Topic: How did we get from Manhattan to Kabul? - Part 1

topic by
Sandra
11/16/2001 (14:54)

This is a question I'd like to have answered myself!
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16 November 2001
How did we get from Manhattan to Kabul?
Part 1

by Mick Hume

Suddenly, it seems, all of the doubts about the war in Afghanistan are supposed to have disappeared. Since the Taliban fled Kabul, we have been told that the American strategy has been 'spectacularly vindicated'. What's more, after the trauma of 11 September, we are assured that the USA and the rest of the West have emerged stronger and more united.

Not quite. Helping the Northern Alliance and other Afghan factions to chase away the Taliban is one thing. Many have rightly noted that it will be much more difficult to sort out the subsequent chaos in Afghanistan. More strikingly, the war has done nothing to 'sort out' the problems of fear, insecurity, fragmentation and alienation within American and Western societies - which was the primary aim of Washington's response to 11 September.

It beggars belief to suggest that the defeat of the Taliban now vindicates Western strategy. We at spiked opposed this war, but we never doubted that the power of the US-led coalition could blow away a ragtag, stateless force like the Taliban, which eventually left Kabul the same way it entered the city in 1996 - without a fight. The only serious doubts seemed to exist in the minds of Western leaders, whose uncertainty about their own authority found reflection in the continual overestimation of the opposition, and reluctance to take decisive military action themselves.

The short-term military outcome within Afghanistan may not have been in much doubt. But important doubts remain regarding broader political questions. For instance:

Exactly what 'strategy' is it that has been vindicated? From the start, the American-led intervention in Afghanistan has appeared aimless and confused, uncertain about any clear, strategic goals.

What has any of this to do with 11 September? After all, the terrorists who attacked New York and Washington did not come from Afghanistan; they were largely made in the West. How did we get from the destruction in Manhattan to the bombing of Kabul and Kandahar and the Balkanisation of Afghanistan?

How has the West been strengthened by this experience? For now, US president George W Bush is riding high in the polls, and UK prime minister Tony Blair can strut about the world stage playing his favourite game of building other people's nations. But beyond that, the crisis has confirmed rather than resolved the problems that lie barely beneath the surface of our societies: the elite's loss of nerve; the uncertainty about what we stand for; the inability to hold the line or act decisively; the all-consuming atmosphere of fear and confusion.

Remember how all of this began, after the devastating terrorist attacks of 11 September, with a disoriented President Bush emerging from his bunker first to swear that America would get 'those folks' responsible, and then to announce that the USA was 'at war' with persons unknown. The unusual step of first declaring war, and then looking for somebody to fight a war against, set the tone for a campaign where war aims seem to have been made up as we go along, with the script being repeatedly rewritten.

Osama bin Laden, said to be the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, was soon put in the frame, followed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, after it refused Anglo-American demands to arrest and extradite bin Laden on the basis of evidence that it was not allowed to see. (This always seemed one of the Taliban's more reasonable attitudes.) But even once the war against the Taliban had begun, American policy still appeared inconsistent and lacking direction.

Josie Appleton has already detailed the many shifts in the coalition's attitude towards the Northern Alliance and the issue of nation-building in Afghanistan (1). It was as if, after four weeks of indecision following 11 September, the US and UK governments finally tried to appear decisive by beginning the bombing, and then declared a war to overthrow the Taliban as justification for the action.

Even then, the main concern of the coalition often seemed to be to limit the damaging propaganda consequences of the military action. Western leaders were at such pains to explain who they were not at war with - the Islamic world, the Afghan people - that the question of what they were fighting for remained unclear. Instead we were treated to the spectacle of battle-hardened US commanders talking like cultural studies professors, explaining to a bemused media that the war was against 'a concept' rather than a country.

The lack of strategic clarity about how they got into this war, and how they might get out of it, led many in the West to exaggerate the logistical difficulties of the campaign and to reinvent their opponents as a major force. Even the day before the Taliban regime collapsed, the talk among Western war leaders was of the Northern Alliance and US airforce keeping the Taliban pinned down until the spring, when a proper offensive could begin. Since then, they have been desperately playing catch-up as Afghanistan is carved into pieces. Or was a Balkan-style fragmentation of the country part of this spectacularly vindicated strategy all along?

At the time of writing confusion reigns, not only in Kabul and Kandahar, but in Western capitals. One moment we are assured that the net is closing around bin Laden, the next that he has probably escaped. One day the word is that he will be assassinated, the next that he will eventually be brought to trial.

reply by
Barb
11/16/2001 (23:23)

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Does Sandra have a life outside of politics? Maybe she needs a man.