Opinion Americas bizarre Afghan war
New York on a hot summers day appears even to me like an odd place to be writing about Afghanistan.
New York on a hot summers day appears even to me like an odd place to be writing about Afghanistan. My only excuse for writing about South Asias problem child in my favourite foreign city is that I happened to be here when the Rolling Stone article caused the sacking of General Stanley McCrystal. A friend sent me the article online and the more I read about General McCrystal the more I realised how sad it was that he would have to go. He seems to me to have understood well the bizarre nature of the war he was fighting and why it has become increasingly unwinnable. There are several things that make this war bizarre and one of them is that there is no way of knowing when to declare victory. We must hope that General David Petraeus understands quickly that Afghanistan is not Iraq and that saying Mission Accomplished will not be easy.
The enemy he has been sent to vanquish are the Taliban and the Al Qaeda but we no longer know if killing every last one of these Islamist warriors will put an end to the worldwide jihad. It may have done in 2001 when American troops first landed in the desolate wilds of the Hindu Kush with a short list of leaders hiding in caves. Since then the jihad has transformed itself into an ideology,a new religion almost,that resonates dangerously with increasing numbers of young Muslims from Bali to Bori Bundur.
Nobody has so far been able to fully understand why,but the one common grievance is a hatred of America and a conviction that the Americans want to take over Islamic lands because of their insatiable hunger for oil. Afghanistan has no oil but according to a recent report it has the worlds largest hidden treasure of minerals. Nobody will remember that the Afghans have not had the brains or the technology to exploit this mineral wealth but it will not be long before the word out in the Muslim street is that the Americans went to Afghanistan not to hunt Osama bin Laden but because they knew about the buried minerals.
Americas Afghan war makes so little sense that any old absurd rumour is likely to be believed. Why it makes no sense is because we have American troops fighting against an enemy called the Taliban which is financed by Pakistan and Pakistan is financed by the Americans. So,in effect,you have the American government financing the enemy they are fighting. It gets even more bizarre if you remember that the leaders of the Taliban are all hiding in Pakistan. I have no pretensions to being a military genius but wonder,as I write,why Washington is not asking Islamabad for reasons why it supports Sirajuddin Haqqani who is Enemy Number One. What makes even less sense is why when Barack Obama became President of the United States he did not announce a withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan instead of a surge of 30,000 more troops.
In Delhi,when I talk to our experts on the AfPak situation,they tell me that we should be grateful that the Americans are fighting our war for us. What they mean is that it does not suit us to have the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan. We prefer Hamid Karzai but can we really stop Islamist ideology from affecting our own young Muslims by supporting a weak Afghan leader? Personally,I believe that Pakistan and Afghanistan should be left to sort out their own problems so that they would be forced to admit that none of these problems would exist if Pakistani foreign policy had been less duplicitous and if Pakistans Generals had been wiser.
What has happened has happened. All we can hope for now is that President Obama realises before it is too late that his AfPak policy makes little sense. Either he holds Pakistan responsible for the creation of the Taliban and warns Islamabad that it better find a way of killing the monster it has created or there will be no more American dollars. Or he finds a way of containing Pakistan.
In my humble opinion nothing better could happen than for the Americans to withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as possible. The most important reason for this is that it would force Pakistan to deal more firmly with the lunatics they have given birth to and once the United States is no longer available to be blamed for all the failures of the Islamic world sensible Muslim leaders may start waking up to the reality that most of their problems are of their own creation. If most Muslim countries today are dysfunctional and dangerous places there have to be indigenous and not external reasons for this.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
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