{"id":188404,"date":"2021-07-12T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=188404"},"modified":"2021-07-08T05:09:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T04:09:31","slug":"us-imperialisms-criminal-debacle-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/07\/us-imperialisms-criminal-debacle-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"US Imperialism\u2019s Criminal Debacle in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

7 Jul 2021 – <\/em>US troops pulled out of the sprawling Bagram Air Base at three in the morning last Friday [2 Jul], without notifying the Afghan government forces meant to replace them, and cutting off the power on the way out, an act that triggered an invasion of the base by a small army of looters.<\/p>\n

This ignoble retreat is a fitting symbol of the debacle wrought by 20 years of US war and occupation in Afghanistan. Bagram, built by the Soviet military in the 1950s and vastly expanded by the Americans, was at the heart of US imperialism\u2019s two-decade-long criminal war of aggression.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of US personnel passed through the base in the longest war in US history. From Bagram, US warplanes carried out bombing campaigns that claimed the lives of countless thousands of Afghan civilians, and special forces kill teams launched raids in which entire families were wiped out. The base, moreover, housed the Parwan Detention Facility where thousands of suspected insurgents were imprisoned and the methods of \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d, i.e., torture were employed. Prisoners were beaten, attacked by dogs, shackled to the ceiling, subjected to sexual humiliation and sleep deprivation, and, in some cases, tortured to death.<\/p>\n

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A member of the Afghan security forces walks in the sprawling Bagram air base after the American military departed. Kabul, Afghanistan, July 5, 2021.
(AP Photo\/Rahmat Gul)<\/p><\/div>\n

Bagram was abandoned in the midst of an unmitigated rout of Afghan security forces at the hands of the Taliban insurgency. The Taliban has overrun roughly a quarter of the country\u2019s districts in the space of a few weeks\u2013in addition to the territories it already controlled. Government soldiers have handed over bases and stockpiles of US-supplied weapons and, in some cases, joined the Islamist fighters. Monday saw more than 1,000 government troops flee across Afghanistan\u2019s northeastern border into the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan to escape the fighting.<\/p>\n

This rout, which seems to confirm the worst-case scenario prepared by US intelligence agencies that Kabul could fall within six months of a US withdrawal, has touched off an increasingly bitter \u201cwho lost Afghanistan\u201d dispute in Washington. Right-wing Republican politicians have indicted the Biden administration, while proclaiming their deep concern for the rights of Afghan women. Biden\u2019s supporters have in turn pointed out that it was the Trump administration that signed the agreement with the Taliban in Qatar in February 2020 mandating the US pullout.<\/p>\n

The reality is that the United States lost Afghanistan over the course of its two-decade colonial-style occupation, which provoked intense opposition and anger within the Afghan population.<\/p>\n

It is conservatively estimated that 175,000 civilians have been killed in the war. If those dying as a result of the conditions of mass displacement and the general destruction of social conditions were to be added, the total doubtless would climb to well over a million.<\/p>\n

The US intervention began with a horrific war crime: the mass execution of over 2,000 Taliban prisoners who were suffocated or shot to death in shipping containers after surrendering to US special forces and their Northern Alliance proxies in November 2001. The US war, obscenely dubbed \u201cOperation Enduring Freedom,\u201d produced an unending series of such crimes against the Afghan population. According to conservative estimates, over the past five years alone, some 4,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in US and allied airstrikes, including nearly 800 children.<\/p>\n