Afghanistan story

Anand Gopal spoke at a forum co-sponsored by the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, Green Party, Brooklyn For Peace, and a number of other organizations. Gopal is an American journalist who is either from Afghanistan or from close by--he is actually a fluent Pashtun speaker. His analysis of why we have lost the war, and why Americans have gone from being heroes to being the enemy focused on three major points:

1. Air strikes and collateral damage. Gopal told the story of one would-be suicide bomber (now in prison, which is where Gopal met and interviewed him), who was only 12 or 13 years old when a U.S. airstrike hit his house and 16 members of his immediate family were killed. He was at school at the time and was the only member of his immediate family who wasn’t killed. When he returned to the house and made his way through the crowd of people trying to clear the rubble to find any survivors, he came across his mother’s severed head, which he held in his arms for a long time and refused to relinquish. When he did, he joined the resistance and volunteered to be a suicide bomber.
Conservative estimates put the ratio of people in the Resistance who have been directly impacted by U.S. airstrikes at 1 out of every 4 fighters. Every airstrike creates untold numbers of volunteers for the Resistance. Gopal pointed out, however, that the Resistance also causes civilian casualties and wanted to know why the same phenomena isn’t at play on the other side. He described a village that had not seen any violence, although it’s in the midst of disputed territory, until U.S. forces came into the area. The Resistance took up positions on one hillside (the village is in the valley between two mountain ranges), while the Americans were on the opposing hillside. In the shooting that followed between the two sides, four villager non-combatants were killed. Gopal returned to the village a few weeks later to talk to the villagers, and everyone blamed the Americans for the deaths, because they believed there was no reason for them to provoke the Resistance by coming into the area.

2. A corrupt and institutionally compromised government. By corrupt Gopal was not only referring to bribery that is heavily in play, which is true of many governments, but the fact that bribery is actually needed to get anything accomplished.
In more than half the country during the last elections, voting booths were said to be open, but in fact they were not because the government could not secure the area. Observers could not be there, and the ballot boxes were simply stuffed to show a government victory.
To illustrate the institutionally compromised state of the government, he told a poignant story demonstrating how the Taliban has made such a comeback. In a northwest region, where loyalties were severely divided during the civil war, the downfall of the Taliban with the American invasion meant that power was handed over to the Northern Alliance mujahedeen. The Pashtuns of the area were not part of the Northern Alliance but maintain the tribal network and power structure that most of Afghanistan still functions under: tribal elders run the villages.
Unfortunately for the Pashtuns, the Northern Alliance leaders used this opportunity to settle scores. The Pashtun villages had their leaders murdered and their women raped time and time again, so the elders went to the Governor, appointed by the Karzi government and the U.S., for redress. Well, the Governor was in league with the Northern Alliance, so there was no redress there.
Next the Pashtun villages sent a delegation to Kabul to plead with Hamed Karzi himself to stop the slaughter, which he promptly promised to do. But Karzi’s authority effectively stops at Kabul’s borders, so the killing and raping continued.
Then, the villages went to the U.S. military to plead their case. The military commander listened sympathetically and went to the Governor to discuss the matter. The Governor told the commander that those people were all terrorists and there was no truth to the allegations.
Shortly after, the U.S. decided that poppy production, which skyrocketed after the demise of the Taliban, was getting out of hand and told the Governor that the poppy production in the area must be cut in half in a year. The Governor and all the Northern Alliance militias grow poppy as a cash crop, as did the Pashtun villages. The Governor then sent the militias to eradicate the poppies in the Pashtun villages but not, of course, their own.
Finally, the Pashtun villages opened a dialogue with the one organization with an infrastructure and military that could protect them: the Taliban. This northwest area is now completely under Taliban control, and no government representative dares set foot in it.

3. Inadequate and wrongly directed reconstruction aid. Though millions and millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been earmarked for reconstruction work there is very little to show for it, because the U.S. government almost always awards the contracts to U.S. companies, the majority of which do not have the infrastructure on the ground in Afghanistan to fulfill the contract. That means they must subcontract out the work, and the subcontracting of the work usually goes to three or four levels, with each subcontractor taking a profit margin, so that when the work finally does get to a subcontractor who can actually do the work, the money, originally more than adequate to do an excellent job, is no longer adequate. That is why the Kabul to Kandahar highway has become impassible in parts after just three years—design, materials, and construction were so poor that the road is disintegrating in some areas.
Another problem is the type of reconstruction taking place. For example, in one village a model pomegranate processing plant was constructed. Literally state of the art, it was even constructed with local laborers. Unfortunately, pomegranates do not grow in the region, and the plant sits unused. Also, being ‘state of the art,’ it requires electricity to run, and the village does not have electricity. There apparently are plenty of example of such misguided reconstruction efforts.



And we wonder why the tide of good-will has turned against us?



Jonathan Fluck