There is something extraordinarily pointless about the death of six British soldiers today at the fag end of a war which we have lost, the purpose of which is long since vanished. Of course Afghans die daily in this war, which is not meaningless for most of them as it involves ridding their country of an extremely unwelcome and alien occupying force. Each death is a tragedy, but we can be forgiven for being most immediately struck by the deaths of our own.
I will set off for India in a week on the next stage of my research for my biography of Alexander Burnes, including his own terribly wasteful death in the First Afghan War. In 1840 and 41 the British Army fought two pretty reasonable battles in just the area of Helmand where the six new deaths have occurred. Both were similar affairs, with British forces numbering over 2,000, including artillery, cavalry and infantry, defeating much larger forces of Pashtun tribesmen. The artillery was criticial. Both tactical successes had no effect at all on the eventual disastrous result of the British occupation, which achieved nothing but death.
We are in alliance with an Afghan government and army dominated by Northen Alliance warlords, plus the renegade Karzai clan of Pashtuns, fighting on the losing side of a civil war to support a massively corrupt government, which is incompetent only in that we have a total misunderstanding of what it is trying to achieve. The purpose of the Afghan government is to use NATO forces to enforce a temporary monopoly of power by the warlords who control the government. This will enable them as long as it lasts to loot billions in aid money and control the booming heroin trade. Then when NATO leave, so will they with their billions.
Seen in this light, its own light, the Afghan government is extraordinarily efficient. It is only incompetent if you imagine its purpose is to establish western governmental institutions, the rule of law, schools, roads etc. It has no intention of doing any of that, except where a little bit of actual development is required to keep lootable aid funds flowing.
There will be no long – or even medium – term effects of our occupation, except for even greater ingrained hatred of the West in the Afghan population.
I wonder who will be the next soldier to die for that?
Frazer,
How long were you Afghanistan?
Why did you go to Afghanistan?
What did you do in Afghanistan?
Can you speak Dari, or Pashtu?
What kind of contacts did you have with Afghans?
What kind of Afghans did you have any kind of contact with?
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Best set out your credentials, before strutting into the thread and starting to piss on people, mate.
@Fedup..well here you go then..
2 Years
As a Humanitarian Aid Worker
I repaired, with my Afghan collegues over 16 miles of underground karez water pipes bringing water to over 200 hectares of arable land benifitting over 19000 families in the Kabul region.
Every day, living and eating with my Engineers and got to know them and thier families, though I was mostly based in District 16, just past the Pigeon Mosque.
Pashtu is a bit rusty but was pretty fair at the time.
I am not strutting into the thread mate, perhaps you can answer the same questions as me…I am sure we will all be rather interested.
That should have been 1900 families..
Wikipedia provides us a breakdown of Elphinstone’s army when it was massacred in 1842:
More from Wikipedia on the 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot:
So what are your views, Frazer, if you care to share them with us? I myself have been no closer to Afghanistan than Southern Italy, so all my thoughts are based on what I have read in forums like this or in articles and books.
Glenn, there are guys such as Seumas Milne, Simon Jenkins and Bob Fisk who have nailed, and continue to nail, the war on terror bollocks that has led us to the brink of a much more serious conflict with Syria/Iran. I say serious because I don’t believe China and Russia will standby and watch the Western long game reach a conclusion. Iran has always been the big prize; the final piece in the puzzle.
I know the guys I’ve just named aren’t exactly household reading in the marginals, but they’re our best hope, in the absence of any meaningful historicised exposure from the BBC.
@Tom..
Well, I pretty much agree with Craig that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable…if you look at the history of occupations from Alexander the Great onwards, it seems that the Afghans have been repelling various types of invaders for hundreds of years.
I suppose the main question, is why are we there in the first place ?
My experience over there was actually very good and I have nothing but respect for the ordinary Afghan just wanting to go about thier daily business, just like anyone else.
Frazer,
Good of you to have corrected the figure, however from the data it is evident you never left Kabul district, and further, your help in laying down sixteen miles of pipe, most probably held you in good standing with the Afghans (ie they would bite their tongue in your presence). Although it is lamentable to find a Western trained engineer to be assigned to help the Afghans with a technology that is endogenous to the area. Evidently all the Qanat engineers in Afghanistan have died without training their younger replacements.
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However given your first hand experience, then you will appreciate that Afghans are not in any way happy with the US staying in their country. This is despite the ambivalence of cosmopolitan residents of Kabul. Further, given the daily toll of the dead and inured in Afghanistan, and the tribal honour traditions that compel the tribe to avenge the death of their members’ loved ones, only adds to the tally of the existing resistance, that “media” casually refer to as Taliban.
