Time to Leave

The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq have indicated quite clearly that they want the United States to leave their countries. In Afghanistan, NATO cannot defeat the Taliban, and only makes matters worse by the indiscriminate killing of civilians.

Time to Get Out
of Afghanistan and Iraq

by Patrick Seale

Afghanistan will be high on the agenda when NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer visits President George W. Bush at his Texas ranch on May 20-21. The message de Hoop Scheffer has to convey is sombre: NATO is losing the war against the Taliban. A fundamental policy review is urgently needed.


The most important new development is that the Afghans themselves, sickened by war and mounting civilian casualties, want the United States and other foreign troops to leave. As President Hamid Karzai himself admitted, Afghan patience with foreign troops is "wearing thin" five years after the U.S. invasion. "It is difficult for us to continue to tolerate civilian casualties," he said at a press conference earlier this month.


On May 8, the Senate in Kabul approved a bill that called for negotiations with the Taliban, a ceasefire, and a date for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The proposed legislation demands that foreign forces should not engage the Taliban unless they are themselves attacked or have first consulted with the Afghan army, police and government.


The bill reflects a growing popular rebellion against heavy-handed American army tactics and aerial bombardments, which have brought death and destruction to many parts of Afghanistan. The bill has to be approved by the lower house of Parliament and by President Karzai before becoming law.


At much the same time in Baghdad, 144 members of Parliament -- out of a total of 275 -- signed a petition calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The petition is now being developed into a draft bill by the legal and foreign affairs committees of the Iraqi Parliament.


Following talks with the Pakistan government last week, de Hoop Scheffer himself declared that military force alone would not defeat the Taliban, but that reconstruction was the key to a durable peace in a country shattered by more than 25 years of conflict and civil war.


The problem, however, in both Afghanistan and Iraq is that, without security, no serious reconstruction can take place. The question arises, therefore, whether the violent campaigns against insurgents in both countries by U.S. and other foreign troops contribute to security or are themselves a cause of insecurity.


This past weekend, the Taliban released a French aid worker captured more than a month ago. Eric Damfreville arrived back in Paris on Saturday, exhausted by the harsh living conditions, but saying that he had been well treated. He had been working in southwestern Afghanistan for Terre d’Enfance, an agency that helps children.


No one yet knows what deal the French may have struck with the Taliban behind the scenes to secure his release. A Taliban spokesman said Damfreville had been freed as a gesture to France’s president-elect, Nicolas Sarkozy. Perhaps more relevant was the statement Sarkozy made during his election campaign that there was no compelling reason for French troops to remain in Afghanistan.


Much like Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq, President Karzai’s position in Afghanistan is increasingly uncomfortable. Crowds in the eastern city of Jalalabad have cried "Death to Karzai!" and "Death to Bush!" Violent anti-American demonstrations have taken place in Kabul, apparently sparked by the large-scale killing of civilians by American air strikes.


In the district of Shindand, 100 kilometres south of Herat, the U.S.-led coalition claimed to have killed 136 Taliban fighters at the end of last month. Local villagers said the dead were 51 civilians, among them 18 women and children. UN investigators said 1,600 families had been displaced. Another air strike a week ago on the village of Sarwan Qala destroyed several houses and is said to have killed between 50 and 80 civilians, mainly women and children.


"Still now they are digging out bodies from the rubble," a local shopkeeper was quoted as saying.


What seems clear is that the conflict in Afghanistan is widening and that pitched battles are taking place in many different parts of the country, and not only in the east close to the Pakistan frontier and in the southern province of Helmand where the Taliban are well entrenched and where fierce fighting is continuing.


The correspondent of the Financial Times in Kabul reported on 4 May that last month the Taliban seized control of a highway just 70 kilometres from Kabul in the Tagab district of the central Kapisa province and held it for 24 hours, before being driven out by government forces. It was the heaviest battle in the region of the capital since 2001.


What can Jaap de Hoop Scheffer say to George W. Bush? His task is unenviable. The American president believes he is engaged in a 'global war on terror', but, in fact, the people his troops are fighting and killing are tribesmen seeking to defend their families and ancestral lands against foreigners. In Afghanistan, attachment to Islam and hatred of foreigners are both very great, and have defeated other armies, whether the Soviets in the 1980s or the British a century earlier.




Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.


Copyright © 2007 Patrick Seale


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Released: 14 May 2007
Word Count: 826
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Advisory Release: 14 May 2007
Word Count: 826
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