed and 4,800 injured in 2012 alone. The
report confirms the torture of prisoners at the hands of the U.S. and their
Afghan "security forces" (which should be called mercenary militias
and death squads). It also confirms the extensive violence against women in
official institutions and in society. The report stresses that the war has left
almost half a million people displaced (not counting those forced to flee the
country), many of them living in camps with limited or no access to water,
health services and education. (AI Report on Afghanistan 2013). These are the
results of a war that was supposed to bring prosperity; democracy and peace for
the people.
In sum, this war
has done much to expose the imperialists' lies and has driven many Afghans into
the arms of the Taliban, especially in the southern and eastern part of the
country, despite their bitter experience when the Taliban were in power and the
hatred they might have for the Taliban. Due to the lack of a strong
revolutionary force in Afghanistan, the U.S. might be able to reduce the
political damage to themselves, but the damage to the people and the country
has already been done.
What is
the purpose of the new strategy?
Given the
political, military and economic problems in sustaining this war indefinitely
with no success in sight, and due to questions of strategic priorities, there
is tremendous pressure on the U.S. to reduce its forces and continue the war in
a different way.
This means cutting
back on the number of troops and keeping enough soldiers in Afghanistan to
enable them to control the country and conduct the war mainly with Afghan
soldiers. This brings to mind the U.S.'s attempt to "Vietnamize" the
war in Vietnam after it became apparent that military victory was not likely.
At the same time the
U.S. has been trying to draw the Taliban to the negotiating table. There have
been some talks but they have not gotten anywhere so far, at least according to
the media, yet the U.S. is still trying to get the Taliban to negotiate. Maybe
the U.S. has reached the conclusion that they cannot defeat the Taliban
militarily, but more importantly, it sees no problem in principle in sharing
power in Afghanistan with the Taliban. There might be some contradictions, some
political price because the Taliban were the initial target of the war, but the
U.S. seems to have come to the conclusion that it is better off to pay that
price.
Does this mean
that the U.S. imperialists have accepted defeat and are retreating, or that
they have achieved their goals and are making a substantial change in their
Afghanistan strategy for that reason? As mentioned before, there is no short
answer, but the shortest answer is that they were not defeated but did not
achieve their initial goals either. They certainly encountered obstacles and
were unable to overcome most of them.
The imperialists
attempted to overcome these problems by allocating more money and troops. At
the same time they limited their goals and had to reveal the real nature of
their occupation to the ordinary masses in Afghanistan, to the world and back
home and drop the fake promises under which they had concealed their war of
aggression, such as liberating women, reconstructing the county and so on. Not
only did they not get rid of the Taliban, they added another fundamentalist and
corrupt government, not to mention the twelve years of atrocities by the
occupiers that the people of Afghanistan will never forget.
To look at it from
another angle, the U.S. has not abandoned or diluted the main goal it was
seeking to achieve: to set up a bastion in this region that is so strategically
important for American global dominance. But first of all this goal has already
exacted a very high price. Secondly, even if the U.S. were to succeed, this
victory might not be stable because of the complexity of the contradictions in
the region. In fact, the interaction of so many contradictions in this region
that has caught the U.S. and its allies by surprise are what has made this
region very unstable for most of the last two centuries.
The occupation of
Afghanistan and the functioning of the occupiers gave rise to an intense
contradiction between the people and the imperialists that will continue in the
years ahead with the presence of the U.S. forces, and given the masses'
discontent both politically and economically that is a big source of potential
instability. But there are also other contradictions, including the
contradictions between the various imperialists and regional powers. Russia,
China, India, Pakistan, Iran and others will continue to manoeuvre and cause
problems for the U.S. The contradiction between the U.S. and the Taliban is
another source of instability. There is also the contradiction between the U.S.
and its appointed government that is not helpful for the U.S. imperialists.
The U.S. war in
Afghanistan is not a thing of the past, and opposition to the occupation of
Afghanistan should not be either.
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