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Also you of all people ought to be aware that there is no such a thing as a model Afghan. In fact the “media” portrayal of a monolithic model Afghan is all but an easy way of providing titbits of info for punters this side of water who will be educated in bits for these punters in time to form the opinions they need to form, and come to think they have thought out the desired lines of spoon fed thinking all by themselves.
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I and others for sure will be interested to read your accounts of your Afghan experience, so long as it is not some opportunity to aid and abet the invading forces in a propaganda blitz.
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as for your first question;
but have any of you ever actually been to Afghanistan ?
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You as an engineer ought to know better, that despite me not having been near the surface of the sun, I have a good idea of its surface temperature, and not having travelled through a length of wire, still I can with some certainty work out the behaviour of the electrons in conducting the charge induced in the wire, and calculate the various parameters thereof. Therefore one needs not have been in Afghanistan to adduce with high degrees of accuracy the events unfolding there, and thereafter extrapolate the feelings of Afghans and their aspirations.
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As for your last question about me; Frazer I would like to boast about my swashbuckling adventures, now that you have kindly provided the opportunity for such an outcome. Alas, my mundane and almost boring narrative would bore the tits of a nun, and lets face it, those poor sods don’t get to have any kind of excitement. Therefore I am doing you and others a favour by not engaging in Tonyop-ing (used to comment here, mind he was a hoot, albeit disruptive and counter-productive when he was drunk)by recanting totally boring bollocks.
Frazer,
Hope you will enjoy this image of a Qanat in Kashan Iran Truly water is a heavenly bounty. The cool, potable, sweet water. It ought to be a human right, as should food, and shelter ought to be human rights too, won’t you agree?
I suppose the main question, is why are we there in the first place?
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“The actual reason for the West being in Afghanistan is to appropriate and transport, through client states, the multi-trillion dollar prize of the Caspian Basin energy reserves to the west. The motivation for which is Europe’s dependence on Russian energy which is severely limiting the West’s ability to contain/control Russia politically and economically.”
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I pretty much agree with Craig that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable
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That may be because your idea of ‘winning’ and the war strategists’ are based on entirely different premises. Afghanistan is one small part of a bigger picture and merely holding Afghanistan for the next two years is a strategic victory of sorts. If they succeed in removing Assad then Iran will be next in the cross-hairs (and maybe the odd African nation between now and then) and Afghanistan makes a perfect place to attack from.
@ Komodo,
“Courtenay – it only took you eleven years to get there! Keywords: Unocal, Cheney, Halliburton”
Come on now – a mere 10 1/2 years – at least give me those 6 months credit.
We’re having so many problems logistically hanging on in Afghanistan, I don’t see much likelihood of its being used as a springboard for an attack on Iran.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=202186767305035287983.0004995f23a58e00370d5&msa=0
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Afghanistan and the bigger picture, a.k.a. the Great Game.
Looking from my point of view I’m told many things from many sources; however I have tried to imagine myself as an ordinary Afghan. I think I’d look to the Taliban as my best hope. I don’t believe the western forces will achieve anything; and we ourselves as a nation have lost all that we hoped to force upon the Afghans. I certainly believe Craig Murray has got it right concerning corruption and wrong doing in Afghanistan; but there is some of that among the western allies, more than most believe.
Lysias
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Very true. Afghanistan, was invaded, just for reasons of making way for the Iraq war. Although, the gas, oil, and mineral deposits in Afghanistan were additional incentives. However given the global economic downturn and the glut of the US dollars, with a worsening oversupply of these to continue, compels the imperial hoards to vacate the joint (Afghanistan) for the time being, without tapping into the said deposits. The need for higher prices of commodities keeps recycling the petrodollars, and instead going after consolidation of the imperial grip on softer and easier targets in Africa.
Glen_UK has it right. Our soldiers are there to die. They serve no other purpose. In their ‘sacrifice’ (a despicable word in context), they aid our faux-alliance with a thoroughly, and increasingly, dangerous USA. Parliamentarians of all stripes think this ‘sacrifice’ is just and noble, necessary to retain our favourite-corgi status with those strange, powerful neocons. Put bluntly, young working class men are being killed to save the careers of well-heeled MP’s. Let’s face it, standing up to the US is career suicide, they all know it.
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As has been said of psychopaths: they know the words but not the music. Who can pay heed to the fine words spoken whenever one of our soldiers is killed? It’s just wind and soundbites, signifying nothing.
Afghanistan, was invaded, just for reasons of making way for the Iraq war.
