{"id":181747,"date":"2021-03-29T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=181747"},"modified":"2024-11-26T21:25:28","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T21:25:28","slug":"u-s-joins-rules-based-world-on-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/u-s-joins-rules-based-world-on-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Joins \u201cRules-Based World\u201d on Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Children in Afghanistan – Photo credit: cdn.pixabay.com<\/p><\/div>\n

On March 18, the world was treated to the spectacle<\/a> of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sternly lecturing senior Chinese officials about the need for China to respect a \u201crules-based order.\u201d The alternative, Blinken warned<\/a>, is a world in which might makes right, and \u201cthat would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blinken was clearly speaking from experience. Since the United States dispensed with the UN Charter<\/a> and the rule of international law to invade Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used military force and unilateral economic sanctions<\/a> against many other countries, it has indeed made the world more deadly, violent and chaotic.<\/p>\n

When the UN Security Council refused to give its blessing to U.S. aggression against Iraq in 2003, President Bush publicly threatened the UN with \u201cirrelevance.\u201d<\/a> He later appointed John Bolton as UN Ambassador, a man who famously once said<\/a> that, if the UN building in New York \u201clost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

But after two decades of unilateral U.S. foreign policy in which the United States has systematically ignored and violated international law, leaving widespread death, violence and chaos in its wake, U.S. foreign policy may finally be coming full circle, at least in the case of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Secretary Blinken has taken the previously unthinkable step of calling on the United Nations to lead negotiations<\/a> for a ceasefire and political transition in Afghanistan, relinquishing the U.S.\u2019s monopoly as the sole mediator between the Kabul government and the Taliban.<\/p>\n

So, after 20 years of war and lawlessness, is the United States finally ready to give the \u201crules-based order\u201d a chance to prevail over U.S. unilateralism and \u201cmight makes right,\u201d instead of just using it as a verbal cudgel to browbeat its enemies?<\/p>\n

Biden and Blinken seem to have chosen America\u2019s endless war in Afghanistan as a test case, even as they resist rejoining Obama\u2019s nuclear agreement with Iran, jealously guard the U.S.\u2019s openly partisan role as the sole mediator between Israel and Palestine, maintain Trump\u2019s vicious economic sanctions, and continue America\u2019s systematic violations of international law against many other countries.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on in Afghanistan?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement<\/a> with the Taliban to fully withdraw U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.<\/p>\n

The Taliban had refused to negotiate with the U.S.-backed government in Kabul until the U.S. and NATO withdrawal agreement was signed, but once that was done, the Afghan sides began peace talks in March 2020. Instead of agreeing to a full ceasefire during the talks, as the U.S. government wanted, the Taliban only agreed to a one-week \u201creduction in violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eleven days later, as fighting continued between the Taliban and the Kabul government, the United States wrongly claimed<\/a> that the Taliban was violating the agreement it signed with the United States and relaunched its bombing campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite the fighting, the Kabul government and the Taliban managed to exchange prisoners and continue negotiations in Qatar, mediated by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who had negotiated the U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. But the talks made slow progress, and now seem to have reached an impasse.<\/p>\n

The coming of spring in Afghanistan usually brings an escalation in the war. Without a new ceasefire, a spring offensive would probably lead to more territorial gains for the Taliban\u2014which already controls<\/a> at least half of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

This prospect, combined with the May 1st withdrawal deadline for the remaining 3,500 U.S.<\/a> and 7,000 other NATO troops, prompted Blinken\u2019s invitation to the United Nations to lead a more inclusive international peace process that will also involve India, Pakistan and the United States\u2019s traditional enemies, China, Russia and, most remarkably, Iran.<\/p>\n

This process began with a conference<\/a> on Afghanistan in Moscow on March 18-19, which brought together a 16-member delegation from the U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul and negotiators from the Taliban, along with U.S. envoy Khalilzad and representatives from the other countries.<\/p>\n

The Moscow conference laid the groundwork<\/a> for a larger UN-led conference<\/a> to be held in Istanbul in April to map out a framework for a ceasefire, a political transition and a power-sharing agreement between the U.S.-backed government and the Taliban.<\/p>\n

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Jean Arnault<\/a> to lead the negotiations for the UN. Arnault previously negotiated the end to the Guatemalan<\/a> Civil War in the 1990s and the peace agreement<\/a> between the government and the FARC in Colombia, and he was the Secretary-General\u2019s representative in Bolivia from the 2019 coup until a new election was held in 2020. Arnault also knows Afghanistan, having served in the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006.<\/p>\n

If the Istanbul conference results in an agreement between the Kabul government and the Taliban, U.S. troops could be home sometime in the coming months.<\/p>\n

resident Trump\u2014belatedly trying to make good on his promise to end that endless\u00a0war\u2014 deserves credit for beginning a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. But a withdrawal without a comprehensive peace plan would not have ended the war. The UN-led peace process should give the people of Afghanistan a much better chance of a peaceful future than if U.S. forces left with the two sides still at war, and reduce the chances that the gains<\/a> made by women over these years will be lost.<\/p>\n

