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AFGHANISTAN: More Civilian Deaths Unless U.S.-NATO Peace Keep

Commentary

KABUL, Sep 11 2009 (IPS) - Each month since U.S. President Barack Obama has taken office, Afghanistan has seen a growing number of civilian and military deaths – a spiral of violence which has served to destabilise a nation already struggling to recover from its previous three decades of war.

Nearly a decade after 9/11 (the World Trade Center bombings in New York), international military operations in Afghanistan are no longer about preventing Afghanistan from becoming another safe haven for al Qaeda but about their own survival.

Every student of counter insurgency knows that when force protection becomes a priority over winning over the local population, you might as well pack up your bags and go home.

This past week in highlights just how much Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) – U.S. combat operation – and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) missions are lost in this country.

The badly coordinated operation in Kunduz which resulted in so many civilian deaths (Sep. 2) and subsequent rift between NATO and OEF commanders, the U.S. military raid on a Swedish Committee hospital (Sep. 7); and somehow related, the abhorrent behaviour of U.S Embassy security contractors (established by an independent probe report).

Major intelligence agencies announced more than a year ago that al Qaeda’s leadership and organisational apparatus have shifted to East Africa and Pakistan.

Nearly every terrorist attack on U.S. interests or its allies since Sep. 11, 2001, such as Riyadh, Madrid, London and Istanbul, were initiated and coordinated not from Afghanistan but from cells within the heart of Europe or Pakistan.

And, the message that al Qaeda will return if the international community allows the Taliban to take over Afghanistan is a misrepresentation of the facts, a fear tactic by politicians in Washington and Brussels (NATO headquarters) meant to buy the time needed for a face-saving withdrawal?

Tragically, by misrepresenting both the al Qaeda and Taliban threat, such a face-saving withdrawal will be a distant accomplishment and at the cost of many more civilians, a growing number of foreign soldiers and at the risk of further destabilising Afghanistan during an already sensitive and potentially volatile election.

Indeed the Taliban are a threat but the threat is only as big as the West makes them. Trying to defeat them militarily is like throwing fuel on a fire.

The Taliban were a problem for the vast majority of Afghans before 9/11 and they will continue to be a problem for Afghanistan unless a locally driven solution is given the political and public space to grow.

Currently, this space is dominated by both the NATO and OEF missions.

As with any extreme and violent social problem, the solution to the Taliban can only come from deep within Afghan society. Though the comparison is not entirely accurate, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK – a white supremacist group) violated and terrorised African Americans, Jews and other minorities in the United States for more than 50 years.

It wasn’t until Americans themselves decided to organise socially, politically and legally that the KKK’s power was suppressed.

Imagine if a foreign military attempted to solve the KKK problem for America?

In the case of Afghanistan, a foreign dominated effort to eliminate the Taliban is not only a reality but a violation of every Afghans sovereign right to deal with a complex, domestic problem

If the friends of Afghanistan truly want to prevent the Taliban from gaining more ground and becoming another safe haven for al Qaeda, then the best thing they can do is pressure Pakistan to continue their fight against extremism and within Afghanistan to take a step back and allow Afghans the room to organise themselves and seize the political and Public space to deal with all three elements of the Taliban, the Haqanni Network, Hiz-b-Islami and local Taliban through a partnership of grassroots and national efforts.

The vast majority of Afghans, even those who have been affected by international combat operations, say that a complete withdrawal of international forces is not the solution and would further destabilise the country but that a fundamental shift is needed in how OEF and NATO operates in this country.

As one illiterate cook from Hazarijat said to me recently, “I was really happy when Western forces first came to Afghanistan but the way they have handled themselves has been unfortunate. Still, if they leave things could be worse.”

The question for the politicians who manage the OEF and NATO missions in Washington and around the world shouldn’t be “how can we reduce the incidents of civilian casualties in Afghanistan” but how can we make a fundamental shift from our combat mission to one of robust peacekeeping, ANA (Afghan army) and ANP (Afghan police) training and better coordinated less wasteful assistance from their donor agencies.

There is already a debate in Germany and Britain about the role that their militaries should be playing in Afghanistan and in the world.

This same debate needs to start in earnest among the U.S. public, their representatives in Congress, the Obama Administration and by the Pentagon and it should start with the question, “how can America and its Allies expect Afghanistan to become a peaceful, productive member of the global community in the midst of what is now their own nearly decade-old foreign military action in this country?”

(*Melek Zimmer-Zahine is a co-founder of The Killid Group. IPS and Killid, an independent Afghan media, have been partners since 2004.)