{"id":184464,"date":"2021-05-10T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=184464"},"modified":"2021-05-06T05:37:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T04:37:57","slug":"united-states-withdraws-from-afghanistan-not-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/05\/united-states-withdraws-from-afghanistan-not-really\/","title":{"rendered":"United States Withdraws from Afghanistan? Not Really!"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 May 2021 – <\/em>The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was criminal. It was criminal because of the immense force used to demolish Afghanistan\u2019s physical infrastructure and to break open its social bonds.<\/p>\n

On October 11, 2001, journalist Anatol Lieven interviewed the Afghan leader Abdul Haq in Peshawar, Pakistan. Haq, who led part of the resistance against the Taliban, was getting ready to return to Afghanistan under the cover of the U.S. aerial bombardments. He was, however, not pleased with the way the United States had decided to prosecute the war. \u201cMilitary action by itself in the present circumstances is only making things more difficult\u2014especially if this war goes on a long time and many civilians are killed,\u201d Abdul Haq told<\/a> Lieven. The war would go on for 20 years, and at least 71,344 civilians<\/a> would lose their lives during this period.<\/p>\n

Abdul Haq told Lieven that \u201cthe best thing would be for the U.S. to work for a united political solution involving all the Afghan groups. Otherwise, there will be an encouragement of deep divisions between different groups, backed by different countries and badly affecting the whole region.\u201d These are prescient words, but Haq knew no one was listening to him. \u201cProbably,\u201d he told Lieven, \u201cthe U.S. has already made up its mind what to do, and any recommendations by me will be too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

After 20 years of the incredible destruction caused by this war, and after inflaming animosity between \u201call the Afghan groups,\u201d the United States has returned to the exact policy prescription of Abdul Haq: political dialogue.<\/p>\n

Abdul Haq returned to Afghanistan and was killed by the Taliban on October 26, 2001. His advice is now out-of-date. In September 2001, the various protagonists in Afghanistan\u2014including the Taliban\u2014were ready to talk. They did so partly because they feared that the looming U.S. warplanes would open the doors to hell for Afghanistan. Now, 20 years later, the gulf between the Taliban and the others has widened. Appetite for negotiations simply does not exist any longer.<\/p>\n

Civil War<\/strong><\/p>\n

On April 14, 2021, the speaker of Afghanistan\u2019s parliament\u2014Mir Rahman Rahmani\u2014warned<\/a> that his country is on the brink of a \u201ccivil war.\u201d Kabul\u2019s political circles have been bristling with conversations about a civil war when the United States withdraws by September 11. This is why on April 15, during a press conference held in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Sharif Amiry of TOLOnews asked<\/a> U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the possibility of a civil war. Blinken answered, \u201cI don\u2019t think that it is in anyone\u2019s interest, to say the least, for Afghanistan to descend into a civil war, into a long war. And even the Taliban, as we hear it, has said it has no interest in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Afghanistan has been in a civil war for half a century, at least since the creation of the mujahideen\u2014including Abdul Haq\u2014to battle the People\u2019s Democratic Party of Afghanistan government (1978-1992). This civil war was intensified by the U.S. support of Afghanistan\u2019s most conservative and extreme right-wing elements, groups that would become part of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other Islamist factions. Never once has the United States offered a path to peace during this period; instead, it has always shown an eagerness at each turn to use the immensity of the U.S. force to control the outcome in Kabul.<\/p>\n

Withdrawal?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even this withdrawal, which was announced in late April 2021 and began on May 1, is not as clear-cut as it seems. \u201cIt\u2019s time for American troops to come home,\u201d announced<\/a> U.S. President Joe Biden on April 14, 2021. On the same day, the U.S. Department of Defense clarified<\/a> that 2,500 troops would leave Afghanistan by September 11. In a March 14 article, meanwhile, the New York Times had noted<\/a> that the U.S. has 3,500 troops in Afghanistan even though \u201c[p]ublicly, 2,500 U.S. troops are said to be in the country.\u201d The undercount by the Pentagon is obscurantism. A report by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment, furthermore, noted<\/a> that the United States has about 16,000 contractors on the ground in Afghanistan. They provide a variety of services, which most likely include military support. None of these contractors\u2014or the additional undisclosed<\/a> 1,000 U.S. troops\u2014are slated for withdrawal, nor will aerial bombardment\u2014including drone strikes\u2014end, and there will be no end to special forces missions either.<\/p>\n