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In that case Iraq was invaded just for reasons of making way for the Iran war.
craig –
do you speak uzbek? found this article on Abdo Husameddin, the alleged Syrian Govt defector all over the MSM, but this guy does not look like the same man, tho he is identified as representing Syria on this page. Google Translate doesn’t do the Uzbek language. the MSM did go from saying the guy “purportedly” defected, to saying “purported defector”, and a lot of people online are wondering about the validity of the story:
http://www.trtuzbek.com/trtworld/oz/newsDetail.aspx?HaberKodu=a6613d83-9650-4bfb-8a6d-f5bf2e3ae2aa
DownWithThisSortOfThing, the map you linked to is good, but incomplete. It doesn’t show the Russian forces to the North, thus making it look like Iran is the primary target. Put the Russian forces in and then the Caspian Basin, where the hydrocarbons are, is seen to be surrounded. The Russian forces don’t have to be so dense due to the large Russian-occupied landmass to the North.
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Lots of the Afghan opium/heroin ends up in Russia where it is destroying huge numbers of people, mostly young adults. This could be interpreted as economic warfare.
Anon
The St Petersburg ocnnection. Most of the heroin through Russia – where it does indeed create a huge social problem – is controlled by Putin’s old people out of St Petersburg. So it is not as simple as a western plot to destabilise Russia.
On various thread points above, Frazer was there as an aid worker before the US invasion, while Kabul was under Taliban control. They used to help him home after a few bevvies, respecting his right to his culture as a non-Muslim, which is interesting.
The suggestion by Nevermind that a serious book about India can be reasearched entirely from Ramsgate is a bit silly. The idea that because of global warmng we should never fly anywhere is not really going to catch on, at least until high speed rail links up the world, which one day it may do.
re Abdo Husameddin post above from Uzbek site:
someone posted this on a blog, which they said they’d found on a website that has no english:
“I read all about this guy in (arabic) arab media , he is the assistant to the minister of petroleum and mineral resources,. the minister and deputy minster positions are political appointments , the assistant position is a managerial and administrative, in other words he is a general manager at the ministry of petroleum in charge of this or that.
According to the opposition syriatruth.org which represent the syrian secular opposition to both the syrian regime as well as the current Franglo islamist opposition the man was under investigation by the government and was facing imminent arrest for selling government geomineral data to oil prospecting foreign companies.”
there’s also stuff online how CNN’s Anderson Cooper has had to respond to a youtube that went viral, showing MSM rebel darling, Syrian Danny, was a fake. this comment was on the same site where i found the above quote:
Anderson Cooper was acting as if he was shocked to hear that Danny was reporting fake stories,after the story of fake Danny hit the internet.
The question is how Danny in no time was able make it to CNN studios to meet Anderson Cooper, all the way from Syria so quickly.
I wonder if CNN have a bed for Danny somewhere in CNN building…!!
there is a CNN video somewhere, but haven’t got time to locate it just now. all is propaganda.
A comment on medialens ref Simon Jenkins’ piece in the Guardian
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/08/afghanistan-lies-killing-our-soldiers
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The ambition to bring Afghanistan democracy, security and gender awareness…
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So Jenkins chooses to blame the Americans for the fiasco, letting our own statesmen off the hook in the process.
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The 400 dead British soldiers died for nothing, at least nothing to do with our security. The something they died for was to prove our closeness and unquestioning loyalty to the United States. In this sense they were a ghastly form of bloody and ritualised… human sacrifice… worthy of the Aztecs.
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At the very least there should be a public enquiry into how Britain became involved in the Afghan occupation, preferably followed by a mass trial for treason, or perhaps we could just skip all that and jump to the axe and the block, saving both time and money in this age of austerity?
News of the World sources back up Guido Fawkes claims about photographs
Politics blog said paper paid £20,000 for pictures of William Hague’s special adviser in gay bar, but never used them
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/09/news-of-the-world-guido-fawkes-hague
Billy Hague, the model of a modern neo-conservative.
Flashman is off to see Obomber next week.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9131281/David-Cameron-need-take-no-lessons-from-Barack-Obama-but-he-might-listen-to-Mitt-Romney.html
To call my suggestion to stop flying around the world and polluting the skies, god beware there’s a problem, cause then we dump some 40tons of fuel into the melee, SILLY, is really the wrong choice of word.
