Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the sins of empire // Anti-Taliban Forces Say They've Taken 3 Districts In North Afghanistan
American empire has been stuck in a place where, to use Polybius’s words, “it can neither endure its condition, nor the means to overcome it.” In the context of Afghanistan, learned strategic thinkers and broadsheets of imperial privilege like The New York Times, will fulminate over roads not taken. But this exercise, as valuable as it might be, misses the wood for the trees. These questions re-enact the presumption of imperial omniscience, innocence and power. In Phil Klay’s masterpiece, Missionaries, Lisette, a journalist who has spent time in Afghanistan, asks the question: “Any wars right now we are not losing?” She promptly thinks the answer is Colombia. But this answer turns on how one defines “not losing”. The exorbitant privilege of empire is you even get to define what counts as loss and shrug off its costs.
There is a long litany
of losses. The wars in Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon; the
coups from Iran to Chile; the creation of secret instruments of violence in assorted
places from Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Laos, Honduras, El Salvador;
sanctuary to autocracies and exporters of violent fundamentalism from Saudi
Arabia to Pakistan, each of whom have subverted the US’s own aims. Ask the
question: “Did intervention leave a place in a better condition or achieve an
objective with least violence possible?” The answer often turns out to be “no”.
The tens of thousands of civilian casualties testify to that.
Often progress was set
back. The Middle East had many functioning states, pockets of urbane modernity,
till the geopolitics set the stage for worse forms of fundamentalist reaction.
The exact shape of the Taliban, ISIS, al Qaeda is no more over-determined by
the interventions of great powers, than it is by some more primordial essence
of a culture. But it is impossible to deny that they are products of modern
imperial politics: Its unsettling of local societies, its encouragement to
violence, its support of fundamentalism, its breaking up of state structures.
At the heart of empire
is the debasement of moral identity. Empire has seven deadly sins. The first is
corruption. Internally, empire always empowers corrupt practices, the legions
of lobbyists, arms dealers, hucksters, who begin to constitute the secret
sinews of the state and channel its war booties. Externally, the reliance on
mercenaries, the sordid deals with all kinds of unsavoury groups, the casual
saturation with arms, the implication in illicit trade, make empire resemble a
gangster operation that has blowback on the state it represents. Corruption
ensured both that the US Treasury was drained and no state was built in
Afghanistan. The second sin is self-deception. From Vietnam to Afghanistan, America
knew exactly what is going on. But the stakes in keeping the myth of imperial
virtue and imperial power produce self-deceptions of the most extraordinary
sort.
The third is a morality that, to use Tagore’s phrase, “is split down the middle,” committed to the very things it disavows. What does the rule of law mean when empire itself enacts a regular lawlessness? What does a “humanitarian mission” mean, when it licenses an outsourcing of torture or disregard for civilian life? The fourth sin is its continual expansionism. The omniscience of empire is apt to give every local conflict global significance. But it also has the need to remind the world of its resolve to remain preeminent. That needs war. The fifth is hypocrisy. The more power tries to stretch, the more it deploys double standards. Some hypocrisy is inevitable in politics. But it becomes the defining feature through which the world understands imperial power.
The sixth
is a cult of violence. There is an abiding paradox in US strategy. The creation
of stable states and societies requires the pacification of violence. But there
is something bizarre about modern imperial counterinsurgency strategies. From
Iraq to Afghanistan to western Pakistan to the drug wars, the abiding legacy of
this empire is saturation of societies with arms and militias; as if creating
armed factions in society and militarising, running it awash with cash, will
ever get you a stable state. The seventh sin is racism. Even the most
liberal-minded empire will create a hierarchy of those whose lives matter; even
in its emancipatory mission it cannot get away from reinforcing claims of
superiority that generate resentment.
There are no easy
solutions in Afghanistan. The corruptions of empire made withdrawal long
overdue. But the tragedy of the American withdrawal is that even in trying to
extricate itself, America ended up enacting the sins of empire, not overcoming
them. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is not an end of the corrupt political
economy of violence. The great powers will be new proxies who produce the same
cycle of violence and civil war. Withdrawal does not signal a commitment to
greater multilateralism or the rule of law. Withdrawal will not produce an
honest reckoning with the self-deceptions of empire.
Will the Taliban
reinvent itself? There is reason to be deeply sceptical that it will. Will it
become like a poor Saudi Arabia in the Eighties — a power the West had no
problems with, even when it was internally repressive or exporting jihad? Or
will anarchy follow? Or will now the internal fissures of Afghan society
produce a new political dynamic? No one truly knows.
But the modality of US
withdrawal exuded the fundamental sin of empire: Its reinforcement of race and
hierarchy. The tropes used to justify the mess of this withdrawal all
underscore this. It is the Afghan president, their army, that is to blame, as
if after 20 years of intervening in a society, the US had no responsibility.
Suddenly, the pretext of common humanity, and universal liberation, which was
the pretext of empire, turned into the worst kind of cultural essentialism. It
is their culture, these medieval tribalists who are incapable of liberty. We
veiled the fact that they are entirely the creation of modern war.
And finally, this
shocking sense of, “Frankly dear, we could not care a damn,” about the Afghans
who reposed trust and risked their lives. Fundamentalism has drawn its
motivating energy, not from God, but from cultivating grievance against
imperial hierarchies. The Taliban’s victory is not just a morale booster for
fundamentalists everywhere. The US management of the withdrawal will give fillip
to fundamentalism’s deepest psychological impulses. It is an anarchic world,
each for their own.
Anti-Taliban Forces Say They've Taken 3 Districts In North Afghanistan
Forces holding out against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan say they have taken three districts close to the Panjshir valley where remnants of government forces and other militia groups have gathered. Defence Minister General Bismillah Mohammadi, who has vowed to resist the Taliban, said in a tweet that the districts of Deh Saleh, Bano and Pul-Hesar in the neighbouring province of Baghlan to the north of Panjshir had been taken.
It was not immediately clear what forces were involved but the incident adds to scattered indications of opposition to the Taliban who swept to power in a lightning campaign that saw them take all of Afghanistan's main cities in a week. Local television station Tolo News quoted a local police commander who said Bano district in Baghlan was under the control of local militia forces and said there had been heavy casualties. The Taliban have not commented on the incident.
Former Vice President Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, son of former anti-Soviet Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, have vowed to resist the Taliban from Panjshir, which repelled both Soviet forces and the Taliban in the 1980s and 1990s. People close to Massoud say that more than 6,000 fighters, made up of remnants of army and Special Forces units as well as local militia groups, have gathered in the valley. They say they have some helicopters and military vehicles and have repaired some of the armoured vehicles left behind by the Soviets.
There appeared to be no connection between the groups in Panjshir and apparently uncoordinated demonstrations in some eastern cities and the capital Kabul in which protesters raised the red green and black colours of the Afghan flag. But they underscore the problems that may face the Taliban as they begin to consolidate their rapid victory….
In
pictures: Afghans mark Independence Day as challenges to Taliban rule rise
Chris
Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine
Book review: AFGHANISTAN: ‘A SHOCKING INDICTMENT’
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
