This past Wednesday (August 11, 2021), Phyllis spoke on Democracy Now! about the situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has seized at least 17 provincial capitals, including Kandahar and Herat, the country’s second- and third-largest cities. The Taliban now has control of two-thirds of the country.
The Taliban’s sweeping offensive comes as the United States is pulling out its troops after nearly 20 years in Afghanistan – the longest war in U.S. history. An end to the conflict was negotiated in February 2020 by the Trump administration and the Taliban. The U.S.-supported Afghan government was not included by Trump in these negotiations. On Thursday, the Biden administration, which some believe was left a “terrible situation” by the Trump-brokered deal, announced that the United States is sending 3,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to help evacuate U.S. embassy staff in Kabul. Britain and Canada are also sending in new troops.
Meanwhile, aid groups are warning of a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as tens of thousands flee their homes to escape the Taliban. The United Nations says more than a quarter of a million people have been displaced since the militants began their assault in May. Over 1,000 casualties have been reported in fighting over the past month.
Following, with added links, are Phyllis Bennis’ thoughts and insights on the current situation in Afghanistan.
It’s important that we recognize that this kind of a crisis was inevitable whenever the U.S. pulled out, whether it had been 10 years ago, 19 years ago or 10 years from now, the reason being that this was rooted in the nature of the U.S. occupation that began in 2001. There was not at that time – there is now not – a military solution to terrorism, which was ostensibly the reason for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. There is no military solution to the “problems of Afghanistan.”
And the notion that the U.S. could create a military force in Afghanistan that was going to be prepared to defend the country against an indigenous opposition force, the Taliban, was never going to be possible, because it was based on the idea that this would be a military that was supporting a government shaped and imposed by the United States in a Western model that had no bearing on the reality of politics and culture in Afghanistan, specifically the question of imposing a nationally-based government with power centralized in the capital – something that was completely opposite of the long-standing, eons-long culture and history of Afghanistan, that was always based on local and tribal and family and clan-based power rather than national power. It was never going to work.
. . . What we do have to recognize is that the U.S., while pulling out the ground troops, is continuing right now, and is indicating further continuation, of airstrikes and drone strikes. Those are continuing to kill civilians. And that’s a significant problem, as well as the continuing presence of CIA forces throughout the country. There have been significant reports in the last year from Human Rights Watch and The Intercept and others indicating massive training by the CIA of death squads in Afghanistan that have been responsible for attacks on schools, on villages, on children as young as 8 years old. And those death squads, as far as we know, are continuing. They have no – there’s no indication that they have stopped. There’s no indication that CIA officials that have been training those death squads are being pulled out as the ground troops are pulled out. So, the question of continuing U.S. responsibility for the violence in Afghanistan plaguing ordinary Afghan civilians is still very serious.
There is the possibility for negotiations with the Taliban, no question about that. We know that in the past, negotiations have gone on between Taliban officials and local religious and tribal officials over issues of education, healthcare, other social questions, and they’ve been able to be resolved in a relatively amicable way. The notion that the lives of Afghan women are suddenly going to get better, of course that’s not the case. But we have to be very clear that while the Taliban represent a very extreme and misogynist and violent definition of religious law, the government and its supporters in Afghanistan have been very close to that level of misogyny and violence towards the civilian population.
Right now the forces fighting on the part of the government side include a number of warlord-led militias that are reconstituting, including some of those – for example, the militia led by Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was an Uzbek member of Afghanistan’s ruling forces at the time that the U.S. took over, whose militia was responsible for one of the biggest massacres, one of the biggest human rights violations, a crime against humanity, a war crime, in the first months after the U.S. occupation began, when they captured somewhere between 250 and 2,000 Taliban prisoners, who were then killed by being suffocated in shipping containers. That Afghan militia is now being reconstituted and is fighting on the side of the U.S.-backed government. So, the notion that somehow the gap between the bad guy, Taliban, and the good guy, government, is a very wide gap is simply not the case.
To watch Democracy Now!’s full interview with Phyllis Bennis, click here.
Related Off-site Links:
Flawed From the Start: Critics Say Afghan War’s Bitter End for US Was “Inevitable” – Andrea Germanos (Common Dreams, August 13, 2021).
Afghan Journalist: Only a Political Compromise Can Stop Taliban’s Military Takeover of Afghanistan – Democracy Now! (August 3, 2021).
U.S. Empire’s Afghan Ponzi Scheme Comes to Ignoble End – Juan Cole (Common Dreams, August 13, 2021).
Afghanistan: At-Risk Civilians Need Evacuation and Protection – Human Rights Watch (August 13, 2021).
UPDATES: A Taste of Panic: The Taliban Continues Its Advance – Binoy Kampmark (The AIM Network, August 15, 2021).
Chaos at Kabul Airport: Thousands of Afghans Gather at Closed Terminal As Fighting Breaks Out Between People Desperate to Get Out – Henry Martin (Daily Mail, August 15, 2021).
Taliban Enters Kabul as Afghan President Flees and U.S. Diplomats Evacuate by Helicopter – ABC News (August 15, 2021).
Taliban Fighters Take Kabul’s Presidential Palace After Seizing Nearly All of Afghanistan in Little More Than a Week – ABC News (August 16, 2021).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Phyllis Bennis: A Voice of Reason
• A Reign of Ignorance and Fear in the U.S.
• Remembering September 11 and its Aftermath
• The Blood-Soaked Thread
• In Afghanistan, a “Widespread, Culturally-Sanctioned Form of Male Rape”
• Jeff Cohen: Quote of the Day – January 30, 2011
• Parvez Sharma on Islam and Homosexuality
• Mark Weisbrot: Osama Bin Laden Provoked a US “War on Terror” that Strengthened His Movement
• Vigiling Against Weaponized Drones
• Say “No” to Endless U.S. Wars
• A Letter to “Dear Abby” re. Responding to 9/11
Opening image: Displaced Afghans from the northern provinces are evacuated from a makeshift IDP (internally displaced people) camp in Share-e-Naw Park to various mosques and schools on August 12, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. People displaced by the Taliban advancing are flooding into the Kabul capital to escape the Taliban takeover of their provinces. (Photo: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
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