Chaos reigns

It is events in Iraq that have dominated the news while the war in Afghanistan has been relegated to the backstage. Yet it is in the Afghanistan mountains that our nemesis, Osama bin Laden, is believed to be hiding, surrounded by loyal followers who would not give away his hiding place for any amount of money.

Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic with an ethnically and linguistically mixed population. Infant and maternal death rates are among of the highest in the world. Life expectancy is about 46 years. The literacy rate among men is less than 50 percent, and for women it is a small minority of 15 percent.

Religion pervades all aspects of life and they follow ancient customs that go back centuries. It is a potentially wealthy country with resources that include natural gas, petroleum, copper, iron, lead and precious stones, yet its people largely live in abject poverty. 

Being strategically located along important trade routes, Afghanistan has had a violent history and experienced many invasions and foreign interventions. The Unocal Oil Co. had hopes to run a pipeline from the oil-rich Caspian basin across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.

Back in the 1970s, Afghanistan had socialist rulers who tried to introduce labor unions, the minimum wage, land reform, and to increase the literacy rate. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US supported various factions of the fundamentalist Mujahedeen in order to defeat and oust the Soviet occupiers. We trained thousands of Mujahedeen and we supplied them with the very weapons and shoulder-to-air missiles which are now shooting back at us.

Osama Bin Laden was then one of our brave freedom fighters helping us fight the Russians. Once the occupiers were defeated, we abandoned him, a policy that has not served us well.

Bin Laden now considers America to be the world’s evil empire, while we look at him as our No. 1 pariah and as a symbol of evil. We believe him to be the instigator of Sept. 11 and leader of a world-wide ring of terrorists known as al Qaida which has gained many sympathizers and recruits in today’s Afghanistan.

One of the many factions in Afghanistan is the Taliban, a fundamentalist group that at one time ruled most of Afghanistan and still has much popular support. A US-led military force toppled the Taliban in 2001, accusing them of harboring Osama Bin Laden.    

The poppy crop — eradicated under Taliban rule — is today at an all-time high. Afghanistan is now the source of most of the world’s heroin. America’s efforts to eradicate the crop have been a failure in spite of the millions the US spent on its war on drugs. High returns keep the drug trafficking alive. 

The Taliban is active at night when they destroy government buildings and schools and plant mines to kill foreign troops. Even the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, which used to be safe, is no longer secure.

Much of the power in the rural areas rests with warlords who employ private armies and rule by the gun. They terrorize the Afghan people and they fight each other. They are accountable to no one.

Farmers and the Taliban have formed an alliance. Drugs, corruption and terrorists are also linked. All factions share in a determination to get all foreign troops out of Afghanistan. None of them can be trusted to carry out the American agenda to catch Bin Laden, dead or alive. Meanwhile Bin Laden remains free to send his taped messages to his supporters and to the world.

Hamid Karzai is Afghanistan’s democratically elected president. His government is weak and cannot even provide basic services to his people. His critics see him as an American puppet.

Karzai is pleading with the US and NATO forces to cut back on airstrikes because too many civilians have been killed. Civilian deaths have incited resentment and anti-American feelings have escalated to new heights.

Karzai wants direct talks with the Taliban because there are too many of them to be eliminated. The Taliban want all foreign forces out before talks with the Karzai government will be considered. We have attacked a country with so many different factions that we are now in danger of losing control. Corruption is rampant and chaos rules. Al Qaida and its Taliban allies have regrouped and taken over more territory. Meanwhile terrified civilians are caught in the middle and they are the ones who suffer.

It is easy to start wars, but once started they take on a life of their own. This has been the deadliest year for both Iraq and Afghanistan, and in both countries we are facing a quagmire with no end in sight.

Worst of all, the global War on Terror may last forever. Why? Because, as the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan shows, one man’s terrorist will always be another man’s freedom fighter.