On April 21, Blinken said<\/a> that the United States would provide nearly $300 million to the Afghanistan government of Ashraf Ghani. Ghani, who\u2014like his predecessor Hamid Karzai\u2014often appears to be more of a mayor of Kabul than the president of Afghanistan, is being outflanked by his rivals. Kabul is buzzing with talk of post-withdrawal governments, including a proposal<\/a> by Hezb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to form a government that he would lead and that would not include the Taliban. The U.S., meanwhile, has consented to the idea that the Taliban should have a role in the government; it is now being said<\/a> openly that the Biden administration believes the Taliban would \u201cgovern less harshly\u201d than it did from 1996 to 2001.<\/p>\n

The United States, it appears, is willing to allow the Taliban to return to power with two caveats: first, that the U.S. presence remains, and second, that the main rivals of the United States\u2014namely China and Russia\u2014have no role in Kabul. In 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke<\/a> in Chennai, India, where she proposed the creation of a New Silk Road Initiative that linked Central Asia through Afghanistan and via the ports of India; the purpose of this initiative was to cut off Russia from its links in Central Asia and to prevent the establishment of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, which now runs all the way to Turkey.<\/p>\n

Stability is not in the cards for Afghanistan. In January, Vladimir Norov, former foreign minister of Uzbekistan and the current secretary-general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), addressed a webinar<\/a> organized by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. Norov said that Daesh or ISIS has been shifting its fighters from Syria to northern Afghanistan. This movement of extremist fighters is of concern not only to Afghanistan but also to Central Asia and to China. In 2020, the Washington Post revealed<\/a> that the U.S. military had been providing aerial support for the Taliban as it made gains against ISIS fighters. Even if there is a peace deal with the Taliban, ISIS will destabilize it.<\/p>\n

Forgotten Possibilities<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forgotten are the words of concern for Afghan women, words that provided legitimacy for the U.S. invasion in October 2001. Rasil Basu, a United Nations official, served as a senior adviser on women\u2019s development to the Afghan government from 1986 to 1988. The Afghan Constitution of 1987 provided women with equal rights, which allowed women\u2019s groups to struggle against patriarchal norms and fight for equality at work and at home. Because large numbers of men had died in the war, Basu told us, women went into several occupations. There were substantial gains for women\u2019s rights, including a rise in literacy rates. All this has been largely erased during the U.S. war over these past two decades.<\/p>\n

Even before the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988-89, men who are now jockeying for power\u2014such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar\u2014said that they would undo these gains. Basu remembered the shabanamas<\/em>, notices that circulated to women and warned them to obey patriarchal norms (she submitted<\/a> an opinion piece warning of this catastrophe to the New York Times, to the Washington Post, and to Ms. Magazine, all of whom rejected it).<\/p>\n

Afghanistan\u2019s last communist head of government\u2014Mohammed Najibullah (1987-1992)\u2014submitted a National Reconciliation Policy, in which he put women\u2019s rights at the top of the agenda. It was rejected by the U.S.-backed Islamists, many of whom remain in positions of authority today.<\/p>\n

No lessons have been learned from this history. The U.S. will \u201cwithdraw,\u201d but will also leave behind its assets to checkmate China and Russia. These geopolitical considerations eclipse any concern for the Afghan people.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Avram Noam Chomsky<\/strong> is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as “the father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, mass media,<\/em> US foreign policy, social issues, Latin American and European history, and more.<\/em> His most recent book is <\/em>Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet<\/a>. <\/u><\/em>\u00a0noamchomsky@\u200bemail.arizona.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Vijay Prashad<\/em><\/strong> is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books<\/a> and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research<\/a>. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies<\/a>, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations<\/a> and<\/em> The Poorer Nations<\/a>. His latest book is <\/em>Washington Bullets<\/a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was produced by <\/em>Globetrotter<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 May 2021 – The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was criminal. It was criminal because of the immense force used to demolish Afghanistan\u2019s physical infrastructure and to break open its social bonds. Now, 20 years later, the gulf between the Taliban and the others has widened. Appetite for negotiations simply does not exist any longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":176668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[93,94,133,1106,267,1126,487,1050,504,291,91,86,112,880,70,126,492],"class_list":["post-184464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-afghanistan","tag-central-asia","tag-cia","tag-drones","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-occupation","tag-pentagon","tag-state-terrorism","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184464","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=184464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}