You would not like it if I call you silly for being largely ignorant on this issue, but you are.
before you start shooting back, I’ve flown once in 30 years and whilst agreeing on the substantial issue, that nobody can save the Afghans from themselves, I find such global complacency ignorant, unsustainable and far far too cheap, airprices should triple, new aircraft should attract VAT and the ruse of duty frees, a fraudulent shooting game allround imho, should be abolished.
The justice lacking regards human relations globally is easily comparable to the lack of justice humans dish out on other species. Today’s news that the seabird populations, thats all of them, are drastically declining, is an indication of the overfishing of our oceans, the increasing acidity, a problem that is far bigger long term than the erradication of some of our species via wars.
It is exactly this ignorance that has brought us to the brink, living unsustainable has conseqwuences for us all.
I’m a father and I have done wrong in life, thanks good for diversion, music, summer festivals, gadgetry and gulibility of our young, othwerwise they might be inclined to get rid of their so called fathers, what have they ever done for them apart from living it up on their resources.
How silly is that?
Amos in 2003. Medialens editors –
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Baroness Amos in 2003: Government’s dossier on WMD in Iraq had been ‘thorough and accurate’
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Posted by The Editors on March 9, 2012, 9:01 am, in reply to “Re: Syrian rebels reject Annan’s call for dialogue”
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The Independent, May 31, 2003:
‘In London, Baroness Amos, the International Development Secretary, insisted that the Government’s dossier on WMD in Iraq had been “thorough and accurate”.
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‘Lady Amos told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One programme: “It is absurd to suggest that we invented, exaggerated or distorted evidence for our own ends. There have been successive United Nations Security Council resolutions about Iraq’s WMD. We have evidence that Iraq used its WMD against its own people. These are the facts.”‘ (Paul Waugh, ‘Rumsfeld changes tack by insisting that WMD will be found,’ Independent, May 31, 2003)
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Eds
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http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1331281363.html
Anon
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I might be wrong in my perception that drugs are as dangerous for the west as they are for Russians in terms of creating social problems. It would be naive to think that US/EU support heroin export just to destroy young lives in Russia when at the same time most of the heroin ends up in western markets.
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Heroin export goes way beyond Afghanistan. Mr Murray stated in his book how Uzbek government at a very top is closely involved in this lucrative business. According to Mr Murray, former UN representative Richard Conroy have been assassinated by Karimov’s regime when tried to investigate drug mafia. Considering how tied Uzbek/Afghan border is monitored it is clear that for drugs and as for anything else is not possible to cross borders without government patronage.
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So all in all your argument about drugs being used as economic warfare against Russians is not held out to critical review particularly considering that elites in Russia and many other former Soviet republics are pretty much involved in drug trafficking business.
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One other thing to add here, that it is very true that drugs destroy many lives in Russia and Central Asia. Many former industrial cities in Kazakhstan and Russia where unemployment is now high have around 30% of people under 30 who are drug addicts.
Komodo
“Uzbek, you mention intertribal conflict. This is certainly relevant to the problem, but IMO it is much enhanced by the imposition from outside of “democratic” values.”
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I think you are right here again. It seems obvious that since foreign invasion intertribal conflicts have intensified. This is partially to do with conservatism of Afghan society and partially to do with the fact that many tribes do not and did not and quite possibly will not recognize Kabul as their supreme authority.
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As mentioned earlier NATO have done their major mistake by mixing up legitimacy. Instead of giving Afghan society a government that was legitimate in their own view NATO established the government that is legitimate by western standards but corrupt, illegitimate and most importantly weak for the most of Afghans. It is no secret that Kabul government will fall as soon as the last foreign military boot left Afghanistan. Intertribal and interethnic conflicts will intensify and the only hope for neighboring nations is that all these will be contained within the current borders of Afghanistan. Pakistan will most likely get involved with supporting Taliban and Central Asians with help of Russia, China and possibly US with support of Northern Alliance.
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So all those who think that Afghan peace is on the way (even in any feasible future) after foreign military withdrawal will most likely found themselves being wrong.
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And for all so called Liberals on this blog, it looks like very much hypocrisy that being concerned with deaths of Afghans caused by foreign invasion you at the same time concerned the least with deaths of Afghans followed by foreign withdrawal. How comes? Is life of Afghan killed by NATO have more moral value than life of Afghan killed by a warlord or Taliban?
Yes, Uzbek, I was being overoptimistic, perhaps, in reckoning without other foreign interference immediately filling the NATO gap. Though I think our sucking up to Uzbekistan may have something to do with keeping the N. borders loosely under our influence (intensification of our arselicking will undoubtedly be accompanied by references to stopping the heroin trade). Wonder what we’re doing in Tajik/Turkmenistan? Or have the Russians returned already?