For nearly eight years, U.S. troops have been sent to occupy one of the poorest countries on earth—a land that has been a graveyard for the soldiers of colonial powers for nearly 2,500 years. The people of Afghanistan have had the misfortune of being born in a place that has rich natural resources and the geographical importance of valuable trade routes and strategic proximity to other desirable areas.
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Like every other imperialist power, which must expand and conquer new markets, the United States has had its sights on Afghanistan for decades. During the cold war, Washington spent billions of dollars to overthrow the progressive, socialist government in Afghanistan by arming and training reactionary, pro-feudal militias. When the Soviet Union was overthrown, Afghanistan became one of the regions newly available for conquest by the imperialist powers.
With a spurious pretext provided by the September 11 attacks, Washington and its generals arrogantly thought they could smash the government in Afghanistan and install a puppet regime. The Pentagon ordered thousands of bombs dropped on farmland and rural areas, and in just the first two months killed more civilians than the number that died in the World Trade Center. U.S. troops were sent in to set the stage for sham elections that ushered in Hamid Karzai, a loyal servant to Washington.
The U.S. operation in Afghanistan was supposed to largely end there. The United States did not aim to completely wipe out the Taliban or al-Qaeda—because the war has nothing to do with fighting terrorism—but to wrest power from the Taliban government and reduce the insurgency to a level that was manageable to Karzai and his newly enlisted Afghan puppet army. As long as a stable proxy government could be left in place to carry out the demands of the U.S. ruling class, troops could be diverted from Afghanistan and sent to other sovereign nations to conquer for Wall Street.
Instead, the Taliban has maintained a strong grip on power and influence through much of the country. Karzai is widely disdained for being the hand of U.S. imperialism, and is rightly associated with the daily murder of innocent civilians by the U.S. military. The Afghan National Army is in a constant state of flux—recruitment levels are low, and those who do join are likely to either desert, or to use their positions to help the resistance movement.
The Taliban is a politically reactionary formation. Its top leaders fought in the CIA-backed war against the socialist government that was in power between 1978 and 1992. Washington provided limited financial support for the Taliban government until the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. Now, however, the Taliban are part of the resistance to the U.S./NATO invasion.
During the Vietnamese liberation struggle, the communist-led National Liberation Front garnered broad international sympathy because of its progressive political program. Comparable sympathy for the Taliban is impossible because of its odious, reactionary political program and orientation. That said, only Afghan progressive sectors can deal a final defeat to such reactionaries.
While the generals scramble to figure out ways to bolster U.S. support and turn the Afghan populace against the Taliban and other resistance forces, the daily horrors of life under occupation drive more and more Afghan civilians to side with those who are standing against U.S. aggression. One district councilmember in Afghanistan estimated that 80 percent of the insurgency is simply local people driven to fight by the conditions they are subjected to: extreme poverty and daily violence from the most powerful empire in the history of the world. (New York Times, July 3)
In addition to popular support for the insurgency against the U.S. occupation, the resistance fighters are quite advanced militarily. Young people in the United States are told by their recruiters that if they go to Afghanistan they will be fighting a rag-tag army that is poorly equipped and unsophisticated, only to find themselves under massive assaults by hundreds of resistance fighters at a time. U.S. soldiers report being outflanked and overrun. Insurgent military victories have only increased.
The effective improvised explosive device attacks alone, in which soldiers are either killed or wounded, have surged from 24 in February to 108 in July. Since 2003, coalition deaths have steadily climbed every year. Insurgent attacks are at the highest level they have been since 2001. July was by far the deadliest month of the entire war, with 76 coalition deaths, and 2009 is only a few deaths away from being the deadliest year of the war.
The Bush administration left office losing the war in Afghanistan. Popular support for a U.S.-run government never materialized as expected, and the U.S. military was in the process of being dealt a clear military defeat at the hands of the Taliban. But a defeat, or the appearance of defeat, in Afghanistan is not an option for Washington.
When the “change” candidate Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, the interests and goals of the U.S. government remained exactly the same as they did under the Bush administration, but it had become obvious that the Bush strategy in Afghanistan would not achieve those goals. This prompted a shift under the Obama administration, marked by the recent troop surge that is doubling the number of U.S. troops, and also doubling the number of government contractors.
