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U.S. 'Secures' War in Afghanistan, Also War Criminals

William Boardman, Reader Supported News

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Oct. 17, 2014

“This year we will conclude our combat mission in Afghanistan.” ~ President Obama, May 27, 2014

ctually, in line with U.S. policy of permanent war somewhere, our combat mission in Afghanistan has been extended indefinitely. Amidst the more clamorous public freak-outs over ISIS and Ebola, the moment of Afghan war extension went largely unnoticed in the media, and went without serious discussion in public or the vacationing Congress. It’s just more war, and just more of the same old war at that, what’s to discuss?

The more war moment occurred on September 30, when the U.S. and Afghanistan signed a 30-page Bilateral Security Agreement that, among other things, prolongs what is already the longest war in U.S. history well into the indefinite future. The agreement also prolongs the backdoor war on Pakistan. On May 27, President Obama said, “This is the year we will conclude our combat mission in Afghanistan.” That statement is now “inoperable.” Maybe the next president will end the Afghan war.

Under the security agreement, the U.S. will keep about 9,800 troops in Afghanistan, where their combat missions will include special forces operations in-country and Afghan-based drone strikes in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. A similar agreement between NATO and the Afghan government will keep another 2,000 or so foreign troops in the country. The U.S.-NATO troop level of 12,000 compares with troop levels in Afghanistan in 2002 – or troop levels in Viet-Nam in 1963 – in similar efforts to suppress an indigenous insurgency with “advisors” and other euphemisms.

When it was signed in Kabul, the security agreement was variously described as “long-term,” which it is; “long awaited,” which it was by some; “an important step forward,” which it may be from some perspectives; “vital,” which has yet to be demonstrated; and “crucial,” which can’t be known for decades. Or, in the words of U.S. secretary of state John Kerry:

The signing of the Bilateral Security Agreement sends a long-awaited and unequivocal message that the United States and Afghanistan are determined not just to sustain, but to build on more than a decade of progress. This is a milestone moment… an exclamation point… a bond…. The gains of the past decade have been won with blood and treasure. They must not be lost, and we all have a stake in ensuring they’re a foundation upon which to build.”

Once the agreement enters into full force on January 1, 2015, it will become virtually permanent. According to Article 26: “This Agreement shall also supersede any prior agreements and understandings … contrary to the provisions of this Agreement.” The Agreement may be amended by mutual agreement of the parties, but it may not be terminated by either party alone except “upon two years’ written notice to the other Party.” [emphasis added]

Does anyone actually know what’s real in Afghanistan?

Afghanistan remains divided, with the government and the Taliban each more or less controlling half the country. Without the security agreement, all foreign troops were likely to withdraw by the end of this year, raising the possibility of a Taliban takeover of the whole country. A shipping company working in and through Afghanistan, the Icon Company, estimates heavy Taliban activity in 80% of the country.

The U.S. continues to frame its purpose in Afghanistan as part of a fight against terrorism. U.S. policy pronouncements continue to conflate al Qaeda with the Taliban, even though the Taliban rejects al Qaeda as being as foreign as Americans. Even in 2001, the training bases in Afghanistan were established and run by Saudis.

The Taliban, also known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, frames its purpose in Afghanistan as a jihad against foreign invaders and a determination to establish “a pure Islamic government” – in other words, repelling a foreign invasion and fighting a civil war against Afghan collaborators.

As soon as the bilateral agreement was signed, the Taliban issued a statement condemning U.S.-Afghan security cooperation, saying in part:

The American stooges further exposed their true faces to the Afghan nation…. these people are the paid employees of America… whose only mission is to cement American interests.… [They] obediently signed away an official document of enslavement of this nation to America….

We consider this action by the new officials of Arg (Presidential Palace) as an act of disgrace and regret which is considered an unforgettable treason with their own religion, people, history and nation and with it has paved the way for continuation of the current crisis for their own immediate political interests…. Afghans have now realized their calls of reconciliation and peace are mere deceitful slogans while the infidel transgressors who were on the verge of fleeing the country have been provided with an excuse to stay….

We once again want to clarify our stance regarding the occupation; the presence of armed infidel forces, their military structures and intelligence agencies on the land of Muslims as well as their unrestricted access to the land and airspace of an Islamic country are in direct conflict with all religious, national and human principles…. therefore we shall never back off from our Jihadi duties in the presence of infidel armies.

… we shall continue our sacred Jihad and struggle for freedom against you until we have saved our country from the savage American claws, restored a strong Islamic government and endowed our nation with another historical distinction.

Our nation … intends to hand out the same Shariah judgment and punishment to the signatories of the current American pact which was meted out to the previous stooges here, Inshallah.

