An Obama official admitted that “Money is the new 800 pound gorilla. It shifts the debate from ‘is the strategy working?’ to ‘can we afford it?’”
Finally, the Americans have decided to depart from Afghanistan by the end of this year, after an occupation of good thirteen years. Today’s Afghanistan is a reflection of the policies pursued by ‘the wise men of Washington.’ They are ‘wise’ because not only are they themselves the product of the world’s best institutions but the ones who assist them in formulating policies and their execution are also the most informed, knowledgeable, articulate and intelligent persons. After all, the US has been the unchallenged master of the globe since the disintegration of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
Despite reservoirs of intelligence, wealth of knowledge and abundance of means, the Americans remained confused about their objectives in Afghanistan. The only thing that they were initially clear about was to destroy al Qaeda which had attacked their homeland and to punish the Talban regime that hosted this terrorist organization in Afghanistan. This they did successfully in November 2001 by overthrowing the Taliban government, however, no homework was conducted as to what they would do with the occupied Afghanistan. This is typical of the Americans as earlier on they had left Afghanistan in chaos after forcing the Soviet withdrawal. It seems as if they have no interest in learning any lesson from history.
Anyone who has studied the history of Afghans knows very well that they just do not accept strict control of any central authority. In spite of this, the two most influential and resourceful institutions of the US- the Pentagon and the State Department- decided to build Afghanistan, which is primarily tribal in nature on the ideals of a modern state.
The first step in this direction was the introduction of democracy under which a Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Karzai was first ‘installed’ as the head of the government, who later ‘got elected’ as the head of the transitional government in 2002 and eventually became the first elected president in 2004. The election of Karzai was not the expression of the popular will of the Afghans because personally, he had no national standing and if he managed to reach the highest political office, it was solely due to the strong backing of the US as the occupying force. Karzai proved no gentleman as he abused the advantage of incumbency at the first opportunity by rigging the election to the extent that the Electoral Complaints Commission had to disqualify nearly 25% of the votes cast.
Right under the nose of the Americans, Karzai made a mockery of democracy by resorting to systematic fraud and violence during the 2009 presidential and 2010 general elections, which compelled the Electoral Commission to reject 1.3 million of the 5.6 million votes cast and to disqualify 21 of the 249 successful candidates in the 2010 general elections. The US policy of introducing electoral politics is waning among the Afghans which can be understood from the facts that the number of cast votes in the presidential elections reduced from 7.4 million in 2004 to 4.8 million in 2009 whereas in the general elections the figures declined from 6.4 million in 2005 to 3.6 million in 2010.
What really spun the heads in Washington was the $5 trillion combined expenditure incurred during the last decade in fighting the ‘dumb war’ in Iraq and the ‘good war’ in Afghanistan. Added to this is the astronomical sum of $ 6 to 8 billion that is required annually to maintain the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) after 2014.
The selection of Karzai as the face of a democratic and modern Afghan state actually tarnished the image of democracy and brought bad name to the American puppetmasters. A research conducted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies on the future of Afghanistan beyond 2014 admits that corruption marred “every aspect of the state’s interaction with Afghan society”. A few instances may illustrate the magnitude. To be appointed at the district level, a police officer had to pay $50000. The head of Karzai’s Afghan National Security Council was found demanding a brand new Toyota car for his son to kill investigation in a corruption case. The president of Afghanistan was himself at the centre of corruption as he extorted between $10 to 50 million to buy the loyalties of the politicians. In October 2010, he admitted to have received biannual cash payments amounting to £625000 from Iran for this slush fund. No wonder, a survey conducted by Integrity Watch Afghanistan in 2010 revealed that “everyday bribery of government officials had doubled since 2007, with ordinary Afghans having to pay an average of $156 in bribes each year to access government services.” Such were the state of affairs of the political system that was cobbled together by the US.
The American performance with regard to law and order and economic sustainability in Afghanistan was equally pathetic. The uprooted Qaeda and Taliban never allowed the US to establish order and peace in the country despite the presence of about 138000 American and foreign troops. This was because of a muddled approach of the ‘wizards in Washington’ as the Pentagon supported by the-then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocated an ambitious counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy as the solution whereas Vice President Joseph Biden and the-then US Ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry opposed COIN and instead advocated a much more modest approach. A classified assessment on Afghanistan leaked to the ‘Washington Post’ in 2009 had revealed that America was heading to ‘mission failure.’
Was it the fear of military failure that compelled Americans to pack up bags from Afghanistan or were there other factors. As the Afghan problem is multi-dimensional, there can obviously be no single factor; however, the most determining one that broke the back of the Americans was the ever escalating financial cost of the Afghan adventure. An Obama official admitted that “Money is the new 800 pound gorilla. It shifts the debate from ‘is the strategy working?’ to ‘can we afford it?’” Just imagine the cost: one district of Helmand province sucking in $1.3 billion in civil and military operations was equal to the total military assistance provided by the US to Egypt, her most reliable strategic ally in the equally volatile Middle East. Equally staggering was the cost of $113 billion per year for maintaining a hundred thousand US troops in Afghanistan. Moreover, what really spun the heads in Washington was the $5 trillion combined expenditure incurred during the last decade in fighting the ‘dumb war’ in Iraq and the ‘good war’ in Afghanistan. Added to this is the astronomical sum of $ 6 to 8 billion that is required annually to maintain the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) after 2014.
Can’t Afghanistan itself afford the cost of its misfortune? It certainly can because the US government announced in2010 that the country possessed an untapped mineral wealth of about $1000 billion worth. This is the potential wealth which cannot be realized in the foreseeable future because the ghost of terrorism continues to lurk the length and breadth of Afghanistan. What the Americans failed to take into account is the fact that Afghanistan has always relied on foreign assistance for survival. Even before the Soviet invasion, 40% of the state spending was financed by external sources and there has been no change in this trend during the decade long American project of nation building in Afghanistan. Despite the pouring in of billions of dollars for economic development in Afghanistan since 2001, the poverty rate has remained high and about 70% of the people still lack access to clean drinking water. While success has many fathers, no American is willing to own the failure in Afghanistan. The nearest one conceding defeat has been a 2010 statement of Arnold Fields, the US Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction: “We have not done enough to build Afghans’ capacity to manage their government and develop their economy.”
The US adventure in Afghanistan was the brainchild of the Neocon Republicans under President Bush but when this adventure turned into a misadventure, even the Republicans began to distance themselves from it, Mitt Romney, the last Republican presidential candidate being one, when he declared, “We have learned that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghans can win Afghanistan’s independence from the Taliban.”
