A Disjointed War

 

A few years ago, an old Afghan friend turned up and Delhi and we decided to meet at Lajpat Nagar. "This is AK", he said introducing a compatriot, "He is a Tajik but we are still good friends." 

I knew that my friend was a Pathan but the introduction left me baffled. There I was, a South Indian, born and brought up in the north, sitting in a bustling market built from scratch by punjabis displaced by the partition...but I just could not imagine introducing a friend from UP, Mizoram or Gujarat, or anywhere else in India, in this way.

It is only later, after serving two UN assignments in Afghanistan that I began to understand that the caveat 'still good friends' was actually an achievement in itself. In Kabul I had found a city that was struggling to recover from years of war and strife, a city divided along ethnic lines, where communities sought the safety of numbers.

Once while driving from Jemal Mena and Kabul University towards Sevom Aqrab, we got stuck in a traffic jam. A colleague pointed to the traffic junction and reminisced, "When I was in school this was a dangerous crossing...on this side were the Tajiks, on the other, the Uzbeks and across the road, the Hazaras...all suspicious of each other, trying to keep the Taliban out of their neighbourhoods...there were dead bodies all over the place...you could get killed simply for responding to a casual greeting with the wrong accent of Dari or Pashto.."

It is a difficult world to explain or understand. Steve Coll's latest book, "Directorate S", tries to give you a bird-eye (or blimp) view of the other side of the story. One that enfolds after 9/11 and the arrival of USA into this tinderbox, seeking Al Qaida, Osama bin Laden, and revenge for the attack on USA. 

An ultimatum was given to Mulla Omar and the Taliban leadership - surrender your guests OBL, and his AQ minions, or else. Bound a code of honour, and, perhaps, by naiveté, they refused and opted for the 'or else'. That autumn US-led coalition dropped about 12,000 bombs on Afghanistan...about 40% were "dumb", unguided resulting in thousands of civilian deaths. 

The Soviet invasion of 1989 had claimed an estimated one to two million lives, or up to 10% of the population. This US invasion also caused about 140,000 deaths directly by the end of NATOs formal combat role in 2014. While the US-led allies spent about $60 billion a year in men, materials and 'humanitarian aid' in Afghanistan, the Taliban found refuge in Pakistan and managed with an estimated budget o $100 million annually. from Arab donations, drug dealing, protection rackets, local taxation, extortion and kidnapping.

Now what about the title of the book, 'Directorate S'? Well the author does not have much to offer other than patchy details about ISI and its machinations. The focus of the book is on allied generals, ambassadors, assorted dictators, dubiously 'elected' leaders and diplomats. 

Steve Coll's latest book reads like a thriller but it leaves you disappointed because the book is essentially about short-sighted Americans, not the Afghans, ISI or a way out of this mess. It describes two decades of disjointed war which has turned out to be as effective as most of the allied bombs - dumb.

-------------------------------------------------------

REFERENCES & LINKS

Coll, Steve (2018): DIRECTORATE S - The CIA and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Kabul's All Seeing Blimps - https://www.wired.com/2011/01/all-seeing-blimp/

Kabul - A City Under Attack...Yet Again

 

Kabul has been on my mind all day today.

It started with a trickle, with a photos-app reminding me that exactly one year ago, I had taken some pics of an office commute that took me across a hill to Jamal Mena. The narrow road had snaked past a large fuel-storage facility, past water-tankers supplying houses tightly packed on the hillside, across the ridge to a lovely green cityscape that stretched from Kabul University to mountains of Paghman.

Towards noon, news of an attack on Kabul University starting appearing on Twitter. For the rest of the day I was checking on friends working and staying around Jamal Mena - they were all safe but by evening reports said, "At least 50 students including 5 professors, 4 members of Kabul University Police, including a policewoman killed."

Is there no end to the violence inflicted on Afghanistan? 

Perhaps the answer to this question lies outside Afghanistan because it has been decades since the Afghans had some real control over their own affairs. During the days of the "Great Game" the British said that the king must return, and so he returned to play the role of an unwilling puppet. A couple of centuries later a Pakistani General said "Kabul must burn!", and so not only Kabul but the whole country was burnt so that the Soviets could be forced out. 

"The Bear Trap", written by Mohammad Yousaf, a former IGI general,  in charge of ISIs Afghanistan operations, gives a detailed account of how a few individuals, backed a 'superpower' can destroy a country in a few years.  From 1984, through 1987, over 80,000 Mujahideen went through ISIs training camps, hundreds of thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition were distributed for operations in all the 29 provinces in Afghanistan. These operations killed over 13,000 Soviet soldiers and wounded some 35,000. during nine years of bitter fighting.

As fighting raged in the countryside, Kabul's population shot up from 750,000 to over 2 million in 1985, most of whom were crammed into into tents on the outskirts of the city. 

Gen. Yousaf was quite clear that neither ISI nor his mujahids would have been able to sustain the fight if it did not have a steady flow of money and modern equipment:

As I was about to discover, nothing moves, in peace or war, without money. The Mujahideen could achieve nothing without financial support. No matter how brilliant my strategy might be, the implementation depended on the availability of a vast reservoir of cash with which to arm, train and move my forces. Almost half this money originated from the US taxpayer, with the remainder coming from the Saudi Arabian government or right Arab individuals.

As the Soviets started leaving Afghanistan, USA realised that a radical islamist government was not in its interest, so they kept the Taliban away from Kabul as long as they could.

Then came 9/11, Osama bin Laden, and the Americans returned to bomb the Taliban out of the country. Then then tried to force-feed democracy a country that has always been a diet of strict autocracy. The Taliban simply said, "You have the watches, but we have the time."   The waiting game seems to have ended this year. 

Over two decades of relative peace and quiet is now being lost again to the sounds of gunfire in universities, assassinations, and street bombings.

--------------------------------------------------

LINKS & REFERENCES

* Kabul University Attack 2020 - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-university/death-toll-from-kabul-university-attack-rises-to-at-least-35-as-anger-grows-idUSKBN27J178?il=0

* Book - The Bear Trap -  https://www.amazon.in/Bear-Trap-Afghanistans-Untold-Story/dp/0850522676