The day before the security pact signing in Kabul, a Taliban suicide bombing killed six people; the day after the signing, another suicide attack in Kabul against an Afghan army bus killed seven and injured 21 (according to Western reporting; the Taliban claimed over 50 deaths). In recent months, Taliban attacks throughout the country have inflicted high casualty rates on government security forces and exposed logistical shortcomings. As a RAND Corporation analyst put it:

The fact that the U.S. and other partner nations will be present doesn’t suggest that this is going to be an easy fight. This year, the Taliban killed more Afghan soldiers and police than it has in any year since it fell from power, and there are no signs that it is easing up.

“10,000 U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan until at least 2024. News greeted with collective beltway shrug.” ~ Rachel Maddow tweet, September 30, 2014

At the end of her MSNBC program on September 29, Maddow concluded by noting that in Congress, out of 100 senators and 435 representatives, a total of 14 (four senators, 10 representatives) “say they’re embarrassed by what Congress has done and Congress ought to come back in order to vote on the war in Syria and Iraq.” It’s even worse when it comes to the U.S.-Afghan security agreement that prolongs the war by executive action. As Maddow said, understating the open-endedness of the U.S. commitment:

But it is both members of the Congress and us the public who actually have to decide if we make overt decisions as a country about what wars to wage and where our troops should serve and whether these decisions are just going to happen outside the political system and nobody answering for them who debate, without hard wisdom about what we’re doing not only going unanswered, but in most cases, going unasked. Amazing.

But tonight’s breaking news, breaking precisely nowhere is 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a decade. They are signing that deal tomorrow. Not a peep in Washington.

Nor have there been many peeps since the signing. Afghanistan has faded in the news. The official narrative has taken hold. U.S. security interests in Afghanistan are “vital,” “crucial,” blah-blah-blah – and in no need of examination. The mainstream media generally reinforce the official narrative, typically by bland acceptance, or silence, occasionally by overt propaganda. Just four days before the signing of the security agreement, Maddow’s parent network NBC ran a blatantly fear-mongering, thinly-sourced story with the headline:

ISIS-Allied Militants Behead 15 During Afghanistan Offensive: Official

According to the U.S. government, the Taliban and al Qaeda are supposed to be indistinguishable. According to NBC News, the Taliban and ISIS, the Islamic State in Syria, are also supposed to be indistinguishable. The propaganda point seems to be that we are facing some kind of global conspiracy of massive proportions and all the propaganda about “Communists” can be re-cycled by replacing “Communists” with “Islamists” or a variant. This is how NBC sold the new fear on September 26:

Militants aligned with ISIS launched a brutal offensive in Afghanistan alongside Taliban fighters that has left more than 100 people dead, local officials said Friday. Insurgents carrying the black flag of ISIS captured several villages in Ghazni province, according to Deputy Governor Ali Ahmad Ahmadi and Deputy Police Chief Gen. Asadullah Ensafi. Fifteen family members of local police officers were beheaded and at least 60 homes were set ablaze …

NBC offers no independent confirmation of any of the supposed facts in this story, although NBC fails to say that outright. Dishonestly, NBC presents the story as true, without actually owning it. The Ghazni attacks, part of a week-long offensive, threatened to give the Taliban control of a province roughly midway between Kabul and Kandahar, two of Afghanistan’s largest cities. The attacks appear to be real enough, but unlike NBC, others, including Reuters, N.Y. Times, and The Guardian, report the possible Islamic State connection only tentatively or not at all.

NBC omits any mention that this is just one more attack in a civil war now in its fourth decade, or that the Taliban insurgency started in 2002. And NBC fails to note that the report is based solely on sources within a government with one of the worst human rights records in the world.

By one ranking, Afghanistan’s human rights record is worse than 200 other countries, out of 215 in all. Afghanistan’s record is significantly worse than China (#50), Ukraine (#63), Israel (#72), Turkey (#89), Qatar (#92), Egypt (#122), Pakistan (#149), and Iran (#167). Among those with worse human rights records than Afghanistan are Saudi Arabia (#206) and Syria (#211).

In another human rights assessment, the 12 worst countries for human rights include Afghanistan, as well as Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria. Also ranked as “extreme” abusers in this study were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and Iran. Similarly, Freedom House considers every country on the map from Afghanistan to Egypt as “not free,” with the exceptions of partly free Turkey and free Israel.

Is Afghanistan now “secure” from spinning out of control?

