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So, Afghanistan- what was all that about?

Roger Watson

The twenty-year military campaign in Afghanistan, if viewed from some perspectives, was a resounding success. If you grow opium poppies or are a member of the Taliban, then life has never been so good, and it just got a whole lot better. As the father of two daughters who served in Afghanistan and with a son-in-law who served (along with his brother and father) and with a future son-in-law who did several tours I have taken more than an average interest in the situation there. I have never fully understood why we were there in the first place.

Invading a whole country always seemed an overreaction to the downing of the Twin Towers on 9/11 in 2001. I well recall my own horror, awaiting a flight in Belfast airport on the day of the attack, of watching live footage of the towers coming down. But surely a covert surgical special forces strike at the heart of Al-Qaeda—assuming that they were responsible for the attack—would have dealt with the perpetrators and their purported leader Osama Bin Laden rather than a massive international mobilisation of troops. My guess is that Osama Bin Laden may have got word they were on their way and fled to the hills. In the end, he was dealt with by a special forces operation in Pakistan. But by this time, we had kicked the hornet’s nest of the Taliban and found ourselves fighting and enemy we did not even know we had. Until now, we thought we had them beat.

Now, at the behest of the leader of the free world President Joe Biden, whose cognitive state some are questioning, we have done a multinational ‘runner’. I know from my own experience in the First Gulf War how meticulous the British armed forces are about clearing up and removing materiel. For example, Camp Bastion, an encampment about the size of Reading, was dismantled and flown back to the UK. But the US forces have been pulled out in such a hurry and the Afghan army offered no resistance so that the Taliban have inherited a lot of state of the art military vehicles and weapons. Some if this is so sophisticated that they cannot use it…yet!

The statistics related to the casualties during the Afghan campaign are staggering. The US figures, which include civilian casualties are: US military: 2,448; NATO allied military: 1,144; contractors: 3,846; Afghan forces and police: 66,000; NATO; civilians: 47,245; Taliban: 51,191; aid workers: 444; journalists: 72. UK military deaths account for 475 of the above figures. With a casualty rate of 66,000 it is hardly surprising that the Afghan army offered no resistance to the Taliban this week. With regard to the opium poppy crop, quoting directly from The Guardian Weekly in 2018: “…opium production surged from around 180 tonnes in 2001 to more than 3,000 tonnes a year after the invasion, and to more than 8,000 by 2007. Every spring, the opium harvest fills the Taliban’s coffers once again, funding wages for a new crop of guerrilla fighters.” If ever a military alliance sowed the seeds (literally in this case) of its own destruction, this is surely a case par excellence.

Our campaign of self-destruction in Afghanistan began during the Russian occupation when, clearly, we backed the wrong horse: the Mujahideen. If you are in any doubt about our enthusiasm for supporting this rag tag and useless collection of disparate tribesmen, then I urge you to watch Charlie Wilson’s War where the US backing for the Mujahideen is dramatised. Once the Russians withdrew, the Mujahideen returned to doing what they always did and started fighting amongst themselves. This created the vacuum which was quickly filled by The Taliban. As explained by the BBC, and I quote at length:

“Afghans, weary of the mujahideen’s excesses and infighting after the Soviets were driven out, generally welcomed the Taliban when they first appeared on the scene. Their early popularity was largely due to their success in stamping out corruption, curbing lawlessness and making the roads and the areas under their control safe for commerce to flourish.

But the Taliban also introduced or supported punishments in line with their strict interpretation of Sharia law – such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers, and amputations for those found guilty of theft. Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the all-covering burka.

The Taliban also banned television, music and cinema, and disapproved of girls aged 10 and over going to school. They were accused of various human rights and cultural abuses. One notorious example was in 2001, when the Taliban went ahead with the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddha statues in central Afghanistan, despite international outrage.”

These are murdering, maiming, raping and thieving savages from the Middle Ages fuelled by a particularly repulsive branch of Islam, the Deobandi. And now they’re back.

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