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'War on terror'- yet the Afghan crisis persists

BRIG GEN M. SAKHAWAT HUSSAIN ndc, psc (Retd)
NEiTHER the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, nor his rag tag army, trained by the so-called multinational forces, could make any impression outside of Kabul.
Faced with the grim realities of deteriorating security situation, and Us geo-political priority shift, President Karzai has been consistently pleading for more foreign troops in the run up to the election. Bush needs Afghan election more than Karzai, to improve his continuously dipping rating, before his own election in November.
Reports suggest that the insurgents have regrouped and geared up attacks on not only Us soldiers but also on aid workers and specially those officials designated to conduct election in september. These facts are acknowledged in Pentagon as well. Quoting Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, the Chicago Tribune on Feb24, 2004 reported, "attacks by a resurgent Taliban and fighters loyal to one of Afghanistan's most powerful warlords have reached 'their highest levels since the collapse of the Taliban government.'
Pakistan, under Us pressure, had launched massive military operation in south Waziristan to hunt down the al-Qaeda-Taliban remnants, which resulted in a fiasco. The Pakistani venture could hardly make any dent in the Talibans' increased insurgency against Karzai's forces and Us troops in search of the elusive Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
Central authority in Afghanistan, past, present and future, cannot be viable without the support of these warlords that run most of the opium business in Afghanistan. in short, Afghanistan has slipped back in the priority list of the Us except for the desperate hunt for the elusive Osama bin Laden. .
Afghanistan was always regarded as a strategic buffer between the socialist world led by the erstwhile soviet Union and the Us led western liberal democratic capitalists. The British Raj in india
had ensured Afghan neutrality with the application of the policy of carrot and stick. in the Us strategy, Afghanistan was never a priority as long as Pakistan and iran stood in between. When the communists, led by General Daud, overthrew the neutral Afghan monarch Zahir shah, Washington was busy appeasing the soviet Union to finalise
stan. The Soviet Union legitimised its occupation under the infamous "friendship treaty".
It was only a handful of antiSoviet members of Carter's team that could identify the Soviet's military ascendancy, both in terms of covert and overt operation that achieved the capability to engage in multiple directions. Washington
against soviet occupation of Afghanistan but also to carry the proxy war into the pre-dominantly southern Muslim majority republics of the UssR. Jihad, which was launched at the end of the Carter administration, was given full impetus during Ronald Reagan's presidency. saudi Arabia financed the Jihad on equal keel with the
strategic arms parity in Europe known as sALT (strategic Arms Limitation Talk).
With the iranian debacle the Us suffered an unprecedented setback in the Middle East. Mr. Leonid Brezhnev took the calculated risk of invading Afghanistan, capitalising on the Us' ambivalent foreign policy under Carter, the disunity among the islamic countries and internal political upheaval in Paki-
knew that the soviet Union was outstretched and was weakening within. What Washington needed to counter was the soviet role played in support of the communist north against the Us in the south.
Washington recruited Muslim states like Pakistan and the strategic contender of the soviet's in Afro-Asia, China. it convinced the largely sunni Muslim countries to support the proxy war, not only
UsA and Pakistan,
The soviets suffered 35,000 dead and lost $ 45 billion in a decade of war in Afghanistan. The Us gained with every loss that soviet Russia suffered. The soviet's strategic defeat in Afghanistan hastened the collapse of the 'Evil Empire' and made UsA the sole surviving super power to transform the remnants of the socialist society into a capitalist
one with the newly evolved concept of 'globalisation'.
Washington, under George H W Bush, celebrated soviet defeat but left Afghanistan at the mercy of the islamist forces of both home grown and Arab brigades allied to Pakistan's isi and the remnants of CiA and KGB agents, to squabble for power in Kabul.
The holy alliance that was made between America and the islamists, gathered under the banner of Jihad to fight Russia, ended in a series of distinctly unholy wars and epidemics of violence, soon after the last Russian soldier departed. Laid in ruins, Afghanistan plunged into a civil war that gave rise to the islamist Taliban extremists , once reared by CiA, then nurtured by isi and the saudis.
Afghanistan lost its geostrategic importance in the global military context with the collapse of the soviet Union, the contesting super power, and with the emergence of natural resource-rich Muslim dominated Central Asian Republics. Washington remained oblivious of the fact that the strength of the islamist forces was even overtaking Central Asia that could deny Us from the new source of energy, an alternative of the conflict-ridden Middle East.
it was only after 1998 that the Us understood its policy lapses in Central Asia especially in Afghanistan. By the 1990s Afghanistan might have lost its military-politico and geo-strategic importance in the changed world, but it remained important in the geo-economic realm.
Violence continues with fresh impetus as Us shifts its focus from the region. The remnants of so-called Taliban, al-Qaeda fighters appear now to be more organised than when they were ousted in 2001.
Recent assaults on the Afghan security forces, well-equipped UN organisations and Us troops, seem to be well timed. The Us forces in Afghanistan, increasingly under attack, not only suffered heavy casualties since the end of the war, but are also being discredited for inhuman handling of
prisoners in Kabul detention centres.
The Us led troops needed to launch counter offensive for more than one reason, one of which was propaganda value, to fend off growing criticism of the Bush administration, than for any other substance. second, was to arrest the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, where attacks by the Taliban and other resistance groups were escalating. As it emerges, the Us has failed to control southeastern Afghanistan as large areas of the south, south east or west are either under the Taliban's or the warlords' control, forcing Western agencies to confine their activities largely to Kabul and Kandahar.
Mr. Hamid Karzai now finds himself less important in the so-called war on terror. Osama bin Laden is becoming less important for George W Bush in his own reelection than Jordanian born Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, alleged to be the mastermind behind iraqi resistance, now elevated to the equal of bin-Laden by Us authorities in iraq. it is not Afghanistan but iraq, which holds the second largest oil reserve of the world.
in fact, it is not only the persisting Afghan crisis but looking at Washington's long term stated aim in the Middle East and Central Asia it appears that the "war on terrorism" was never about making the world a safer place, as the Bush administration so often quotes to its benefit. Occupations of Afghanistan and then iraq are cases in point. in the process it has only heightened the danger of further conflict and war and enabled islamic extremists, such as bin Laden, to exploit the deep-seated hatred felt by many in the region towards Us militarism and neocolonialism.
in reality, the so-called islamic Jihad that started from Afghanistan with American alliance is not only paying back America but also engulfing the entire Muslim world, from Morocco to indonesia.
The author is a defence and security analyst.