Page 1 of
2 Bored to
death in Afghanistan By Tom
Engelhardt
One day in October 2001, a
pilot for Northwest Airlines refused to let Arshad
Chowdhury, a 25-year-old American Muslim ("with a
dark complexion") who had once worked as an
investment banker in the World Trade Center, board
his plane at San Francisco National Airport.
According to Northwest's gate agents, Chowdhury
writes in the Washington Post, "he thought my name
sounded suspicious" even though "airport security
and the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]
verified that I posed no threat." He sued.
Now, skip nearly a decade. It's May 6,
2011, and two New York-based African-American
imams, a father and son, attempting to take an
American Airlines flight from New York to
Charlotte to
attend a conference on
"prejudice against Muslims", were prevented from
flying. The same thing happened to two imams in
Memphis "dressed in traditional long shirts and
[with] beard", heading for the same conference,
when a pilot for Atlantic Southeast refused to fly
with them aboard, even though they had been
screened three times.
So how is the war in
Afghanistan going almost 10 years later? Or do you
think that's a non sequitur?
I
don't, and let me suggest two reasons why: first,
boredom; second, the missing learning curve.
At home and abroad, whether judging by
airline pilots or Washington's war policy,
Americans seem remarkably incapable of doing
anything other than repeating the same
self-defeating acts, as if they had never happened
before. Hence Afghanistan. Almost 10 years after
the George W Bush administration invaded
Afghanistan and proclaimed victory, like
imam-paralyzed airline pilots, we find ourselves
in a state that might otherwise be achieved only
if you mated deja vu with a Mobius strip.
If you aren't already bored to death, you
should be. Because, believe me, you've read it all
before. Take the last month of news from America's
second Afghan war. If nobody told you otherwise,
you could easily believe that almost every
breaking Afghan story in the last four weeks came
from some previous year of the war.
Headlines from the dustbin of history
(Afghan Department) Let me explain with
seven headlines ripped from the news, all of which
sit atop Afghan War articles that couldn't be
newer - or older. Each represents news of our
moment that was also news in previous moments;
each should leave Americans wondering about
Washington's learning curve.
Pentagon reports 'tangible progress' in
Afghanistan. Here, the headline tells you
everything you need to know. Things are going
remarkably swimmingly, according to a recent
congressionally mandated Pentagon report (which
cost a mere $344,259 to produce). How many times
in recent years has the military claimed
"progress" in Afghanistan, with the usual
carefully placed reservations about the fragility
or reversibility of the situation? (Oh, and how
many times have US intelligence reports been far
gloomier on the same subject?)
Afghan
violence rises amid troop surge -
Pentagon. The information that led to this
headline came, curiously enough, from that very
same upbeat Pentagon report. As the Reuters piece
to which this headline was attached put it: "A
surge of US troops into Afghanistan has dealt a
blow to the Taliban insurgency, but total violence
has risen since last fall and is likely to keep
climbing, the Pentagon said on Friday in a new
assessment of the war as it approaches its 10-year
mark." This spring, insurgent attacks have
reportedly been up about 80% compared to the
previous year, which might be more startling if
the rise-in-violence piece weren't a longtime
staple of Afghan War reportage.
Are you
bored to death yet? No, then I'll keep
going.
Audit: Afghans don't know how many
police on rolls. The news embedded in this
headline is that a recent audit by the US special
inspector general for Afghanistan has found that
some of the $10 billion a year being poured into
training, building up, and supplying Afghanistan's
security forces is undoubtedly missing-in-action.
The IG reports that "the country's police
rolls and payrolls cannot be verified because of
poor record keeping," which means that the numbers
"for all practical purposes become somewhat
fictitious." Put another way, the US and its
coalition partners are undoubtedly paying "ghost"
policemen.
This story could be paired with
a recent Reuters piece, "Pentagon's rosy report of
Afghanistan war raises questions," which points
out that, despite the billions of dollars and
years of time invested in mentoring Afghanistan's
security forces, "there are currently no Afghan
National Police units that are able to operate
independently."
In addition, even that
recent "rosy" Pentagon report indicates that so
many Afghan soldiers are deserting - six out of
every 10 new recruits - as to imperil the goal of
creating a massive army capable of taking over
security duties in the next several years. It has
also been difficult to find enough trainers for
the program, and given all of the above, experts
suspect that the country will not have an
effective army in place by 2014.
But
here's the thing: such reports about the massive
training program for Afghan security forces, the
inability of those forces to operate
independently, the wholesale desertions
continually suffered, and so on have appeared
again and again and again over the last years.
With bin Laden dead, some escalate push
for new Afghan strategy. Here's the only
problem with that "new Afghan strategy" reportedly
being debated in Washington - it's not new. It's
drearily old. In fact, it's simply a replay on the
downhill slide of bitter policy arguments in the
fall of 2009 involving Washington policymakers and
the US military.
That was a moment when
the Obama administration had set about reassessing
Afghan strategy and trying to choose between
counter-insurgency ("the surge") and what was then
called "counter-terrorism plus" (more drones and
more trainers, but less combat troops).
Then the debate was narrow indeed -
between more (an increase of 40,000 troops) and
more (an increase of 20,000 troops). There was
never a real "less" option. Today, with almost
100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and despite
reports of "war fatigue," even among Congressional
Republicans, as well as plummeting poll numbers
among Americans generally, the new debate is
similarly narrow, similarly focused, and deeply
familiar, a kind of less-versus-less version of
the more-versus-more duke-em-out of 2009.
Similar arguments, similar crew. Then,
Vice President Biden spearheaded the
counterterrorism-plus option; today, it's chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John
Kerry, who quickly made the parameters of the
"new" strategy debate clear: "I do not know of any
serious policy person who believes that a
unilateral precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan
would somehow serve our interests or anybody's
interests. I do not believe that is a viable
option."
As in the autumn of 2009,
agreement among "serious policy people" that there
should be a continuing American "footprint" in
Afghanistan is set in stone. It seems the only
question on the table is how small and how slow
the drawdown should be, with the debaters already
evidently settling into an agreed upon endgame of
20,000 to 30,000 American troops, special
operations forces, and trainers post-2014.
Despite the president's promise of
significant troop reductions this year, early
hints about war commander General David Petraeus's
recommendations indicate that as few as 10,000 may
be withdrawn, with no combat troops among them
(though pressure to increase those numbers is
rising).
Not out of your mind with boredom
yet? Then I'll keep at it.
Accusations of Corruption Rampant in
Afghanistan. Here's the thing:
you don't even need to know the details of the
story that lies behind that NPR headline. Yes,
Vermont representative Peter Welsh has called on
Congress to investigate Afghan corruption, given
the billions the US is squandering there; yes, the
Afghan deputy attorney general admitted that he
had arrest warrants for various high officials on
corruption charges but feared trying to bring them
in; yes, headlines like "Afghan war progress at
risk from corruption, training lags" are
commonplace these days, as are stories about
"reconstruction" corruption, protection payoffs to
unsavory local warlords or the Taliban, and
staggering levels of corruption in and around the
government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
