Afghan debacle casts shadow on ‘forever wars’

Saeed Naqvi, Indo-Asian News Service

The horrific terrorist attacks outside Kabul airport will boost chaos sky high. It will take focus away from the only frame in which the epochal events of the past few days should be seen. Did the US withdrawal, however messy, bring an end to the ‘forever wars’? Is that outcome to be welcomed? Or is this the time to analyze the ‘incompetence’ of the Taliban? A people who defeated a superpower in battle should be given a little more than a fortnight to find their feet.

Or, is there an urge in wounded hearts for some rearguard action in order to pick up shreds of prestige blown to smithereens? A military response to the residual imperialist yearning, pulsating beneath the ashes, may well provide Afghans with an opportunity to measure up to Vietnam’s record. Vietnam defeated three permanent members of the Security Council in the battlefield: France at Dien Bien Phu, the US at Saigon, and China in Lang Son. Mujahideen Taliban have two scalps in their bag already — Soviet Union and the US. Another trophy for the Afghans, anybody?

It is ironical that Tony Blair’s has been the loudest yelp. “Imbecilic” to withdraw, he screamed. How thick a human skin can be? Just the other day Sir John Chilcot in his historic report grilled the illustrious British Prime Minister for dissembling facts leading Britain into a bogus Iraq war. “I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you will ever imagine” he wept.

Donald Trump asked Jimmy Carter, “What should we do, China is going ahead of us?” Carter’s reply was pithy: “China has not been at war since 1978; we have never stopped being at war.” Does this withdrawal spell an end to Imperial overreach?

Is there something akin to racism in the way TV images of the Taliban in Kabul send shivers down our spine? How did we ever persuade ourselves that they are a ghastly lot? Who knows, they may well be but who has drilled this image so indelibly into our consciousness? Not our media, surely. Our ‘atmanirbhar’, or self-sufficient media take ‘foreign’ news from Western agencies to a point of saturation. This shapes our mind and, to some extent, South Block’s too.

When Nick Robertson of the CNN froths in the mouth about the “thugs” which means the Taliban in his book, the froth is sprayed all over our ‘atmanirbhar’ channels. Christiane Amanpour grills former Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on his support for Biden’s decision. “Are we giving up on terrorism? Is our project of democracy, human rights being abandoned?” in acute anxiety she rolls her eyeballs virtually out of their sockets.

Painting Muslims in lurid colours has been a practice at least since the 70s when Muslim states surrounding Israel vigorously supported the Palestinian cause. Palestinian Professor at Columbia University, Edward Said’s ‘Covering Islam’ has a jacket which is a collector’s item. It is a metaphor for the way Muslims are portrayed in the media. An Afghan militant, headgear et all, is crouching and taking aim with his Kalashnikov. In the very frame is a western cameraman, resting a knee on the ground, clicking the gun-toting Afghan. This is how the image of a ‘militant Islamist’ is manufactured.

Oh, the excuses that are being made for the debacle: we made the mistake of training the Afghan army in “our image”, like the US military. Really! Where the hell have all the soldiers gone, however wrongly trained, armed to the teeth? What were all those “Green on Blue” attacks when trainees turned upon their trainers, killing many. Did such attacks just end by divine intervention or embarrassing episodes just go away because the obedient media switches off its cameras?

Even as I write Ben Roberts-Smith, of Australia’s Special Air Services regiment, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for duty in Afghanistan, was, until the other day, fighting with his back to the wall in an Australian court facing charges of atrocities on Afghan civilians. An internal investigation last year found Special Forces men “unlawfully killed” 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners. At least in Australia some limited processes were set into motion, but as for the US, let me quote George Bush the senior. “United States can do what the hell it wants.”

If Biden’s withdrawal puts an end to actions which do not become America, history will judge him fairly. Dealing with the Taliban is a separate matter.