The U.S. and Afghan Tragedy

[Idealism]

One of the first difficult foreign policy decisions of the Obama administration will be what the United States should do about Afghanistan. Escalating the war, as National Security Advisor Jim Jones has been encouraging, will likely make matters worse. At the same time, simply abandoning the country — as the United States did after the overthrow of Afghanistan's Communist government soon after the Soviet withdrawal 20 years ago — would lead to another set of serious problems.

In making what administration officials themselves have acknowledged will be profoundly difficult choices, it will be important to understand how Afghanistan — and, by extension, the United States — has found itself in this difficult situation of a weak and corrupt central government, a resurgent Taliban, and increasing violence and chaos in the countryside.

Many Americans are profoundly ignorant of history, even regarding distant countries where the United States finds itself at war. One need not know much about Afghanistan's rich and ancient history, however, to learn some important lessons regarding the tragic failures of U.S. policy toward that country during the past three decades.

The Soviet Union invaded in December 1979, after the Afghan people rose up against two successive communist regimes that seized power in violent coup d'états in 1978 and 1979. The devastating aerial bombing and counterinsurgency operations led to more than six million Afghans fleeing into exile, most of them settling into refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan. The United States, with the assistance of Pakistan's Islamist military dictatorship, found their allies in some of the more hard-line resistance movements, at the expense of some very rational enlightened Afghans from different fields and aspect of life.

The United States sent more than $8 billion to Pakistani military dictator Zia al-Huq, who dramatically increased the size of the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to help support Afghan mujahedeen in their battle against the Soviets and their puppet government. Their goal, according to the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was "to radicalize the influence of religious factions within Afghanistan." The ISI helped channel this American money, and billions more from oil-rich American allies, from the Gulf region to extremists within the Afghan resistance movement.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5878

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Very good analysis of the problems of Afghanistan that Obama will face, worth the read!

[Xipe Totec]

1. It's called the graveyard of empires for a reason.

The sooner we pull out of that rathole, the better off we will be.

Let Hamid Karsai, the Mayor of Kabul, deal with it.

[ixion]

2. exactly

spot on.

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. one heck of a long read - but yes - well worth it

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Most do not realize the USA's complicity in the problems over there

USA supported and supplied Saddam, then turned on him


USA supported and supplied the Taleban, then turned on them

They all over there aren't gonna forget this -

From the article posted:

"The United States has made many errors during the more than eight years of fighting, but one of most dangerous was repeating the tragic mistake of placing short-term alliances ahead of the Afghanistan's long-term stability. During the 1980s, the United States was so focused on defeating the Soviets and the Afghan communists that an alliance was made with Islamist extremists, who ended up contributing to the country's destruction. In this decade, the United States has been so focused on defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda it's made alliances with an assortment of drug lords, opium magnates, militia leaders, and other violent and corrupting elements which have contributed to the country's devastation still further.

There's no easy answer to Afghanistan's ongoing tragic situation. Nor is the question of the most appropriate role the United States can now play after contributing so much to this tragedy.

What's important, however, is recognizing that Afghanistan's fate belongs to the people of Afghanistan. Indeed, any further efforts by the United States to play one faction off against the other for temporary political gain won't only add to that country's suffering but — as we became tragically aware on a September morning eight years ago — could some day bring the violence home to American shores.


any further efforts by the United States to play one faction off against the other for temporary political gain won't only add to that country's suffering but — as we became tragically aware on a September morning eight years ago — could some day bring the violence home to American shores.


And President Obama is gonna send MORE troops over there?

Send FOOD and Medicine - silly stuff like that . .

much cheaper in the long run methinks . . .

[Idealism]

4. We have seen the US influence on foreign politics in the past:

From the bullshit National Endowment for Democracy funding to right-wing parties to CIA-backed military coup's and juntas, the US foreign policy over the past few decades has been a disgrace. We have done nothing but undermine elected governments, in favor of neo-liberal shell governments, secular dictatorships, and military kleptocracys.