Afghanistan and the Real Terrorists

Terrorising Afghanistan
by Patrick Seale

Last Friday’s massive jail break at Kandahar, which freed 1,200 prisoners including hundreds of Taliban fighters, is only the latest demonstration of the acute difficulties the Western powers are facing in Afghanistan.


Using truck bombs, Taliban guerrillas blow open the gates and mud walls of the Sarpoza Provincial Prison, raced in on motorbikes, killed fifteen of the prison guards, released the prisoners from their cells, and then faded away into the night.


Canadian and Afghan troops arrived on the scene some hours later “to restore order.”


It has long been clear that the 60,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan -- which include 34,000 American and 7,800 British soldiers -- are neither winning the war against the insurgents nor laying the basis for democracy. These are unrealistic objectives, which should, very probably, be abandoned, before more lives are uselessly thrown away.


Afghanistan is a country with strong Islamic traditions and conservative social mores. Every man’s house is his castle. The protection and privacy of women is closely tied to notions of family prestige and male honour. Breaking into people’s houses in search of ‘terrorists’, killing neighbours and relatives by means of air strikes, are hardly the way to win hearts and minds.


Afghans have an ancient and deeply-ingrained hatred of foreign control, as the British discovered to their cost in the 19th century and the Soviets in the twentieth. Theirs is a country of tribes and warlords, of mutually hostile ethnic groups, strong regional diversity, different languages and primitive infrastructure.


Its economy depends very largely on the illegal production of opium and other drugs for the international market -- a brisk and flourishing trade which corrupts every relationship and every institution of the state, not excluding the army and security services.


This is not a country where Western armed intervention can create a viable state, and certainly not the Western model of a state, which most Afghans reject. The task of state-building must surely be left to the Afghans themselves. They alone must decide how and by whom they wish to be governed.


Far from eliminating terrorism, Western policy in Afghanistan -- much like U.S. policies in Iraq and Pakistan -- seems to be creating the very conditions which drive young men into the arms of the insurgency.


Two recent events cast a sharp light on the size of the problem. The first was the Afghan donors’ conference held in Paris on 12 June, at which $20 billion was reluctantly pledged by the 85 delegations present. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon struck a warning note by stressing that the UN -- and its high representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide -- were to play a greater role in coordinating the flow of aid for development and reconstruction. The UN was to be the interface between the Afghan government and the international community.


There is a strong suspicion in the West that aid money in Afghanistan is either lining the pockets of warlords, or used to pay the extravagant fees of Western consultants, or is simply wasted. The clear message of the conference to President Hamid Karzai was that, for international aid to continue, Afghanistan had to put its house in order and make greater efforts to fight corruption.


This, in itself, is an unrealistic expectation since much of Afghanistan is in the hands of warlords and private armies. The writ of Karzai’s government does not run far beyond the capital, Kabul.


The second event which will undoubtedly spawn anti-Western terrorists was the U.S. cross-border airstrike which killed 12 Pakistani soldiers on 10 June. Such strikes arouse fury in Pakistan and undermine U.S.-Pakistani relations.


They will strengthen the conviction of Pakistan’s newly-elected government under Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani -- who took the oath of office on 25 March -- that the way to pacify the tribal agencies on the Pakistani-Afghan border is by negotiations with the local tribes, including the Taliban, rather than by military action.


It is a lesson NATO has yet to learn in Afghanistan. A review of the current bankrupt military policy cannot be long delayed.




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 © 2008 Patrick Seale