Despite the U.S.-Afghan security agreement, “Afghan security” remains an oxymoron. No civilians are safe: not from the Taliban, not from the Afghan government, and certainly not from U.S. and NATO night raids and drone strikes. By definition, none of the fighting forces are safe. The Second Afghan Civil War that began with the Saur Revolution in 1978 has entered a new phase, but unlikely a better phase. Despite the drawdown, foreign troops may keep the Taliban in check for awhile. But the Afghan military has yet to perform well, and is significantly infiltrated by its enemies. The foreign troop drawdown will also allow more space for other outside intervention. Pakistan, India, and international Islamist forces are already in the game, and others could easily join.

So what does the Bilateral Security Agreement actually secure? Here’s an incomplete checklist of what the U.S.-Afghan agreement, together with the NATO-Afghan pact, are designed to secure for now in one of the poorest countries in the world:

PERMANENT WAR. The security agreements keep war alive for at least two years, and set the framework for a war that can be extended indefinitely into its fifth and sixth decades and beyond. Subsidizing the war will cost about $5.1 billion a year, mostly paid by the U.S. The direct military subsidy is necessary, according to official Washington, because the Afghan government can’t afford to pay its army. But this military subsidy is down from recent years, $11 billion in 2012 and $5.7 billion in 2013. So it appears that the agreements provide just enough assistance to keep the Afghan government from losing control of its share of the country, probably, but not enough to defeat the Taliban. No one is talking much about peace negotiations.

U.S. IMMUNITY from Afghan law. That was the potential deal-breaker. American exceptionalism requires the exception that U.S. forces not be subject to the laws of any country in which they may commit war crimes. The U.S. has been immune from Afghan law since 2001. The U.S. has prosecuted some of the most egregious war crimes U.S. forces have committed, but not those policy-based war crimes like bombing civilians and night raids. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai balked at giving immunity for bombing civilians and entering their homes, among other things. In Iraq in 2008, Nouri al-Maliki also balked at giving the U.S. immunity for the crimes U.S. forces committed there. Failing to get U.S. immunity in Iraq, lame duck President Bush in late 2008 signed the U.S. military withdrawal agreement that some people now blame on President Obama.

U.S. DRONE BASES. Even though drone strikes are arguably war crimes and arbitrary presidential execution is arguably an impeachable offense, U.S. drone bases are now secure to continue killing people in at least two countries.

PERMANENT U.S BASES. The U.S. currently has something like 30 bases in Afghanistan. The White House says that “the U.S. does not seek permanent military bases in Afghanistan.” On the ground, U.S. bases will remain effectively permanent until the U.S. decides otherwise. The security agreement also contemplates the U.S. building new bases. There’s no need to “seek” what the U.S. already has. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani reportedly “assured Afghanistan’s neighbors that the extended presence of U.S. troops would pose no threat to them,” as if he had any control over what a rogue state like the U.S. might choose to do to Pakistan, Iran, or China.

TORTURE, SECRET PRISONS. Officially denied, these practices reportedly continue with U.S. blessings, outsourced to contractors and the Afghan government. The U.S. may transfer some of its secret prisoners in Afghanistan to the concentration camp in Guantanamo. The security agreement is politely silent on torture, secret prisons, and human rights abuses generally. UNAMA, the United Nations Assistant Mission in Afghanistan, reports a bleak picture of human rights there. The U.S. continues to embrace human rights abuses around the world, to the extent that they are seen to serve U.S. policy goals.

PRIVATE CONTRACTOR CORRUPTION. In June 2013, the Congressional Research Service reported that there were 108,000 private contract workers in Afghanistan, outnumbering U.S. troop strength of 56,700. That report noted: “the ineffective use of contractors can prevent troops from receiving what they need, when they need it, and can lead to the wasteful spending of billions of dollars. Contractors can also compromise the credibility and effectiveness of the U.S. military and undermine operations, as many analysts believe have occurred in recent operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Blackwater, for example, gunned down civilians, with little or no response from the Pentagon. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office underscored Pentagon management shortcomings. While spending on contractors reached $195 billion in 2010, contractor reporting was inadequate to assess whether contractors actually did the jobs they were paid to do. Contractors, some of whom have been hired for combat work, will not be immune under the security agreement from Afghan laws and courts.

FORCED LABOR AT U.S. BASES. The U.S., while officially forbidding the use of forced labor on U.S. bases, has tolerated the practice for decades now. The perverse practice is a direct result of U.S. policy outsourcing military jobs to contractors who squeeze their workers to increase corporate profit. Two of the more notorious abusers are Fluor and Dyncorp International. The Pentagon knows all this and chooses to do nothing about it. The exploited workers, mostly third-country migrants, get little protection from the U.S. or the host countries that don’t care how the U.S. treats non-locals.

