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TechnoratiKabul 30 Years Ago, and Kabul Today. Have We Learned Nothing?
'Terrorists' were in Soviet sights; now they are in the Americans'.
I sit on the rooftop of the old Central Hotel - pharaonic-decorated elevator, unspeakable apple juice, sublime green tea, and armed Tajik guards at the front door - and look out across the smoky red of the Kabul evening. The Bala Hissar fort glows in the dusk, massive portals, the great keep to which the British army should have moved its men in 1841. Instead, they felt the king should live there and humbly built a cantonment on the undefended plain, thus leading to a "signal catastrophe".
Like automated birds, the kites swoop over the rooftops. Yes, the kite-runners of Kabul, minus Hollywood. At night, the thump of American Sikorsky helicopters and the whisper of high-altitude F-18s invade my room. The United States of America is settling George Bush's scores with the "terrorists" trying to overthrow Hamid Karzai's corrupt government.
Now rewind almost 29 years, and I am on the balcony of the Intercontinental Hotel on the other side of this great, cold, fuggy city. Impeccable staff, frozen Polish beer in the bar, secret policemen in the front lobby, Russian troops parked in the forecourt. The Bala Hissar fort glimmers through the smoke. The kites - green seems a favourite colour - move beyond the trees. At night, the thump of Hind choppers and the whisper of high-altitude MiGs invade my room. The Soviet Union is settling Leonid Brezhnev's scores with the "terrorists" trying to overthrow Barbrak Karmal's corrupt government.
Thirty miles north, all those years ago, a Soviet general told us of the imminent victory over the "terrorists" in the mountains, imperialist "remnants" - the phrase Kabul communist radio always used - who were being supported by America and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Fast forward to 2001 - just seven years ago - and an American general told us of the imminent victory over the "terrorists" in the mountains, the all but conquered Taliban who were being supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The Russian was pontificating at the big Soviet airbase at Bagram. The American general was pontificating at the big US airbase at Bagram.
This is not déjà-vu. This is déjà double-vu. And it gets worse.
Almost 29 years ago, the Afghan "mujahedin" began a campaign to end the mixed schooling of boys and girls in the remote mountain passes, legislation pushed through by successive communist governments. Schools were burned down. Outside Jalalabad, I found a headmaster and his headmistress wife burned to death. Today, the Afghan Taliban are campaigning to end the mixed schooling of boys and girls - indeed the very education of young women - across the great deserts of Kandahar and Helmand. Schools have been burned down. Teachers have been executed.
As the Soviets began to suffer more and more casualties, their officers boasted of the increasing prowess of the Afghan National Army, the ANA. Infiltrated though they were by the "mujahedin", Moscow gave them newer tanks and helped to train new battalions to take on the guerrillas outside the capital.
Fast forward to now. As the Americans and British suffer ever greater casualties, their officers boast of the increasing prowess of the ANA. Infiltrated though they are by the Taliban, America and other Nato states are providing them with newer equipment and training new battalions to take on the guerrillas outside the capital. Back in January of 1980, I could take a bus from Kabul to Kandahar. Seven years later, the broken highway was haunted by "mujahedin" fighters and bandits and the only safe way to travel to Kandahar was by air.
In the immediate aftermath of America's arrival here in 2001, I could take a bus from Kabul to Kandahar. Now, seven years later, the highway - rebuilt on the express instructions of George W but already cracked and swamped with sand - is haunted by Taliban fighters and bandits and the only safe way to travel to Kandahar is by air.
Throughout the 1980s, the Soviets and the ANA held the towns but lost most of the country. Today, America and its allies and the ANA hold most of the towns but have lost the southern half of the country. The Soviets secretly sent another 9,000 troops to join their 115,000-strong occupation force to fight the "mujahedin". Today, the Americans are publicly sending another 7,000 troops to join their 55,000-strong occupation force to fight the Taliban.
In 1980, I would sneak down to Chicken Street to buy old books in the dust-filled shops, cheap and illegal Pakistani reprints of the memoirs of British Empire officers while my driver watched anxiously lest I be mistaken for a Russian. Last week, I sneaked down to the Shar Book shop, which is filled with the very same illicit volumes, while my driver watched anxiously lest I be mistaken for an American (or, indeed, a Brit). I find Stephen Tanner's Afghanistan: A Military History From Alexander The Great To The Fall Of The Taliban and drive back to my hotel through the streets of wood-smoked Kabul to read it in my ill-lit room.
