Page 2 of
2 A catalogue of errors in
Afghanistan By Michael Scheuer
women's rights - added to the
misery of rural Afghans by appearing to be attacks
on millennia-old social, tribal and religious
mores. As Afghans were faced with the reality of
being in the thrall of criminals, and perceived
their culture to be under attack, it is not
surprising that the Taliban are finding at least a
tepid welcome home.
The third problem for
the coalition is the amount of time it has
spent in Afghanistan. Now in
the sixth year of occupation, Western leaders are
confronted not only by a stronger-than-2001 enemy,
but also by the resurgent insularity and
anti-foreign inclinations of the Afghan people.
While not precisely xenophobic, the
Afghans are historically hospitable and protective
to a fault of visiting foreigners whom they have
welcomed - witness their treatment of bin Laden -
but have precious little tolerance for foreigners
who, by intention or default, seek to rule them.
Today, the Afghans perceive themselves to be
doubly ruled, and doubly badly ruled, by
foreigners: the US-led coalition and the
pro-Western, nominally Islamic, detribalized and
corruption-ridden government of President Hamid
Karzai.
This perception of a "foreign
yoke", along with spreading warfare, little
reconstruction and endemic banditry, has created a
fertile nationalistic environment for the Taliban
and their allies to exploit.
Finally, the
US-led coalition now faces the full brunt of a new
era that was started by the prolonged and brutal
Soviet occupation and its consequent jihad. Long
on the periphery of Islam - almost a backwater -
Afghanistan became part of the Muslim world's
consciousness during the Afghan-Soviet war of the
1980s.
The war focused Muslims, and
especially Arab Muslims, on the plight of their
Afghan brethren and prompted them to send large
amounts of money and arms, as well as fighters to
support the mujahideen. The Afghans repaid this
assistance by defeating the Red Army, thereby
giving the Islamic world its first victory over
"infidel" Western forces in several hundred years.
The Afghans' victory was the turning point, and
the totem for the maturing of a well-defined
worldwide Islamist militant movement.
Today, many non-Afghan Muslims again
perceive that the Afghans are being occupied and
tortured by another infidel entity, the US-led
coalition. This is especially the case because the
Afghan war is occurring in tandem with the Iraq
war, which broadens the sense that all of Islam is
under infidel attack.
As a result, the
flow from abroad of funds, arms and fighters to
the Afghan insurgents - while probably not as
large as the flow to the Iraqi resistance - is
substantial, and can be seen in the improving
combat performance of the Taliban-led forces
confronting coalition forces.
Also
suggesting this connection are the successful
efforts to share expertise across the two
theaters, with Iraq war skills in suicide attacks
and improvised explosive devices being brought to
bear in Afghanistan, while the Afghans' well-honed
skills in attacking helicopters are emerging as
part of the Iraqi insurgents' toolkit.
The
future for the West in Afghanistan is bleak, and
it is made more discouraging by the fact that much
of the West's defeat will be self-inflicted
because it did not adequately study the lessons of
history.
"Efforts to occupy and rule
[Afghanistan] usually ended in disaster," wrote
eminent British historian Sir John Keegan in The
Daily Telegraph in September 2001. "But
straightforward punitive expeditions ... were
successful on more than one occasion.
"It
should be remembered that, in 1878, the British
did succeed in bringing the Afghans to heel [with
a punitive expedition]. Lord Roberts' march from
'Kabul to Kandahar' was one of [Queen] Victoria's
most celebrated wars. The Russians, moreover,
foolishly did not try to punish rogue Afghans, as
Roberts did, but to rule the country. Since
Afghanistan is ungovernable, the failure of their
efforts was predictable ...
"America
should not seek to change the regime, but simply
to find and kill the terrorists. It should do so
without pity."
Michael Scheuer
served in the Central Intelligence Agency for 22
years before resigning in 2004. He served as the
chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the
Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is
the once-anonymous author of Imperial Hubris:
Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin
Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.
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