On Oct. 8, the U.S.-led war and occupation of Afghanistan will enter its
tenth year. Despite numerous attempts at spinning a justification for this war
from both the Bush and the Obama administrations, there is no hiding the
colonial nature of this enterprise.
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Both Afghans and U.S. soldiers have seen a recordbreaking increase in deaths
in the past year. As of Sept. 16, at least 1,178 members of the U.S. military
have died in Afghanistan since 2001, according to the Associated Press. By
August of this year, the total number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan
under the Obama administration exceeded the number of troops killed during the
Bush administration.
Reflecting the chauvinist character of the U.S. media coverage, statistics
on Afghan casualties are much harder to come by. However, according to a United
Nations report issued in August, in just the first six months of this year,
1,271 Afghan civilians were killed and 1,997 were wounded, most of them
severely. This represents a 31 percent increase over the same period in 2009. A
majority of those killed by U.S. and NATO forces were killed by airstrikes.
There are presently some 90,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. While U.S. troop
levels have surged, so has the resistance, which has spread to formerly “quiet”
areas of the country.
The resistance, unlike the picture painted by the corporate media, is not
fueled by ideological allegiance to the Taliban. In his 2009 resignation
letter, Matthew Hoh, a high-level State Department official in Afghanistan,
wrote that he “observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the
white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign
soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.” Hoh has
said that hundreds or maybe thousands of resistance groups fight independently,
moved by the common desire to rid their villages of foreign occupiers.
Much has been said about improving the plight of women in Afghanistan, yet
today domestic abuse and rape are commonplace occurrences. Attempted suicides
among Afghan women have increased by as much as 50 percent, with an estimated
2,300 women and girls attempting to kill themselves each year. Women in
Afghanistan have nothing to celebrate as the occupation starts its tenth year.
Of course, improving the lot of women in Afghanistan was never a goal of the
U.S. occupation. The Taliban and its reactionary social program emerged as an
outgrowth of the brutal U.S.-funded and trained Mujahedeen. U.S. officials saw
in the Mujahedeen the means to overthrow the progressive, Soviet-supported
Afghan government. Upon coming to power in 1978, that government had prohibited
the selling of women into marriage and their execution for “marital
infidelity.” It cancelled the debts of peasants and invested heavily in schools
and hospitals.
The legacy of U.S. intervention, war and occupation is telling. Today, the
United Nations ranks Afghanistan last in the Human Poverty Index which “focuses
on the proportion of people below certain threshold[s] in regard to a long and
healthy life, having access to education, and a decent standard of living.”
The Taliban, which governed Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, continued to
receive U.S. funding up until the 9/11 attacks. It is distinct from al-Qaeda, a
state-less network dedicated to global jihad. There is no evidence that the
Taliban had a role in the 9/11 attacks, and they in fact offered to extradite
bin Laden to face trial. The Taliban’s leaders have repeatedly maintained that
they have no interest in launching international attacks against the United
States. They are fighting to drive out a colonialtype occupation by foreign
invaders. Senior U.S. military intelligence officers report that today fewer
than 100 alQaeda fighters remain in Afghanistan.
What, then, could be the motive behind this ongoing occupation?
The answer is empire and geopolitical control. Afghanistan is home to
strategic natural gas and oil pipelines and is a critical crossroads to deal
with the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, as well as Pakistan and Iran.
Afghanistan is now also being called the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” the metal
used in cell phone and computer batteries. Considering the importance of these
technologies, the country’s mineral wealth is estimated around $1 trillion. The
economic stakes and potential for mass looting are so high that the U.S.
government still dreams of establishing a neocolonial relationship with the
impoverished nation.
It is clear, however, that U.S. forces cannot secure victory. The goal now
is to avoid the appearance of a catastrophic defeat that could inspire
resistance among other targets of the U.S. empire. In the meantime, Afghans and
U.S. troops will continue to die and important social programs at home will
continue to be slashed so that the Pentagon and White House can minimize the
political blow of losing the war.
Support for the war is at an all-time low, at only 37 per cent; 58 percent
of those polled by CNN opposed the war. The war and occupation currently costs
an estimated $126 billion a year. That is approximately $2.5 billion a week.
Meanwhile, poverty in the United States is at record levels, and state and
local services are experiencing drastic cuts.
The U.S. working class has nothing to gain from this criminal occupation.
The Afghan people have the right to self-determination. The U.S. government and
its allies must withdraw their forces immediately and unconditionally, and pay
reparations to Afghanistan for the years of occupation and, decades of
intervention before that, all of which are directly responsible for the state
that Afghanistan is in today. U.S. out of Afghanistan!