In 1840, Tanner writes, Britain's supply line from the Pakistani city of Karachi up through the Khyber Pass and Jalalabad to Kabul was being threatened by Afghan fighters, "British officers on the crucial supply line through Peshawar... insulted and attacked". I fumble through my bag for a clipping from a recent copy of Le Monde. It marks Nato's main supply route from the Pakistani city of Karachi up through the Khyber Pass and Jalalabad to Kabul, and illustrates the location of each Taliban attack on the convoys bringing fuel and food to America's allies in Afghanistan.
Then I prowl through one of the Pakistani retread books I have found and discover General Roberts of Kandahar telling the British in 1880 that "we have nothing to fear from Afghanistan, and the best thing to do is to leave it as much as possible to itself... I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us, the less they will dislike us".
Memo to the Americans, the Brits, the Canadians and the rest of Humpty Dumpty's men. Read Roberts. Read history.
27 Comments so far
Show AllI was there in 1978 ten days before the Russian coup. I was impressed with firmness and independence of the the people. I still remember chicken street. I hope some day they can find a time of peace and attract tourists again. It is a starkly beautiful country. I think they need to be left alone to solve their own problems. This war is insane.
weather Afghanistan this or Afghanistan that...., why no mention of the worlds largest open air prison known as Palestine..
we sit back in our comfort and pick sides while millions starve and die,
why?, so the "McDonald's" and the "Wallmart's" can place "consumer generating media" (adverts.) and the accompanying stores into these "emerging economies".
buy local and barter.. get to know your neighbors
plant a garden or even a few flowers
there is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed
-herb
consume to live NOT live to consume
I was in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan in 1976 and quickly learned why no foreign power has ever won or will ever win in that region. Those people have been abused by other nations for so many centuries that they are extremely resourceful and can create a weapon out of anything and survive on very little.
One of the chief problems, Mr Fisk, is that very few people in the US, Canada or Britain read much of anything at all -- including the "elites" who order these insane horrors, generation after generation after generation. A recurring nightmare that is real, not a dream...
This makes some good points, but Moscow in the 1970s was supporting a government which was carrying out land reform and ending discrimination against women. The basic point about arrogance of major powers though is surely valid. But most of the time those major powers have been Western ones, whether West European ones or the USA. Lord Acton put well indeed when he said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." When the USA became the sole international super power is when things really got crazy. Any time such happen things get crazy.
AD
Fisk is once again right on the money. Is there a better Western journalist covering the Middle East and the Subcontinent? His work is very impressive....
"When the power of love replaces the love of power, the world will be a better place."
I'm not sure these were his exact words, but this is attributed to Jimi Hendrix.
Great documentary shown on a French TV channel the other night (1.00 a.m.) and morning (7.30) - oh yeah, this is democracy, programmes that enable you to think must not be shown on prime time - and entitled 'La Cabale'('The Cabal').
A bit like 'Why We Fight' by Eugene Jarecki, with some of the same interviewees, extracts from Eisenhower's speech on military-industrial complex, same denunciation of Bush's lies etc.
Only it is more up to date and shows Obama as candidate, and one American interviewee saying he "probably" won't change much about the overpowering influence of the military-industrial complex.
What do you guys think???
Is it true that he obtained 600 million dollars, six times more than McCain? (Source:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21159.htm)
Have you / we lost democracy for ever?
Anybody who quotes Hendrix must be cool. Hendrix was a cool guy on top of being an amazing musician.
I know a bit about Obama and how he got there. You might want to read the article by Neal Peirce (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/23-5) in today's CD.
There was a great article in either Harper's or Atlantic about 2 or 3 months ago about Obama's campaign. He did raise more money than anybody else in history but that's more to his credit than a negative. His organization was incredible and he reached out to people in a way that the likes of Bush and McCain can't even understand...let alone that they couldn't do it.
Obama is a top-notch organizer who handles the latest electronic gadgetry perfectly and he understands young people well, and how they communicate. So it's not just that he organized brilliantly with Facebook because he's hip to the technology. Experts claim that the style of organizing he carried out perfectly fitted the Facebook generation... not interested in a centralized approach where they are talked down to.
He used a brilliant decentralized approach where he pulled in millions of young people who contributed small amounts of money, and shared info in a way that is totally in keeping with 21st young people's habits of sharing their lives, friends, taste in music, etc., through the internet with things like Facebook, chat, etc.
Contrast that to weird McCain who admitted he couldn't even GET ONLINE!!! Nothing to do with age. Lots of people who contribute and blog on CD are older than him. He referred to the INTERNETS.... once.
