We know America and Britain have made a commitment to pull out
of Afghanistan by the end on 2014. It is high time some more
thought was given to what that means, in particular to the
Westernized Afghanis.
It is a mystery why these and smaller countries like Australia
continue to waste treasure and the lives of their best troops in a
war whose futility has become obvious.
The Crimean War, resulting in such incidents as the Charge of
the Light Brigade, had its origins, according to popular mythology
which may be true, in the fact that the British Cabinet was drunk
at the time. Yet it can be said to have at least achieved a
strategic objective in cutting back Russia’s Turkish ambitions.
The same cannot be said for the present Afghan war. It would
have made some sort of sense — admittedly perhaps not very good
sense — if it had been restricted to a punitive expedition, a
quick get-in-get-out affair. Instead, under Obama, it has become
vast, unwieldy and purposeless. It is an intriguing question for
the political scientist why the war goes on when no one expects
victory or anything like it, and when continuing the war does
nothing for Western interests. Where, one may ask, is the anti-war
movement of yesteryear? Still waiting for the Moscow gold to
finance its marches and teach-in?
It does not need to be labored that almost every week brings
news of Western soldiers being murdered by Afghanis they were
allegedly trying to train. If there was a real possibility of
Afghanistan becoming a modern, democratic State, such sacrifices
might be justifiable in realpolitik terms (it was worth
saving South Korea from becoming North Korea, and worth stopping
Communism in Indochina before it destroyed the ASEAN countries).
But that is not going to happen this time.
George W. Bush appeared to have some kind of a policy, if not a
very clear-headed one. However, Western policy-makers have from the
start of the Obama administration appeared to be sleep-walking to
disaster with no plans in the event of the near-inevitable Taliban
return in force as soon as they leave. The obvious raison
d’être for the Western military presence — punishment for
9/11 — ended before the execution of Bin Laden. This was itself
carried out in a way — not the fault of the troops concerned —
that turned it into a demonstration of weakness rather than
strength in a culture where strength is what is respected.
It is not easy to see how killing a few more Afghans with either
drone attacks or foot soldiers will do anything to create or
strengthen Western democratic institutions there. No doubt on those
occasions when he wears a shirt, Mr. Putin is laughing up his
sleeve at the spectacle of the Western countries further wasting
their strained and cut-down militaries in a campaign that suits
Russia’s geopolitical interests very well.
The leading Anglosphere countries have all made deep
and unprecedented cuts to their military budgets, making the war in
Afghanistan not only a disproportionately heavy drain, but leaving
them less able to offer one another mutual assistance. The whole
picture is coming to look like a house of cards.
The announcement of the 2014 withdrawal date not only underlines
the futility of the Western campaign: it looks like a piece of
military idiocy. How difficult is it to grasp as a principle of war
not to tell the enemy your plans?
British ex-services chaplain Peter Mullen wrote recently, making
what seems an unanswerable point: “Can you imagine Mr. Churchill
getting on the phone to Hitler at the back end of 1940 and saying:
‘As you know Adolf, we’re going to surrender in 1943. In the
meantime we will engage our troops in this useless campaign and I
dare say many more of them will be slaughtered’?”
Further, one of the classic moral requirements for a
“just war” is that there be a reasonable chance of success. This is
plainly not the case here, now that the withdrawal date has been
announced. No one in his or her right mind believes that after the
NATO and associated forces withdraw Afghanistan will be a
liberal-democratic State.
Unless some kind of miracle happens, the Taliban will come
storming back before the last Western plane takes off from Kabul
airport. One remembers George MacDonald Fraser’s brilliant novel
Flashman, closely based on fact, which tells of the
retreat of the British Army from Kabul in 1842, with the tribesmen
swarming in and cutting up the rear of the retreating column of the
Army of Afghanistan before it was out of its compound. British war
artist Lady Elizabeth Butler painted a famous picture of the return
of the Army from Afghanistan — one man and one dying horse.
This leads to another vital point, and the one possible
justification for continuing the war: what will happen to the
Afghans who, have allied with the West and the larger number who,
in the Taliban’s eyes, have been contaminated merely by contact
with Western ways and education? The puppet president during the
ill-fated Russian occupation, Mohammad
Najibullah, was castrated and dragged from the back of a truck
before being hanged when the Russians were no longer around to
protect him. His brother was shot. Eyewitness Terence White
wrote
of the events the next day:
Next, the religious police from the soon to be dreaded
Department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice
appeared on the streets.
Their sole business was punishment. Their first victims were
women, whom they beat with wire cables and hose-pipes when found on
the street in violation of the Taliban’s first decree, which stated
that women could no longer work and must stay at home.
In another foretaste of what may be expected this time, Razia
Jan, founder of a girls’ school outside Kabul, reportedly said
recently, “[T]hey threw hand grenades in a girls’ school, and 100
girls were killed. Every day, you hear that somebody’s thrown acid
at a girl’s face … or they poison their water.”
According to the United Nations, there were at least 185
documented attacks on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan last
year. The majority of the attacks were attributed to “groups
opposed to girls’ education,” and to women engaging in such
occupations as medicine or nursing.
Afghanistan has a small Westernized elite, centered on Kabul.
There have been some moving stories of the bravery of those who
tried to preserve some artifacts of culture from the Taliban. If
the Western powers were interested in doing something humane and
constructive, they would be making plans to get these people out —
particularly professional women and school-girls — and arranging
re-settlement for them.
Once the Western forces are gone, if they are left behind,
fleeing over the desolate mountains to, say, Pakistan, will hardly
improve matters for these desperate people. A Taliban victory in
Afghanistan can be expected to finish off the beleaguered
democratic institutions in the failing State of Pakistan as well.
Other neighbors — India and China — are unlikely to give refugees
a warm welcome. Neither wants more Muslims, Westernized or not.
Selecting the people to be given refugee status and evacuated,
as well as finding countries willing to give them refuge, and even
organizing transport, will be a long and complex task, calling for
a major international administrative effort, and an effort against
the clock at that. However, there is at present no evidence that
anything along these lines is being done.
