The US-NATO forces are making the same blunders the Soviet occupation forces once made in Afghanistan, in addition to new mistakes, all of which will cumulatively cost Washington dearly, says Mr. Zamir Kabulov, Russian envoy in Kabul. And given the close parallels with the deteriorating situation in Baghdad, it is imperative that the international community wake up and prevent further adventurism vis-à-vis Teheran.
On the twentieth anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal on 15 May 1988, BBC’s Alastair Leithead observes Moscow conceded defeat after eight-and-a-half years of sustained warfare. As the Soviet superpower pulled its tanks and armoured vehicles out of Kabul, the mujahideen, funded by money and arms from an alliance comprising the United States, Britain, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, tasted their first major victory against an alien oppressor.
Now, two decades later, says ambassador Zamir Kabulov: “There is no mistake made by the Soviet Union that was not repeated by the international community here in Afghanistan.” To begin with, a British flag flies over a former Soviet outpost in Helmand province, an ominous sign that the US-NATO is underestimating the Afghan nation in an erroneous belief that “we have superiority over Afghans and that they are inferior and they cannot be trusted to run affairs in this country.”
This is consistent with the old ‘White Man’s Burden’ mentality, which resurfaces with disturbing regularity in West-created trouble spots: East Timor, Kosovo, Kabul, Baghdad. Worse says Mr. Kabulov is the sheer “lack of knowledge of the social and ethnic structure of this country; a lack of sufficient understanding of traditions and religion.” He could have added that the West has a pronounced lack of respect for traditions, cultures and faiths in lands it occupies.
This tendency drives the West to make new mistakes in Kabul. The “NATO soldiers and officers alienate themselves from Afghans – they are not in touch in an everyday manner. They communicate with them from the barrels of guns in their bullet-proof Humvees.” This is a grim indication that the Western soldiers and officers are in fact afraid of the mujahideen whom they once backed against the Soviet Union, and relate to them only from the security of armed cover.
This is similar to the ground situation in Iraq, where the so-called elected government and western military forces operate only from the security of the fortified Green Zone. This shows that even Kabul is not pacified by the presence of Western arms, and that the situation is deteriorating with each passing day as the mujahideen press forward to topple the regime of the West-sponsored President Hamid Karzai.
Mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, prime minister in exile in the 1990s, says infighting caused mujahideen failure in the years following Soviet withdrawal, which created a situation in which the current international occupation of Afghanistan could happen. Criticizing NATO forces, he warned that: “The Russians were beaten because they invaded our country. They were the transgressors,” and now, the ground situation is no different because whereas Soviets were imposing their Communist regime on Afghanistan, the West wants to impose its “so-called democracy on us.” NATO forces, he said, are killing innocent men, women and children.
The Russian envoy noted that while NATO forces may be holding the ground for the present, things are getting increasingly difficult. In the 1980s, the native Afghan structures of government were still intact, and the Soviets could try to win local support and loyalty; today there is no working local administration; hence the Western forces have to engage in a constant holding operation. Parallels with Baghdad are inevitable; the country’s infrastructure and civic amenities are in serious disarray, while friends of the Bush administration batten themselves on reconstruction contracts. The burgeoning hatred of the local populations can well be imagined, and an ultimate Western retreat from both countries is inevitable.
In these circumstances, persistent reports that President George W. Bush is determined to attack Iran in the coming months, before the end of his term, hardly add to the stability of India’s neighbourhood. Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem who said that a senior member of the Bush entourage, which visited Israel last week, informed a high-level meeting that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney felt that military action was required. The Bush administration was being held back on account of the hesitation of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Tel Aviv, however, feels that America will attack sooner because of the current turmoil in Lebanon where the Iran-backed Hezbollah has established de facto control of the country and inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Israeli forces. This had resulted in a sharp increase in the power and prestige of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which Washington wants to nip in the bud. Addressing the Knesset, Mr. Bush reassured Israel that America would oppose Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
BBC suggests that the US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend far beyond its nuclear sites and include most of its military infrastructure, such as its air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. Washington’s hit-list is said to include the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, and facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr.
Looking for excuses to intervene, Washington claims it has evidence Iran is providing weapons to Iraqi Shia militias, though senior military officers clarified that they only had proof that weapons ‘made in Iran’ were being used in Iraq and that they had no proof of Teheran’s complicity or knowledge of this fact. From now till the November presidential elections, the situation in the Gulf is fraught with danger. This is further underlined by the fact that the Republican nominee John McCain views 2013 as the earliest likely date for an American withdrawal from Baghdad.
Organiser weekly, 25 May 2008