So yes, he was able to raise $$$ and get support and volunteers in a way that is profoundly to his credit: he can organize; he's on top of modern tech.; and he deeply understands today's generation. Sounds better to me than a silly, weird old goof who can't find the START button.
Of course, once the powers that be (especially the $$$) saw what he could do, they started to contribute as well. It became obvious even as he was on his way to wrapping up the marathon primary that this guy was an organizing whiz with far better than an even chance of winning on Nov. 4th. So of course the big $$$ guys started to throw money at him: they're not going to miss something so obvious.
But he would never have been in a position to 'force' them to contribute (because his chances were so good) had he not been able to organize such a huge smooth campaign with tons of $$$ from millions of small contributions. That is all to his credit.
His detractors are constantly making it appear like the big money people made him and financed him. Nothing could be further from the truth. Until he had Hillary knocked out, nobody believed a black man with Hussein for a middle name who had sort of come out of nowhere, had the least chance. He made his chances through superb organizing, and then the big $$$ had no choice.
6 times more, I don't think so; but a lot more for sure.
abdosoliman46
After bombing Laos and Cambodia and north and south vietnam again and again the not a crock president R.M. Nixon went to china ,negotiated in praise and saw to it that the last men run from the top of the embassy. MR Obama deserve better fate which start with negotiation in Iran, and China too, and concerted effort in the united nation to form real international forces to extract the western forces from afghanistan. A serious effort to rebuild afghanistan with the participation and cooperation of the Afghans of all colors will open the way to a civil society in afghanistan.
Little typo (I usually ignore them, but this one is interesting).
You likely meant Nixon's famous: "I am not a crook".
But he definitely was a 'crock'.
What a great article by Fisk. Only someone like him, with his experience on the ground (on top of all the reading a good journalist should do) can put things in such a solid perspective.
Our occupation of Afghanistan might not look exactly like that of Alexander the Great, the Brits, or the Ruskies, but the underlying dynamics are the very same. But Fisk is able to show such incredible parallels where it counts.
Let's hope that Obama was saber-rattling on this one as a necessary promise to getting elected (way too many Americans see this as the 'good war'), and will now back away from the stupid promise to escalate.
The 'message' from people like Fisk can be expressed in different ways, but it all boils down to: Afghanistan will not be successfully occupied. Period. Eventually the occupying force will be driven out.
I know Afghans who weep for what their country was, and was becoming, back in the 1960s and 1970s. It was becoming a modern country, of modest means, but equal opportunity and equal rights for men and women. Kabul was becoming a culturally sophisticated city.
When secularists took over the government, the fundamentalist religous zealots of course rebelled, as in the Fisk article. With no help from the West, the Russians were called upon to help beat back the fanatics. They were doing so, but of course, this could not be tolerated by the West, still playing the Great Game. So America had to beat the Ruskies, no matter what it cost Afghanistan. See the book/film 'Charlie Wilson's War.'
America itself created and trained and armed the terrorist devils we now live in fear of, and we did so in Afghanistan- just to humiliate the Russians, not because we cared about the Afghans one little bit. We should have let the Russians defend the secular society, if we were not going to when they left. So the promise of a new and better Afghanistan was snuffed out. By Our Guys- the Mujahadeen!
After our own more recent experience of the CIA frankenstein monster that is Al Quaeda, America defeated the Taliban, but then forgot to fix the country in the rush to the oil in Iraq. So the brokenness remains, to inspire more vendetta fighters, as vendetta and war are all that is left.
There should have been a massive effort to repair the country after the defeat, and aid the people, and make them happy to be our friends. This would have inspired that area of the world far more than our military adventurism. But of course, that concept is agaist all the greedy on-your-own principles of the US Republican imperialist-capitalist ruling junta. Kill 'em off, keep 'em down, more like.
So Afghanistan remains the festering wound it was made into. By the United States of America. Good work, Bushites! As the Bushite idiots have said, they create their own (hellish)reality, so they don't need to know history, such as that described so eloquently by Robert Fisk in his article. And I've got news for them... their cretinous ignorance is abundantly evident. Too bad others must suffer for the Bush regime's insane evils.
Bang on! This is a very accurate precis. That Bryzynski prick should be taken out behind the barn and shot dead. Criminal bastard.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
In a word: no.
