The basic political problem for the U.S. in Afghanistan is that the government it supports is corrupt and
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knew what that meant: another of Hekmatyar’s sup posed internal enemies had been eliminated.”
Hekmatyar has had a shifting relationship with the Taliban: “In the late 1980s his fighters often seemed more intent on ambushing other mujahedin factions than on battling the Soviets. After the collapse of the Soviet-backed regime, Hekmatyar’s artillery and rockets destroyed much of Kabul, at a cost of no one knows how many civilian lives, in a failed attempt to grab power from rival mujahedin leaders. The Taliban drove him out of the country in 1996, but he returned after the U.S. invasion to wage jihad against the Ameri cans, and in 2006 he publicly declared an alliance with Al Qaeda: ‘They hold the banner, and we stand along side them as supporters.’”
The Newsweek article quoted Taliban spokespersons to the effect that they never trusted Hekmatyar, which is likely, and that he controls only a small part of their forces, which may be true. The conflict between Hek matyar and the Taliban leadership has reportedly led to fighting between the factions that the majority has been unable to stop.
Hekmatyar’s essential condition for making a deal with the U.S. is the withdrawal of foreign troops within a short time. The U.S. officials are apparently interest ed in negotiating with him, although neither side has any reason to trust the other.
But whatever the outcome of this wheeling and deal ing, it raises the question: if the U.S. is prepared to consider making a deal with one of the worst of the Islamic factions and one openly allied in the past with al-Qaeda, why has it waited until now, and what has it gained from its disastrous assault on the country?
In fact, a previous article in Newsweek documented the way that the U.S. repression and bombing drove the decisive sections of the Afghan population back into the arms of the routed Taliban. The U.S. command ers finally had to recognize the problem, although the jingoistic right during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign thundered that it was a slander on our won derful military forces to say that they actually killed innocent people. However, by their own accounts the U.S. chiefs have been unable to stop the slaughter of innocents.
An article in the March 27 issue of The New York Times reported: “American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul.”
The same assessment came from the lips of the new U.S. top commander in Afghanistan: “’We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,’ said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His com ments came during a recent video conference to an swer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.”
Obviously, it is hard to convince Afghans that the oc 12 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2010 cupation soldiers are their defenders, when these for eign troops are shooting down their countrymen ar bitrarily and with impunity. And this is to say nothing of the victims of “collateral damage” in bombings that typically kill far more innocent people than their mili tary targets. A horrific example was the September 2009 bombing in Kunduz that killed 142 people who were trying to take gasoline from tankers seized by the Taliban. It was an atrocity comparable to the Mylai massacre during the Vietnam War. It so shocked Ger man public opinion (German pilots were responsible) that it sparked a crisis in the conservative government of Angela Merkel.
The basic political problem for the U.S. in Afghani stan is that the government it supports is profoundly corrupt and without credibility. The U.S. big press has been suggesting that Obama’s visit to Afghanistan was intended to straighten out the U.S. client Karzai. But how can the U.S. crack down on Karzai when its own contractors are being shown to be as corrupt and inef fective as his government?
An article by a team of journalists in the March 19 Newsweek reported: “ America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were poorly account ed for, according to a government audit, and fewer than 12 percent of the country’s police units are ca pable of operating on their own. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the State Department’s top representative in the region, has publicly called the Afghan police ‘an inadequate organization, riddled with corruption.’”
The British Independent confirmed this estimate in a March 28 article based on internal British government documents: “A series of internal Foreign Office papers obtained by The Independent on Sunday lay bare the deep concerns of British officials over the standard of recruits to the Afghan National Police (ANP), ranging from high casualty rates and illiteracy to poor vetting and low pay.
“The memos, which warn that building an effective police force ‘will take many years,’ also reveal how non-existent ‘ghost recruits’ may account for up to a quarter of the purported strength of the police force, often the front line against the Taliban insurgency. The ‘attrition rate’ among police officers—including loss