Afghanistan choice emerging as dying - or living

 

Bill Knight column for Aug. 17, 18 or 19. 2020

 Remembering progressive broadcaster Mike Malloy’s description of Afghanistan – “where empires go to die” – it should come as no surprise that the Trump administration has been outmaneuvered in the long-promised end to the nation’s longest war.

Negotiations are expected to resume in Doha, Qatar, this week after Afghan lawmakers on Aug. 9 released 400 Taiban prisoners, the last holdup delaying talks between the Afghan and U.S. governments and the Taliban.

Previous bargaining resulted in an agreement to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners, but Afghanistan hesitated in releasing the last few hundred, who’d been accused of serious offenses.

Afghans are led by President Ashraf Ghani – reelected over Abdullah Abdullah after disputed September voting, and finally seated in February. That was the month when U.S. diplomats brokered a peace deal with Taliban forces and the Afghan government, and also when U.S. intelligence reportedly briefed the White House that a Russian spy agency had been offering bounties for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Widespread fighting and targeted killings also stalled the peace process.

The war started in 2001, when the Taliban was considered an armed nuisance that harbored Al Qaeda leaders responsible for the 9/11 attacks, a weak annoyance that could be overwhelmed with military might. However, year after year, casualties increased, and “liberation” of territories was often temporary. Eventually, Taliban support grew with everyday Afghans’ resentment and outrage about the U.S. and allies.

Now, the Pentagon is planning for a withdrawal before the November election – one of a few “October Surprises,” one suspects – but withdrawal means more than loading troops onto aircraft and flying them home. It would take weeks, if not months, to ship weapons and equipment, give some material to Afghan forces and just leave other items not worth keeping or transferring.

An autumn withdrawal would follow moving thousands of personnel since the Trump administration approved the deal. However, after Trump was inaugurated – campaigning on ending the country’s “endless wars” – the administration lifted restrictions on air strikes, and the U.S. military’s air war increased there, resulting in more civilian casualties, according to the independent Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In the first half of 2019, U.S. and Afghan militaries together were responsible for more civilian deaths than the Taliban. Last year, American forces dropped more bombs in Afghanistan than in any year in the last decade, resulting in more than 1,000 civilian casualties, the United Nations reports – a number that’s increased in each of the last five years.

“We are no better off than when we started counterterrorism operations after 9/11,” researcher Larry Lewis of the Center for Naval Analyses told Rolling Stone magazine, “and arguably in a worse position.”

While all this was happening, U.S. intelligence reported Russians’ secret bounty program paying the Taliban or other insurgents for killing U.S. servicepeople. About 20 of them were killed last year, but Trump – who constantly complains about innumerable topics, many ridiculous – hasn’t criticized Russians’ apparent scheme, or even accepted his own administration’s findings, which he reportedly received in a daily briefing Feb. 27.

Meanwhile, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs – which has jurisdiction over bills and investigations related to the nation’s foreign affairs – will get new leadership after the primary defeat of committee chair Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) by progressive Jamaal Bowman.

Engel, who backed the Iraq War, also was one of a handful of Democrats who opposed the Iran deal and who helped defeat an attempt to stop selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia.

Progressives are lobbying House leadership to name a chair who will push for change in Afghanistan and throughout foreign-affairs issues.

The committee – whose members include Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger and progressive Democrats Joaquin Castro of Texas, Ted Lieu of California and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota – needs someone who “advances the bold, progressive foreign policy that this country deserves,” said progressive groups in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They seek a chair independent from special interests who opposes militarization and surveillance at home and sanctions that hurt civilians abroad, and who supports a diplomacy-first approach to national security and a global economy that prioritizes people and the planet, not corporate profit.

Perhaps for the United States, leaving Afghanistan won’t signal the death of an “empire,” but the birth of sensible policies.