Using soldiers as bait
The strategy that has been used thus far has included tiny outposts spread throughout remote, isolated regions, particularly along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. U.S. troops, who are overwhelmingly lower enlisted soldiers and rarely any ranking officers, have been marooned in these outposts for almost eight years. They have endured near-constant attacks by the insurgency; hundreds of these soldiers have been killed or wounded, and thousands will live the rest of their lives with the trauma of living under siege.
In one instance last year, an outpost of around 50 soldiers in the village of Wanat was attacked by approximately 200 resistance fighters. Days before, a U.S. helicopter killed every single doctor and nurse working at the clinic in Wanat. When the soldiers at the outpost notified their superior officers (who of course were not at the outpost) of an imminent attack, they were left without water, supplies and intelligence support.
Their job was the same as it was at every outpost: to sit and wait to be attacked, so the military brass could mark on a map where there was insurgent activity. The resistance fighters inflicted the highest casualty rate since the Vietnam War, with 75 percent of the soldiers left dead or wounded. Two days later, the outpost was abandoned, as it had served its purpose. (Seattle Times, July 31)
Now, officials are saying that those outposts have no real purpose, and say they are in the process of removing them. “They are costly and dangerous and not doing much to bring security,” said one official. General McChrystal, the new commander of forces in Afghanistan, said, “[T]here’s no point in swinging a hammer if there’s no anvil there.”
The Pentagon generals are saying to the rank-and-file troops and their families that they have endured the hell of defending the outposts for nothing; there was “no point.” The service members who will live a life of sleepless nights, who will look down at missing limbs, and families who have nothing left of their loved one but a folded flag, now know that the generals simply threw them carelessly into the fire. The outposts terrorized and enraged nearby villagers, and served no purpose other than to attract insurgent attacks.
As General Petraeus, now commander of U.S. Central Command, put it, “[F]orces must conduct patrols, share risk and maintain contact to obtain the intelligence to drive operations.” In clear terms, this means that soldiers must be used as bait to encourage attacks, so the commanders can know where to drop their bombs. It was this same disregard for human life by the brass that inspired GI resistance during the Vietnam War, and the existence of those conditions in Afghanistan give GIs today the same potential.
For the imperialists to achieve their goals in Afghanistan, the new strategy under the Obama administration must address the lack of popular support for the U.S./NATO operation and the military success of the Taliban. While there are signs that behind-the-scenes talks are taking place with the Taliban to negotiate a truce, the Pentagon has launched a new approach similar to what was carried out recently in Iraq.
Administration’s new strategy
This new strategy made its debut in early July as 4,000 troops pushed into Helmand River Valley, a southern province in Afghanistan that has had the worst civilian casualties since the United States turned its attention to the region in 2006. While the previous strategy emphasized a presence in remote areas, U.S. forces have essentially been driven out, and are now focusing on large urban areas like Helmand.
The Marines invading Helmand are trying to use large numbers of troops to drive out the Taliban from the area. They will then set up bases within the villages to live and work with the local people. McCrystal describes this as a “cultural shift,” where their goal is to “protect Afghan civilians,” an obvious response to the widespread hatred for massive causalities inflicted by the U.S. military.
Moving from secluded, rural areas to more densely populated urban centers, the crux of this strategy is to convince the local people to side with the United States instead of the Taliban. As a senior military officer explained, “[E]ssentially what they are trying to do is create a productive presence in Helmand Province, including both combat power and civil-engagement capabilities.”
This “productive presence” means flooding populated areas with U.S. troops, killing the resistance, and trying to convince the remaining locals to help rebuild and join the U.S.-backed government. Since the majority of the resistance is driven to fight by the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country, trying to win them over by invading and occupying their cities is a strategy that could only come from the mind of an imperialist conqueror. (NY Times July 3)
The Obama administration is testing this new strategy with the blood of U.S. troops and Afghan civilians, and like their previous eight-year botched attempt to install a puppet government, this strategy will be catastrophic for the people of Afghanistan and the troops sent to kill them. The only strategy that is in the interests of the Afghan people, U.S. soldiers, and people in the United States, is the immediate and complete withdrawal of all forces from Afghanistan. As Washington and the Pentagon are poised for a long war with no end in sight, it is the responsibility of working people in the United States and GIs in the military to force this criminal war to end.
Just as the ruling class has a strategy to win the war in Afghanistan, we have a strategy to end the war in Afghanistan: build a mass movement, in work places, in factories, in schools, in the military and in the streets.
