Not for the first time in its history, Afghanistan is turning into a killing ground for British troops – and for Afghan civilians as well. The killings will go on until British troops are withdrawn…
No end in sight as Afghan adventure turns into a fully fledged disaster
WORKERS, DECEMBER 2009 ISSUE
The British state’s war politics are crumbling under the pressure of reality. The British working class opposes the war: in the recent YouGov poll, 73 per cent want troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan now or within the next year or so. That figure rose to 77 per cent in London. (The Guardian headlined this as “35% believe troops should come home.”)
When asked, Should British troops be brought home from Afghanistan? 35 per cent said yes – all troops should be withdrawn immediately. 38 per cent said yes – most troops should be withdrawn soon, and the rest within the next year or so, and 20 per cent said no – British troops should remain in Afghanistan as long as Afghanistan’s government wants them there. 10 per cent didn’t know. If our TV companies changed their policy of never showing the effects of NATO bombing, even more of us would oppose the war.
When asked, Do you think British troops are winning the war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, or not? 5 per cent replied yes, the British troops are winning. 28 per cent replied no – they are not winning yet, but victory is possible eventually, and 57 per cent said no – they are not winning, and victory is not possible. 10 per cent didn’t know.
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| US troops on patrol in Afghanistan, September 2009. |
The US working class has also turned against the war. A majority of Americans now believe that the war is “not worth fighting”. 57 per cent oppose the war; only 26 per cent support the idea of sending more troops.
In all NATO member countries, the working class majority opposes deployment, not, as the BBC tells us, because they ‘do not understand’ the state’s case for intervention, but because they oppose it.
The Afghan war began as the US ruling class’s revenge for the 11 September 2001 attacks, but it was a fraud, because not a single Afghan was involved in the attacks. The ruling Taliban had no quarrel with the USA and were dealing with the Clinton administration over a strategic pipeline. They offered to apprehend Osama Bin Laden and hand him over to a clerical court, but Clinton rejected this offer.
The main reason for the war is to establish a permanent US/NATO presence in a strategic region. British troops are there because Washington wants it.
Casualties
NATO military fatalities are rising every year. British military casualties, dead and wounded, are rising too: 1,442 in 2007, 1,857 in 2008 and 1,982 so far in 2009.
The war has caused the deaths of even greater numbers of Afghan civilians. These figures are less precise because the USA “doesn’t do body-counts” any more. But somewhere between 9,260 and 12,057 have died as a direct result of the war, only about a third of them as a result of insurgent actions.
The indirect death count is much harder to estimate, but is considered to be between 3,200 and 20,000. Taking direct and indirect deaths together, it is estimated that somewhere between 12,460 and 32,057 Afghan civilians have been killed as a result of the war.
2008 saw the highest number of civilian casualties so far. 2,118 are reported to have been killed. This is almost 40 per cent up on 2007, when 1,523 people were killed. In the first half of 2009, there were 1013 civilian deaths, 24 per cent up from 818 in the first half of 2008. There were 684 in the first half of 2007.
The USAF and RAF continue their lethal air attacks. For example, on 4 September 2009, a US airstrike called in by German troops killed as many as 90 people, most of them civilians, in northern Kunduz province. The US denied that any of those killed were women and children, until confronted with the evidence.
Claims
Some, like Lord Ashdown, resurrect the discredited domino theory and say that if Afghanistan is “lost”, then Pakistan will be next. Others say that our troops are there to stem the flow of drugs to Britain.
But as a “concerned member of the Royal Marines” wrote from Exeter, “If the government is worried about drugs ending up on UK streets, then why don’t we spend the billions of pounds currently being wasted in Afghanistan to protect and increase security on our own borders? At least we’d have less people being killed!”
Tighter border controls certainly would be a great idea. But some call for increased surveillance of Muslim communities, and this would give even more powers to the increasingly repressive state, which could then be used against the entire working class.
Some claim that NATO forces will bring democracy, education, health and women’s rights to Afghanistan. NATO forces have had eight years to achieve this and have failed. If the Afghans want these good things, they will have to win them themselves.
Brown tells us that the troops are there ‘to keep the British people safe’. This is like President Johnson’s claim, “We have to stop the communists over there [Vietnam] or we’ll soon be fighting them in California.” By refusing to bring the troops home, Brown may well provoke another atrocity here; the recent Old Bailey trial made that clear and his own security adviser has told him this publicly.
In polls in 2001 and 2004, 59 per cent of us rightly said that attacking Afghanistan would make terrorist acts in Britain more likely. Only 3 per cent agreed with Blair that it would make us safer. The bombs of 7 July 2005 showed who was right. This counter-productive war makes us less safe.
There are already 68,000 US soldiers, 9,000 British and 23,000 other NATO troops in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander overseeing the war, wants 40,000 more troops. Despite the addition of 21,000 NATO troops in March, the Taliban have continued to make gains across Afghanistan, disrupting at least 40 per cent of the country. US casualties have risen sharply in the four months since McChrystal took over, to 165, nearly one-fifth of those killed during the entire war.
The Brown government has offered another 500 British troops and has given its support to McChrystal’s ‘new strategy’. 44 per cent of Afghans want fewer foreign forces; just 18 per cent want more, but what Afghans want doesn’t count for NATO.
General McChrystal also wants another trillion dollars to be spent in this Vietnam-like quagmire. Spending on the war has risen rapidly, from $2 billion in October 2008 to $6.7 billion in June 2009, and President Obama has requested $65 billion for 2010, even without more troops being sent.
In Iraq, there were 8,315–9,028 civilian deaths in 2008. This compares to 25,774–27,599 deaths reported in 2006 and 22,671–24,295 in 2007. There have been between 93,897 and 102,451 violent civilian deaths during and since the 2003 invasion. This count includes non-combatants killed by military or paramilitary action and those killed due to the breakdown in civil security following the invasion. The US casualty count is nearing 4,500 dead and 30,000 wounded.
US forces are still occupying Iraq. Why should 117,000 American soldiers stay there until 2011 in a war costing the USA 20 dead and $12 billion every month? Colonel Timothy Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi senior military command, says that it is time “for the US to declare victory and bring our combat forces home.” The same goes for Afghanistan.
President Karzai may well be a corrupt autocrat. But this is a matter for the Afghan people to resolve. It is no business of ours whether Afghanistan is run by a corrupt autocracy or by a relatively clean democracy. If NATO troops were to stay until Afghanistan is democratic and not corrupt, they will stay for a very long time.
There is no military solution, no solution from outside at all. The only solution is for the Afghan people to take responsibility for running their own country, in their own interests, according to their own needs. NATO forces are not winning, they can’t win, they won’t win and they shouldn’t win.
The US state is isolated, exposed and weak. Its economy is failing and its wars are failing. It now depends on its NATO allies, especially on Britain’s ruling class. The British working class could end this war tomorrow, if we insisted on pulling our troops out now.