US follies & repetition of history

Oct 5, 2011
Pak Observer

Taliban are poor but the problem is that they are happy to be poor…” have been the words of one of my American professors, who painfully analyzed Taliban feats and American failures yet always trying to prove that the Yanks had not lost the war in socially hospitable but geographically inhospitable highlands of Afghanistan. I reflected a while as to why should Taliban happiness with poverty be a problem for him.

American academics and policy makers have been thinking and rather confessing that their armed machine had won conventional wars, even the great ones, but was unfit to win unconventional wars waged thousands of miles away from the shores of Atlantic. Having lost in Vietnam about four decades ago, they continued with perpetual proxy conflicts on the continents of Africa and Asia. Ostensibly, they stood prevailed in some of the conflicts wherein they did not have direct involvement but lost all irregular campaigns wherever they fielded their own Champaign-bred soldiers. The problem that their analyst found was over-obsession with the military power and over-use of military muscle, using gun where stick was sufficient or even a word would do. This time, following the terrorist incident of 9/11, they thought of using military behind the veil of diplomacy, information, economic and other instruments of statecraft. Thus, they put the entire academic machine to malign the Islamic communities as Islamists and anyone who resisted their militaristic pursuits as terrorist. Yet they failed.

The war in Iraq is far from over despite victory declared by Mr. Bush, and the War in Afghanistan is rather haunting the US polity and military hierarchy in their days and dreams. This is what had been the cry of the professor that the drones and dollars have not worked on Taliban, and they continue to challenge the supremacy of the superpower with daggers and donkeys. Hence, it is a foregone conclusion that whatever the route they may take, the victory has decided the side it would choose in the rough Highlands. Taliban now actually rule over better part of Afghanistan. The US-protected government in the city of Kabul has no teeth to scare the Taliban fighters entering the capital and attacking even the most sensitive veins of America’s civilian and military structure in Afghanistan including the US Embassy, the NATO Headquarters, the CIA Headquarters and Intercontinental Hotel oft-inhabited by the Euro-American officials and intelligence operatives.

The history is actually repeating itself. Through the mirror of Vietnam, one can look at the portrait of today’s Afghanistan and vice versa. Situation in Afghanistan is nothing less than a coloured photocopy of Vietnam of 1960s. What Mr. Henry Kissinger wrote at the end of the Vietnam War is somewhat replicating in Afghanistan today. He had noted, “We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla warfare: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The [North Vietnamese] used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape – to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.” If the Vietnamese did what Kissinger nitpicked, the Afghans are a mile ahead. Now, after numerous follies and continual failure, the Americans seem to have unlearnt all lessons of the war even before it has come to a logical (they may call it illogical) end. However, their frustration is not without reason. The reality claims after Operation in Marja, which had more to do with media and less with military, that we are winning, we have attained partial victory, Kabul is secure and elected government in Kabul is functioning while insurgents have been rejected by the populace, we have started securing the Taliban strongholds of Kandhar and Helmand, and so on has proved to be less than even a school team rhetoric. Their claim that Al-Qaida is virtually no more after they killed Osama bin Laden and that it would also break the back of Taliban proved wide of the mark, when Taliban downed a Blackhawk and announced that they had killed all Naval SEALs who took part in operation against bin Laden along with their dog.

US Administration expectedly turned towards Pakistan to find a scapegoat so as to pull up Obama’s popularity which has dropped to 38%. There is nothing new. They did the same with Cambodia in the aftermath of fierce Tet Offensive launched by Vietcong guerrillas against them in January 1968. “Last night that American ground troops have attacked ... a communist base extending 20 miles inside Cambodia ... This is not an invasion of Cambodia ... The areas in which these attacks will be launched are completely occupied and controlled by North Vietnamese forces. Our purpose is not to occupy the areas. Once enemy forces are driven out of these sanctuaries and their military supplies destroyed, we will withdraw,” informed US President Richard Nixon to his nation during his address on 20 April 1970. Cambodia had been presented to the Western publics as a scapegoat for US failure in Vietnam through the war therein. As for Haqqani Network, CIA knows more than ISI that they are effective in Afghanistan, and not only have an elaborate militant infrastructure but even the political structure at least in half a dozen provinces of their country.

As for the fear that the Americans may launch physical attack on North Waziristan Agency, it is considered that they will think a thousand times before such a treacherous scheme, though, they have unveiled the façade of friendship insofar as Pakistan is concerned. They have spoken their mind to repeat the history in yet other way; rushing off Afghanistan sooner or later (events point to sooner) and thus leaving the region in turmoil ones again as they did the moment the last Soviet soldier crossed “Friendship Bridge” over Amu Darya in 1989 after 9 years, 1 month and 20 days of war. It is feared that till such time the power continues to ooze out of American coffers, they would go on with their pursuits thereby keeping the poorer nations under the weight of history.

—The writer holds masters degree in Strategic Security Studies from the College of International Security Affairs, Washington DC.