AFGHAN POVERTY. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Estimates of the Afghan population range from roughly 27 million to 35 million. Of these, roughly half live in poverty. Almost half are food-insecure. Half the children under five are malnourished. More than 80% of Afghans are illiterate. Claims of “recent progress” ring hollow in the echo chamber of endless war and exploitation. The security agreement makes it more likely that Afghans will be killed than fed, or lifted out of poverty.

AFGHAN HUNGER. In early 2014, as hunger and malnutrition increased across the country, even in the capital, some officials found it “baffling.” Others, such as an Afghan doctor in a malnutrition ward, noted that conditions were the worst since 2001, and maybe decades of war and a large uprooted internal population might have something to do with it. Other contributing factors are mines in agricultural fields, a decline in breast-feeding, and reduced food shipments because of sanctions on Iran.

AFGHAN GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION. One of the ideas behind the United States’ role in arranging the new Afghan government was to reduce Afghan corruption. A UN report found that in 2012, 50% of Afghans receiving free public services had to pay bribes to get them. Any reduction in corruption would have to be huge to be meaningful. According to generally accepted ballpark figures, the U.S. has spent more than $100 billion ($100,000,000,000) in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan since 2001, of which about $85 billion has apparently been stolen. In a 2012 ranking, only North Korea and Somalia were considered more corrupt than Afghanistan. President Ghani recently announced the re-opening of an investigation into the Kabul Bank scandal, in which $1 billion disappeared and 10% has been recovered. Full recovery would still be a drop in the bucket, suggesting that the investigation’s true purpose may be to serve as a check on former President Karzai. In April 2014, even the Pentagon realized that U.S. policy since 2001 has fostered corruption in a corrupt state, through this war on which the U.S. has spent close to $1 trillion. Lacking any useful solution of its own, the Pentagon pretty much blamed then-President Karzai for the mess the U.S. has fostered.

AFGHAN JUDICIAL CORRUPTION. In a well-functioning judicial system even the guilty – perhaps especially the guilty – are treated with fundamentally fair due process. A recent case against several rapists turned into a kangaroo court and rush to execution, despite calls from some in the international community for a competent, impartial, and independent review of the flawed trial. Despite pleas to stay the execution ordered by President Karzai, President Ghani chose not to act, allowing the men to be hanged as the result of an unarguably corrupt judicial travesty based on confessions made under torture. The verdict would almost surely have been the same in a fair trial.

HEROIN AND OPIUM BUSINESS. The drug trade represents an estimated one quarter of Afghanistan’s economy of about $34 billion a year. By 2001, under the Taliban, the Afghan government reduced opium poppy cultivation to less than one-tenth of its previous acreage (roughly from 202,000 acres to 19,000 acres). In the wake of the U.S. invasion, opium poppy cultivation returned quickly to previous levels. Protected by the U.S. military, the drug trade continues to expand and flourish. According to the UN’s Afghanistan Opium Survey, poppy cultivation covered more than 400,000 acres for the first time in 2013. The crop is worth an estimated $1 billion a year to farmers and much more to traffickers as the product moves to the global market. Afghan heroin reportedly represents 90% of the world’s supply, “managed” by the CIA and “secured” by the U.S. military. Over at the State Department, they’ve come up with “Myths and Facts about Fighting the Opium Trade” in which the first myth is that opium poppies can be refined into biodiesel fuel.

WAR CRIMINALS. War crimes have characterized the U.S. presence in Afghanistan since 2001. Hundreds of prisoners of war in U.S.-Afghan custody that December were murdered by suffocation and shooting, then the U.S. participated in a cover-up that continues to the present. Under the auspices of the UN, Physicians for Human Rights compiled compelling evidence of the mass killing, including mass grave sites. The Bush administration consistently stonewalled requests for an official investigation. Democracy NOW first covered the story in 2003. When James Risen broke the story in mainstream media (New York Times of July 10, 2009) the Times editorial board characterized the murders and cover-up as part of the “sordid legacy” of the Bush administration. At the heart of the mass killing of POWs was an Afghan warlord on the payroll of the CIA, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum. Afghanistan’s current president Ghani has publicly called Dostum a “known killer.” A few days after Risen broke the story, President Obama acknowledged that the massacre had not been “properly investigated” and asked his “national security team … to collect the facts,” seeming to imply that he would order an investigation. Instead he has maintained the cover-up. As covered in depth by Democracy NOW on September 30, the “known killer” Dostum is now the vice president of Afghanistan, personally secured by a bilateral agreement with the U.S.

Those are some of the things the Bilateral Security Agreement is likely to secure. As Secretary of State Kerry said, with no hint of irony, “The gains of the past decade have been won with blood and treasure…. and we all have a stake in ensuring they’re a foundation upon which to build.” That helps to explain why the U.S. is planning to deploy 9,800 troops to defend a mass murderer.


William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported N

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