By Joseph A. Kechichian Special to Gulf News
Published: September 16, 2009, 23:10
The war for Afghanistan is not going well, though Washington is now engaged in a full-fledged assessment to see what can, or ought, to be done to secure internal stability. Policy-makers are perplexed. Some are calling for a full withdrawal. Others contemplate the use of decisive force, ostensibly to support Kabul as it asserts itself and denies the Taliban additional gains.
It may be useful to remember that no foreign power ever tamed that land and chances are excellent that these latest calls to 'get real about Afghanistan' will come to naught.
Throughout history, invaders and conquerors almost never missed an opportunity to try their luck in Afghanistan, allegedly because the country was a crossroads between East and West. The renowned stop on the famed Silk Road was transformed in the late 19th century into a buffer state by both Britain and Russia, as the two empires played their 'Great Game', which conveniently ignored indigenous needs. Unsurprisingly, and brilliantly told by Rudyard Kipling in his 1888 book The Man Who Would Be King, the British adventurers disregarded genuine needs all around them. In the book, two scruffy swashbucklers are tired of just being "soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer ... [railroad] engine-drivers, petty contractors" and more. They decide to become kings instead but ruin the place and, of course, themselves.
It would take three Anglo-Afghan wars - and nearly 10,000 British, along with 100,000 Afghan fatalities - for London to finally grant Kabul its full independence in 1919. At the height of empire folly, few worried about the conquered, so that locals could flourish or perhaps pull themselves out of poverty. In time, King Amanullah introduced minor reforms intended to modernise the country, including the education of women, an abolition of the traditional Muslim veil, and similar rules that alienated tribal and religious leaders. What followed were decades-long power struggles between various tribes whose internal disputes were systematically manipulated by foreign forces.
Afghanistan was ostensibly neutral but, in fact, fell victim to the East-West rivalries. Starting in 1978, the country suffered continuous and brutal civil wars, which eventually led to the 1979 Soviet invasion. Legendary Soviet cruelty towards the untamable Afghans increased the number of casualties among the hapless population, which goaded Charlie Wilson, a Democratic representative from Texas who believed in Ronald Reagan's 'evil empire', to push for Operation Cyclone.
The latter, a US Congress-funded CIA covert operation, secured an estimated one billion dollars to equip the hard-liner Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Afghan mujahideen. What became known as 'Charlie Wilson's War' supplied Afghans with Stinger missiles, but Congress refused to allocate a few million dollars more towards development programmes. Hekmatyar eventually fell from grace when he became a Taliban leader. In the event, and after a futile decade that recorded close to 15,000 Soviet deaths and perhaps up to two million Afghan casualties, Moscow withdrew in 1989. It too chose to ignore indigenous needs that might have cost very little.
After 9/11, George W. Bush decided to invade and topple the Taliban government and by late 2001 the United Nations Security Council authorised the creation of an International Security Assistance Force composed of Nato troops to share the burden.
Today, there are those who believe that Nato troops will prevail where everyone else failed, with wily politicians selling the snake-oil notion that this war is 'winnable'. US President Barack Obama has maintained that the conflict is the "right war", or as he put it recently, "a war of necessity". He pledged that he would not allow a resurgent Taliban to restore its brutal regime or re-establish the country as a terrorist safe haven. Towards that end, he promised to "pursue a new strategy", which will essentially increase American military strength to 62,000 troops, supposing that "more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more non-military assistance [will] accomplish the mission there".
Rather than send additional combat troops to Afghanistan, the president may wish to focus on his non-military assistance vow, perhaps by recruiting an army of physicians and nurses, construction engineers, sanitation workers (as was the case in the 1960s when the Kennedy Administration funded international relief agencies to construct Kabul's first sewer system) and idle police officers who should see the world - about 100,000 capable civilian cadres to train as many Afghans.
Since 2001, more than 5,000 poorly trained and inadequately equipped Afghan security forces have died, along with 1,500 Nato troops. An estimated 25,000 civilians perished as well in what has become a war of attrition. There are no military victories over the horizon and the idea of creating a 400,000-strong security force is truly absurd.
Those who are talking about there being "no alternative to victory" should remember the 1973 political subterfuge in Vietnam that led to the 1975 humiliation, and it behooves Obama not to earn his presidential seal of approval by being responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans and Afghans over and above those who already paid the ultimate price. To avoid ruining his presidency, Obama may wish to learn from Kipling, whose silly adventurers wanted to be king in someone else's land, as well as from Wilson, who pleaded with his colleagues for a few million dollars in development assistance.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is a commentator and author of several books on Gulf affairs.
Pakistan Airforce: The largest distributor of Indian airforce parts in Asia
![[linked image]](http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u311/TLCPrado/aw378if.jpg)
Pathankot Strike
8 F-86Fs of No 19 Squadron led by Squadron Leader Sajjad Haider struck Pathankot airfield. With carefully positioned dives and selecting each individual aircraft in their protected pens for their strafing attacks, the strike elements completed a textbook operation against Pathankot. Wing Commander M G Tawab, flying one of the two Sabres as tied escorts overhead, counted 14 wrecks burning on the airfield. Among the aircraft destroyed on the ground were nearly all of the IAFs Soviet-supplied Mig-21s till then received, none of which were seen again during the War.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFHlzP69n9c
