How Does FORTY More Years In Afghanistan Sound?

By Steve Hynd

Forty more years of occupation - that's what the next head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, is predicting. And he also predicts that US and British troops will be actively fighting there for "the medium term", i.e. about 15-20 years. He thinks that's a good idea but Conservative Party Shadow Foreign Secretary Liam Fox described it as "not a runner. It would require a total rethink of our foreign and security policy.”

Before American readers dismiss Richards' prediction as "not invented here", I'll remind them that back in 2004 everyone in the U.S. was talking about a possible pullout from Iraq after elections in 2005 - but that the British Army said it was planning to be there until at least late 2008. They turned out to be more honest about prospects then than any American politician, pundit or general. The British Army finally left Iraq in mid-2009.

I expect the same on current timelines for Afghanistan, where American officials have been notoriously averse to estimates of how long the "long war" will actually take. Even now, they're hedging their bets - but the estimate of David Kilcullen, Australian advisor to General Petraeus and now fellow of the neoliberal mothership, CNAS, that the U.S. will be enmired for at least a decade at a cost that will eventually eclipse even the trillion-plus spent on Iraq has become one they cannot ignore.

Imagine how much more incredibly costly in both blood and treasure FORTY years will be. And for what?

Today at the New York Times, Elizabeth Rubin's profile of Hamid Karzai presents what my friend Gareth Porter describes as "arguably the most important piece of journalism so far on the U.S. war in Afghanistan" as it describes a country inextricably beholden to warlords, a situation made worse by American policies enabling those regional, tribal strongmen who control the security forces, drug trafficking, corruption and the political process. Gareth emails:

Only now is it dawning on Washington policymakers that they have a serious problem of warlordism on their hands which renders the Afghan government illegitimate in the eyes of the vast majority of Afghans. At the same time whey are talking about doubling the number of Afghan police and troops, even though they have no idea how the influence of the warlords on those additional police and troops through a warlord-dominated chain of command would be avoided.

The Vietnamisation of Af/Pak continues, and we're rapidly heading towards the point where everyone except the neocon and neoliberal interventionists realises we're in Quagmiristan. Not that that will affect policy - the Very Serious People are always right, even when they're wrong.

Comments

[Dave Schuler]

They're also positing foreign aid from the U. S. to Afghanistan on the order of the aid we give to Israel or Egypt for the indefinite future. There's a big difference: Israel or Egypt's GDP is ten times Afghanistan's. Foreign aid on the order of the aid we're giving those two would amount to 30% of Afghanistan's GDP. That's beyond absurd.

[Ron Beasley]

With over 50% already opposed to US involvement and the number only growing there will be a lot of pressure by next summer - before the midterm elections. I don't see us there four more years much less forty.