It took 17 years of war to bring the United States to the negotiating table and another two-and-a-half years before it was ready to step back and let the UN take the lead in peace negotiations.<\/p>\n

For most of this time, the U.S. tried to maintain the illusion that it could eventually defeat the Taliban and \u201cwin\u201d the war. But U.S. internal documents published by WikiLeaks<\/a> and a stream of reports<\/a> and investigations<\/a> revealed that U.S. military and political leaders have known for a long time that they could not win. As General Stanley McChrystal put it, the best that U.S. forces could do in Afghanistan was to \u201cmuddle along.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

What that meant in practice was dropping tens of thousands<\/a> of bombs, day after day, year after year, and conducting thousands of night raids that, more often than not, <\/a>killed, maimed or unjustly detained innocent civilians.<\/p>\n

The death toll in Afghanistan is unknown<\/a>. Most U.S. airstrikes<\/a> and night raids<\/a> take place in remote, mountainous areas where people have no contact with the UN human rights office in Kabul that investigates reports of civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

Fiona Frazer<\/a>, the UN\u2019s human rights chief in Afghanistan, admitted to the BBC in 2019 that<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 more civilians are killed or injured in Afghanistan due to armed conflict than anywhere else on Earth\u2026 The published figures almost certainly do not reflect the true scale of harm.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No serious mortality study has been conducted since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Initiating a full accounting for the human cost of this war should be an integral part of UN envoy Arnault\u2019s job, and we should not be surprised if, like the Truth Commission<\/a> he oversaw in Guatemala, it reveals a death toll that is ten or twenty times what we have been told.<\/p>\n

If Blinken\u2019s diplomatic initiative succeeds in breaking this deadly cycle of \u201cmuddling along,\u201d and brings even relative peace to Afghanistan, that will establish a precedent and an exemplary alternative to the seemingly endless violence and chaos of America\u2019s post-9\/11 wars in other countries.<\/p>\n

The United States has used military force and economic sanctions to destroy, isolate or punish an ever-growing list of countries around the world, but it no longer has the power to defeat, re-stabilize and integrate these countries into its neocolonial empire, as it did at the height of its power after the Second World War. America\u2019s defeat in Vietnam was a historical turning point: the end of an age of Western military empires.<\/p>\n

All the United States can achieve in the countries it is occupying or besieging today is to keep them in various states of poverty, violence and chaos\u2014shattered fragments of empire adrift in the twenty-first century world.<\/p>\n

U.S. military power and economic sanctions can temporarily prevent bombed or impoverished countries from fully recovering their sovereignty or benefiting from Chinese-led development projects like the Belt and Road Initiative<\/a>, but America\u2019s leaders have no alternative development model to offer them.<\/p>\n

The people of Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela have only to look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya or Somalia to see where the pied piper of American regime change would lead them.<\/p>\n

What is this all about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Humanity faces truly serious challenges in this century, from the mass extinction<\/a> of the natural world to the destruction<\/a> of the life-affirming climate that has been the vital backdrop of human history, while nuclear mushroom clouds still threaten us all<\/a> with civilization-ending destruction.<\/p>\n

It is a sign of hope that Biden and Blinken are turning to legitimate, multilateral diplomacy in the case of Afghanistan, even if only because, after 20 years of war, they finally see diplomacy as a last resort.<\/p>\n

But peace, diplomacy and international law should not be a last resort, to be tried only when Democrats and Republicans alike are finally forced to admit that no new form of force or coercion will work. Nor should they be a cynical way for American leaders to wash their hands of a thorny problem and offer it as a poisoned chalice for others to drink.<\/p>\n

If the UN-led peace process Secretary Blinken has initiated succeeds and U.S. troops finally come home, Americans should not forget about Afghanistan in the coming months and years. We should pay attention to what happens there and learn from it. And we should support generous U.S. contributions to the humanitarian and development aid that the people of Afghanistan will need for many years to come.<\/p>\n

This is how the international \u201crules-based system,\u201d which U.S. leaders love to talk about but routinely violate, is supposed to work, with the UN fulfilling its responsibility for peacemaking and individual countries overcoming their differences to support it.<\/p>\n

Maybe cooperation over Afghanistan can even be a first step toward broader U.S. cooperation with China, Russia and Iran that will be essential if we are to solve the serious common challenges confronting us all.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Benjamin is cofounder of<\/em> CODEPINK for Peace<\/em><\/a>, and author of several books, including<\/em> Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of<\/em> Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S.A. asked the United Nations to lead peace negotiations for Afghanistan. Could U.S. leaders finally be opening a door to the “rules-based world” of the UN and international law, which they claim to uphold but in practice routinely ignore and violate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":181748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[93,867,2628,680,442,124,70,92],"class_list":["post-181747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-afghanistan","tag-anglo-america","tag-conflict-mediation","tag-conflict-resolution","tag-conflict-transformation","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-violent-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281372,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181747\/revisions\/281372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}