Jonathan Steele in Kabul Guardian/UK 10 December 012
Eleven years after the west's
military intervention, the withdrawal of US, British and other international
forces has started, but no one knows whether their departure will lead to more
or less instability for a country that has been mired in
civil war for almost 40 years.
Most Afghans say they are happy to see foreign troops depart, yet many
are also concerned at the vacuum they will leave, in spite of international
pledges of billions of dollars for the next decade. In seven visits to the
country since the Taliban were toppled I have never found the Afghan mood so
febrile and gloomy.
Disappointment and bitterness are
widespread. Long gone are the high hopes sparked by regime change in 2001. The
foreigners delivered far less than they promised. Kabul was transformed into a
canyon of concrete blast walls and watchtowers shielding enclaves from which
foreign diplomats only emerge in armoured vehicles for official contacts.
Journalists, NGO staff and independent westerners who have lived here for years
sense a rising mood of anger, and most have stopped going around Kabul on foot
for fear of hostile looks, insults hissed in Dari
or Pashto,
or stones being thrown.
While Afghans blame government officials for creaming off
much of the aid money, they blame western donors for doing too little to reduce
corruption. US military commanders who handed out cash for "quick
impact" projects are accused of encouraging it.
Most diplomats still peddle cautious optimism about
"progress, albeit fragile", as the US and UK hand military
responsibility to hastily trained Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Few
Afghans share it. The new rich are getting their money or their families out to
Dubai and other Gulf states. Many are putting their houses on the market so as
to acquire the cash to leave.
In many instances US commanders no
longer provide close air support or medevac facilities to embattled Afghan
units – a dramatic sign that Afghans are on their own. Afghans direct
experience of the difference in facilities and "culture". They resent
the brutality of raids on family compounds in which they are asked to take
part.
A massive surge in unemployment is approaching. The vast
army of translators, drivers, cooks and bottle-washers who serve the occupation
forces will shrink throughout next year. The provincial reconstruction teams –
the bases where foreign advisers and consultants sit and monitor aid delivery –
will close. The result will be a dramatic curtailment of projects, since
foreigners will no longer be able to supervise them.
Optimists in the Afghan elite believe there is still a
chance to win popular support for the government in the two years remaining
before foreign troops leave. They want to ensure that the elections, due in
2014, are clean this time. This would weaken the Taliban claim to provide
justice more effectively than the predators and brigands who now dominate local
and central government.
Outside Afghanistan, public interest has collapsed. In
Europe and the US, people want out, and care little whether the whole adventure
is seen as a defeat. It was remarkable how minor a role the war played in the
US election. There will be less demand for a grand reckoning of policymakers'
blunders than there was for Iraq.
The American and British people were largely complicit,
since the revenge attack on Afghanistan after 9/11 had widespread
approval, and certainly more than the invasion of Iraq. In Kabul there was
a greater welcome for the foreign occupiers than in Baghdad or Basra. The
Taliban had less of a support base than Saddam Hussein. But western armies
cannot remain popular for long when they invade Muslim countries, Bush and
Blair are guilty of as great a folly as they were in Iraq. [Abridged]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/ten-years-of-western-folly-afghanistan
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