Poet
Sioux Rose
Thanks to Fisk we see the facts of an insane policy, for clearly the same moves are being redone to attain the same lame outcome, minus the new sacrifices of "collateral damage." Sometimes I wonder how much is karma and how much stupidity; but I do recall a message gained at attending a Unity Church. We were told that if we purchased insurance, subconsciously we'd want to get our money's worth and thus advertently or inadvertently contribute to a situation whereby that insurance was necessary. The analogy is intended for the U.S. build-up of armaments. In order to convince the under-informed public that these costly tools of destruction are a necessary budgetary staple, OLD INVENTORIES MUST BE USED. Thus the US requires wars to deploy weapons, so it can go on to build "the next generation of weapons."
A post on CD yesterday explained that military investments do not produce value for a community (and that's not counting the communites it lays to waste). This is investment IN loss on more planes than are comprehended. To battle the rhetoric that always puts war first means dismantling religious doctrine that pits tribe against tribe, the sports nexus that virtually worships team sports, and the Hollywood extravaganzas that manage to glorify heroes as those most adept at using some form of violence or another. I long for a world that sees weapons as the first entry on the endangered species list...
"I long for a world that sees weapons as the first entry on the endangered species list..."
My new favorite quote.
Joe
"I long for a world that sees weapons as the first entry on the endangered species list..."
**************
Nicely said.
Poet
If by "we" the great Robert Fisk, second to no one in his knowledge of the regions he writes about, means the leaders of the Western world, the answer is most definitely: NO!
It is not up to Obama to end these wars, it will be up to us.
We have to organize at all age groups, and protest peaceably in large numbers every day all over the USA.
We have to yell louder then the elite that run our countys and states.
The only way to do that is with all age groups and hundreds of thousands of us in the streets.
This is war, and we need a surge of our own, lets call it the "PEACE SURGE".
Lets give the nation wide movement a name , bring it to life.
Then the elite elite might listen to "We THe People"
BornFreeMen
Prisoner of warrant less surviellance and torture in Bradenton Florida.
24/7 2 years.
Live Free or Die.
You are right, Bornfreemen! It is up to the American people to gently push Obama, help him to keep on track, help him to head towards peace rather than continue with the tragedy of endless war.
War is for fools and those who profit from wars are parasitic lowlife.
www.dangerouscreation.com
There are two interlocking problems for the US in Afghanistan.
There is the Taliban fighting against foreign forces, and there is the 'war on terror' featuring al-Qaeda (and bin Laden, recently reinstalled on the enemies list by Mr. Obama).
Will the new President give up on two impossible to win conflicts simultaneously?
Or will he muddle through, surge and surge again, and like LBJ and GWB, hope to avoid defeat while in office?
Afghanistan -- where empires go to die.
Insanity is doing the same stuff over and over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
But Obama won't be doing "the same stuff over and over and over again and expecting a different outcome". Everyone agrees that the main problem in Afghanistan is that we never committed enough resources to accomplish our mission. Obama will immediately increase of size of our forces and aggressively pursue Bin Laden. Like it or not, as Obama and others have pointed out, that region is the real central front on the war on terror. Talk to any New Yorker and they'll tell you they want a President who will do whatever it takes to bring justice to the perpetrators of 911. But then again, maybe you're some wingnut conspiracy theorist who thinks the planes that hit the Word Trade Center and the Pentagon were holograms programmed by aliens.
Joe, I love your sarcasm: "Everyone agrees that the main problem in Afghanistan is that we never committed enough resources to accomplish our mission."
But there is absolutely no chance that Obama will "do whatever it takes to bring justice to the perpetrators of 911." Obama just follows the lead of Pelosi and will never bring GWB to justice for his war crimes.
No. Everyone does NOT agree that not enough resources committed to Afghanistan to "Complete Our Mission".
There was no justifiable mission in Afghanistan. The "Our" had no business going into there. A whole lot of people believe the Invasion of Afghanistan should never have happened, meaning your claim to speak for everyone is a false one.
Now as to talking to any New Yorker for their take. I am going to take a great big leap here and suggest that you have not talked to all these new Yorkers.
In polls as recently as a year ago the majority of New Yorkers believe there was a coverup by the Government regarding 9/11. Fully 50 percent believe the Government was aware of the attacks and allowed it to happen and 66 percent claimed a new investigation should be taken.
To Afghanistan being the central front of terror, it not a mtter of "liking it or not" just because a person supported the Invasion of Afghanistan it does not translate to it becoming a fact that the central front in the war on terror is Afghanistan. Indeed many would point out that the entire idea of a "war on terror" is inane.
PK
And all empires are deeply psychotic.