These are reflections on notes drawn from memory.
The U.S destroyed and overran the Taliban in mere days, using the CIA, a few Special Ops personnel, and devastating air power in support of their Northern Alliance Allies.
But no sooner had the Taliban been overwhelmed, it seems, the U.S began meticulously laying the groundwork for its own ultimate defeat.
It began by eroding its credibility by announcing that the U.S was in Afghanistan to kill or bring Osama bin Laden to justice. Few outside the West believed this. And from then on it continually shifted its mission statement. Laura Bush encouraged the first shift i.e they had invaded Afghanistan to improve the lives of Afghan women; next it was to bring democracy to Afghanistan, and then to nation building, and on to conducting anti-terrorism operations to make the world a safer place, and finally they were there for counter insurgency so that the insurgents could be killed in Afghanistan, rather than in the U.S..
And now that they have left, no one knows why it took them 20 years to decide why they went there in the first place. And neither do the Americans know this themselves! Only Bush knew this, and he has forgotten.
Concurrently with trying to define their mission, they began arresting and torturing tens of thousands of Taliban who had surrendered and returned to their villages. And so the resistance began to take shape. The Americans obviously had never heard of Afghan commitment to vengeance. Had they asked the British or the Russians, they would have been better instructed.
Then came the five-thousand-dollar reward for every tip off leading to the arrest of each Taliban. Personal accounts began to be settled. Thousands of innocents began being clapped in irons to be sent off to Bagram or to Guantanamo. And society began to unravel in turmoil anew.
Afghan society was a rudimentary democracy held together by tradition, overseen by the village and tribal elders. With the “five-thousand-dollar bonus scheme” began, what was in time to become, huge inflows of cash to local power brokers. And these morphed into a new breed of dirty rich warlords who began taking the place of the elders.
With these warlords came unbounded all-round corruption and injustice, for which an inestimable price would have to be paid later by both the Americans, and the poorest Afghans. As all this stoked the fires of anti-American vengeance, so the floodgates of recruitment for the Resistance opened wider
Not to leave any area unsullied by incompetence, the U.S picked up first Karzai, and then Ashraf Ghani, two inveterate anti-Pakistanis, to rule the roost in Kabul. Indian consulates mushroomed in Afghanistan, as this country became a base for terrorist attacks on Pakistan. And Pakistan was supposed to be the foremost ally of the U.S in the Afghan segment of its “war against terror”, and this was the currency in which the U.S chose to pay Pakistan back! While Pakistan bled, it was routinely tasked to “do more”, and castigated for its “double dealing”!
And as Taliban power and audacity grew, it came time to teach them new lessons. These came by way of using “daisy cutters” against them and by using Zero units to kick in midnight doors and putting innocents to slaughter; and having raw recruits get their “first kills”–to break their virginity and their shyness, as it were–by furnishing them with hapless civilian targets!
Towards the end, as the 300.000 strong Afghan National Army began its meltdown, pious wonder began being expressed at this wholly unexpected ignominy. It began being emphasized that the U.S had spent 2.7 trillion dollars on the “reconstruction” of Afghanistan, and the building of its army. So how could this be?
All became clear when Ashraf Ghani fled the country with 4 SUVs full of stolen cash. The last 20 years proved in the end to be the biggest wealth transfer from the U.S taxpayer to the front men of the U.S arms industry and the Afghan warlords and administrators. Not a penny went down to the poor Afghan or to his country which was being ” reconstructed.”
Had the U.S ONLY and ONLY taken care to ensure that every Afghan on government salary– soldier, policemen, administrator– would be paid his dues personally by the hand of a U.S army officer or W/O, so much money would have percolated down to the average Afghan household, that the Afghan Army would have fought back, and the U.S would never have had to slink out in the middle of the night.
Indeed, these were the standard instructions to company commanders in the British Indian Army regarding the disbursement of pay! They had to give money in the hands of their men personally!
Indeed, 2.7 trillion U.S dollars is so much money that, halfway judiciously spent, the same Kalashnikov-bearing Afghan who gave the Taliban their fighting power, would have fought to PREVENT the departure of the U.S instead of hastening it. And many in the third world would have stood, petitions in hand, requesting a U.S invasion!
But of course, this could not be, because the stated reason for the U.S invasion of Afghanistan was a lie. And this lie needed continuous bolstering and reinvention over the next 20 years.
And this stated reason HAD to be a lie, because the official U.S narrative of 9/11 was far from the truth. The internal U.S response to 911 fell well short of what was expected. Indeed, from a nation whose credo of accountability is defined by the expression: “Wanted Dead or Alive,” how was it that not a SINGLE person from the military, the intelligence, or sundry administration, was held accountable and punished for multiple failures which resulted in 9/11? This was the most catastrophic attack on American soil. The failure to stop it was cross sectional and at multiple levels. And yet not a SINGLE person was held accountable either on account of its commission or of dereliction? And this in a country whose culture does not admit of a “free lunch”, nor giving up the chase of a criminal even when his trail has gone cold?
It should thus be quite clear that the U.S was not willing to dig deeper into this catastrophe, because obviously there was a lot to hide. Thus, the all-in-one solution was to bring Osama to trial, or to just kill him. To do this either Mullah Omar had to hand Osama over to the U.S, or the Taliban, who stood between Osama and the U.S, had to be removed. And this, despite the fact that it was an open secret that Mulla Omar had warned Osama not to use Afghan territory for attack on another country. And then, in order to keep his one good eye on him, he had Osama shifted to Kandahar.
In the event, however, Mullah Omar signaled his willingness to send Osama to any neutral country provided the U.S rendered proof of Osama’s complicity in the 9/11 attacks.
As a sovereign state Afghanistan was well within its rights to demand such evidence, which was within the ambit of international law. But this was too much of an affront for the “Indispensable Nation” to bear, and the U.S felt that its position as the “sole superpower” entitled it to commit the supreme international crime of unleashing a war of aggression which had no legal justification.
And so began a war spawned by a lie, which battened upon endless falsehoods over twenty years, finally ending in defeat for the U.S on the one hand, and the utter destruction of Afghanistan on the other.
Defeated nations have had to shed vastly more blood than the U.S had to. But few outcomes have so completely undermined the credibility of a nation which so vociferously proclaimed itself to be a beacon of democracy and a light on the hill for other nations.
At the end of it all, this turned out to be a case of: ” Winning Hearts and Minds, using Shock and Awe, by Cool Cats, eating Hotdogs worth 2.7 Trillion Dollars.”