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War that can bring neither peace nor freedom

The Afghan war, you will remember, was supposed to be the “good war.” Unlike the catastrophe of Iraq, from which most former cheerleaders still prefer to avert their eyes, Afghanistan was thought to be different. Senior British military figures might wince in private over their Basra humiliation, but would earnestly insist that they were fighting the good fight in Helmand “at the request of the elected Afghan government.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown felt able to tell the U.K. Parliament only six weeks ago that “we are winning the battle in Afghanistan.”

But in the wake of a string of reports that the country is fast becoming a failed state and a humanitarian disaster, as armed attacks on Western troops and Afghan forces multiply and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation splits down the middle over sending reinforcements, that looks ever more other-worldly.

U.S. coordinator on Iraq David Satterfield even suggested last month that Iraq would turn out to be America’s “good war,” while Afghanistan was going “bad.”

Public cynicism towards Britain’s first co-occupation of a Muslim country in the U.S.’ “war on terror” can only be deepened by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s public denunciation last month of the British military role in the south — which had, he said, led to the return of the Taliban. The criticism caused outrage, but Mr. Karzai is either a sovereign ruler or he is not. Together with his complaint that he had been strong-armed by the British into removing the Governor of Helmand, with disastrous consequences, it clearly cuts the ground from beneath the claim that Western troops are simply in Afghanistan to support the government.

Mr. Karzai was, after all, installed by the U.S. after the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001 and subsequently confirmed in bogus U.S.-orchestrated elections three years later. If even someone regarded as a U.S.-British stooge, whose writ famously barely runs outside Kabul, is reduced to protesting in public that his Western protectors are doing more harm than good, that not only makes a mockery of the idea that Afghanistan is an independent state. It also strongly suggests this is a man who recognises that the occupation forces may not be around indefinitely — and he may have to come to more serious terms with the local forces that will.

For all the insistence by British Defence Secretary Des Browne and others that this is a “commitment which could last decades,” there is no doubt that armed resistance to foreign occupation is growing and spreading. NATO forces’ own figures show that attacks on Western and Afghan troops were up by almost a third last year, to more than 9,000 “significant actions.”

And while NATO claims that 70 per cent of incidents took place in the southern Taliban heartlands, the independent Senlis Council think tank recently estimated that the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 54 per cent of Afghanistan, arguing that “the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when.”

The original aims of the U.S.-led invasion were, of course, the capture of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and Osama bin Laden, along with the destruction of Al-Qaeda. None of those aims has been achieved. Instead, the two leaders remain free, while Al-Qaeda has spread from its Afghan base into Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere, and Afghanistan has become the heroin capital of the world. For the majority of Afghans, occupation has meant the exchange of obscurantist theocrats for brutal and corrupt warlordism, along with rampant torture and insecurity.

The war in Afghanistan, which claimed more than 6,500 lives last year, cannot be won. It has brought neither peace, development nor freedom, and has no prospect of doing so. Instead of eradicating terror networks, it has spread and multiplied them.

The U.S. plans to send 3,000 more troops in April to reinforce its existing 25,000-strong contingent, and influential think tanks in Washington are pressing for an Iraqi-style surge. But only a vastly greater deployment could even temporarily subdue the country, and that is not remotely in prospect. The only real chance for peace in Afghanistan is the withdrawal of foreign forces as part of a wider political settlement, including the Taliban and neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan.

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