Oct. 7, 2001 marked the beginning of the war in Afghanistan and the “war on terror.” Today, over nine years later, we have seen absolutely no progress or improvement; rather we have been regressing day by day.
Obama’s recent increase in troops has done very little towards securing Afghanistan, ridding it from the Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc., or speeding up our withdrawal from the region. Things just seem to be going to hell in a hand basket, so to speak.
To make matters worse, rumors of peace the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, has shut down United States negotiations with the Taliban. He says these kinds of rumors are a ploy by the west to “cover up” American failure in Afghanistan. The point of view expressed by Mullah Omar is if we have been fighting to get the Russians out, what makes you think we will let the Americans take their place?
So the question now is has anything changed in the last nine years? The answer is absolutely not. In fact, it is quite the opposite. There are still troops from all over the U.S., the United Kingdom, Italy and France stationed in Afghanistan — troops who are either dying or killing for nothing.
According to BBC, “This year has been the most deadly for Nato forces fighting in Afghanistan since the invasion of 2001.” If this doesn’t scare tax payers, I don’t know what else could. Working with the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, isn’t helping, either — to be fair, though, his corrupt administration wasn’t expected to benefit war efforts in any major way.
American troops are desperate to leave Afghanistan, as they rightfully should be. This desperation has led to possible cease fire negotiations among U.S. led coalition forces and Afghani rebel insurgent groups such as Hezb-e-Islami who, according to BBC, are “viewed as the country’s most important rebel group after the Taliban,” and claim “they had already held talks with the Americans.”
Whatever happened to George W. Bush’s statement “we don’t negotiate with terrorists?” Of course, at that point in time, it could be argued Bush was indirectly referring to either that entire region or Muslims in general, but contextually, where do we stand today? I think this goes beyond terrorism — the issue in Afghanistan today is directly linked to military inefficiency and the need for state-implemented violence. I agree with President Barack Obama in that unlike the Iraq war, Afghanistan is “a war of necessity” however, how long is it necessary to keep it up?
When it comes to this almost decade long war, there is no clear-cut, one-way, set course of action. On one hand, we can potentially withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving the entire region at a heightened security risk (especially our nuclear friendly Pakistani allies). On the other hand, remaining military and politically involved in Afghanistan has proven detrimental to the US economy, our troops, our allies’ troops and has gotten us virtually no where.
We are in deeper than ever and things are now worse than before. According to Robert Mackey of the New York Times, “Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American military commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that he will need more than 68,000 American troops to defeat the Taliban,” which leaves us to also question the needed increase in foreign troops.
I hate to rain on everyone’s pre-holiday weekend, Eid, and so on.
Happy Holidays.
Dina Al-Hayek is a senior political science major and a columnist for the Daily 49er.
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