Murky dealings reveal disaster in Afghanistan
2010Gerry Foley 2010-04Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 12 →
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While the rate of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan has dou bled since a year ago, and Obama has made a personal visit to the country, recent speculation about the fu ture of the U.S.-led occupation has centered around projections of a peace deal with a faction of the Taliban forces, specifically the Hezb-i-Islami, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The latter once had a close relationship with the U.S. secret services.
Charlie Wilson, the reactionary U.S. congressman who became a patron on covert intervention in the Afghan civil wars when the Soviet Union was backing a client government there, notably referred to him as “pure goodness.” That is a good example of the sense of smell of the U.S. interventionists. Actually, Hekma tyar has one of the worst records of any of the leaders in the Afghan Islamist constellation.
An article published on line by Newsweek on March 26 claimed that during the conflict with the Soviet Union, Hekmatyar got the most U.S. aid. The two Newsweek journalists also offered a rap sheet on the U.S. hope for splitting the Taliban: “The sprawling Shamshatoo camp, just outside Peshawar, has always been the most tightly organized and disciplined Af ghan refugee camp in Pakistan. The only law within its boundaries is that of Hezb-i-Islami (the Party of Is lam), led by the notoriously ruthless warlord Gulbud din Hekmatyar. Back in the 1980s, when the camp was Hekmatyar’s main base in the war against the Soviets, people in Peshawar would sometimes see a corpse floating down the canal that ran beside the camp. They without credibility.
(Above) U.S. soldiers search houses for enemy suspects in Nangarhar Province, March 18.
es caused by deaths, desertion and dismissals, often due to positive drug tests—is as high as 60 per cent in Helmand province.”
The March 26 Newsweek article noted: “Worse, crooked Afghan cops supply much of the ammunition used by the Taliban, according to Saleh Mohammed, an insurgent commander in Helmand province.”
However, it was American private contractors, the new mercenary outfits spawned by the privatization of the U.S. military fostered by the capitalist political regression, who were responsible for training and or ganizing the Afghan police. In this case, it was mainly DynCorp. But Blackwater and others have been trying to get into the game.
The March 26 Newsweek article noted: “The people who oversaw much of the training that did take place were contractors—many of them former American cops or sheriffs [who of course should be above suspi cion of corruption!]. They themselves had little proper direction, and the government officials overseeing their activities did not bother to examine most ex penses under $3,000, leaving room for abuse. Amaz ingly, no single agency or individual ever had control of the training program for long, so lines of account ability were blurred.” Moreover, “the audit says State Department officials ‘did not conduct adequate sur veillance for two task orders in excess of $1 billion.’”
People who work together inevitably interact. So, why should anyone think that these U.S. profit makers have not become intertwined with the Afghan world of corruption?
Of course, any deal the U.S. makes with Hekmatyar is hardly going to convince Afghans that the U.S.-led intervention is going to offer them more honest and democratic government. In fact, the Taliban won a reputation for honesty, despite its repressive outrag es. The U.S. clients are not likely to look very clean by comparison.
Thus, whether the U.S. rulers decide to continue their escalation or whether they look for a way of reducing their investment in Afghanistan, the balance sheet of seven years of intervention is negative in every re spect. And there is no reason to believe that it is going to get any better no matter what the U.S. does.
However, by its nature, the U.S. regime, based on predatory big business, will not give up foreign ad ventures unless the American people stay its hand. It will always try to find devious ways of continuing and justifying its intervention at the expense of Americans and other peoples alike. The crookedness and ruth lessness of the mercenary outfits is only one of the more egregious examples.
Americans need to make very clear and unequivocal demands for an end to intervention in Afghanistan and express them loudly and clearly in the streets. They cannot place trust in any politician who is part of the big-business system or give any credibility to excuses for such intervention. n