Why are USA still in Afghanistan?

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and got totally bogged down there was a joke circulating in Moscow,. Why are we still in Afghanistan? Answer. We are still looking for the people who invited us. Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of US policy in Afghanistan when he was president Jimmy Carter`s national security advisor, was convinced Afganistan would become the Soviet Union Vietnam. In fact Soviet Union`s Vietnam has become America`s Afghanistan.

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Winning the war in Afghanistan was never an easy proposition. After the Americans’ decade-long stay in that country, discovery of a way out which is acceptable to the US is almost an impossibility. Nevertheless, the US seems bent upon proving all the negative indicators wrong.

The declared objective at the time of invasion of Afghanistan was overthrow of the Taliban and destruction of Al-Qaeda. Bringing democracy was not part of the stated policy, nor was development despite the long stay ahead.

The real cause for this long-drawn-out war seems to be something other than the stated objectives. If that were not the case, the US troops could have been withdrawn immediately after the Taliban’s removal from authority and Al-Qaeda’s defeat. On the contrary, the US is engaged in a war whose end is not within sight and the course uncertain. Many believe it in reality to be what President Bush once said, which was later covered up as a slip of the tongue—i.e., a “Crusade.” Or, reportedly, as a “clash of civilizations, a clash of religions and a clash of the whole way of life.” Indications from across our western border certainly point in that direction.

While the Taliban have been dislodged from government they certainly are not defeated. Their resilience in fighting the war, and that too against the world’s sole superpower and its allies, has been tremendously effective and has worn out the occupying forces. In turn, in their frustration these forces have resorted to brutalities which can indisputably be called war crimes.

We recently saw a horrifying example of the consistently bestial behaviour of American troops when 17 civilians, including women and children asleep in different houses, were woken up and butchered. There have been innumerable incidents of brutal killings of innocent civilians in the past as well but were invariably swept under the carpet, after some inane US expression of regret, with the collusion of the government in Kabul which appeased relatives of the dead by sending them for Hajj, allocating houses in posh area in Kandahar, or financial compensations.

Such actions expose them thoroughly, bringing to the fore their hatred for Islam and the cultural values of the Afghans. Cutting off fingers of dead Taliban as trophies, urinating on corpses and killing innocent people in night raids in their homes are just a few incidents in a long list of atrocities committed by them. But the abhorrent incident at Bagram airbase when US soldiers burnt copies of the Holy Quran inflamed passions. The violent reaction that followed was but natural. Every Muslim worth the name would have reacted that way, to say nothing of the Afghans who have always upheld Islamic values above everything else. It also led to a security cleared Afghan worker, not a Taliban, losing control of himself and killing two American advisors in the ministry of interior whom he was supposed to protect. It was only after learning the lesson the hard way that the US made it mandatory for troops to undergo a short course to familiarise themselves with the religious and cultural values of the Afghans.




Anti-American feelings over the burning of the Quran had barely cooled when the Kandahar killing of the 17 took place. This butchery has infuriated Afghans so much that they react against foreign troops whenever and wherever they can. The attack by a young Afghan interpreter at an airport in Helmand province last week is a case in point. He tried to run over and kill a top US commander, Maj Gen Mark Gurganus, with his vehicle last week. The general, along with his British deputy and other senior military officers, was at the air strip to greet visiting US secretary of defence, Leon Panetta. The Afghan, it is believed, was not aware of the expected arrival of Panetta. He would have caused a disaster had he crashed his speeding vehicle a few minutes later into the path of Panetta’s landing aircraft.


Such incidents, on the one hand, fuel concern about a surge in attacks on foreign troops and on the other lend support to the resistance of the Taliban whose movement has now turned into a national war for every Afghan, whether he admits that or not.

A decade is a long-enough period of firing on mosques, wedding parties and funeral processions and riding roughshod over not just the bodies of innocent Afghans but also Afghan values and sensibilities. During this period the Americans should have learnt to respect the religious and cultural values of their Afghan allies if they were really serious about winning their hearts and minds.

Another important lesson they should have learnt long ago but do not want to is to find a workable, durable and permanent solution to the problems in Afghanistan. They should have entered into serious negotiations with all the stakeholders by now but the situation that exists is to the contrary. The Taliban have called off the dialogue process for which they had opened an office in Doha, Qatar. With Iran they are not on talking terms and with Pakistan their relations are on the lowest ebb. It is another matter that the government wants to restore them to the previous level, at least, by setting new rules of engagement with the US, while sheltering behind parliamentary action to this end.

In short, the war in Afghanistan has been lost and so is the case with their stay after 2014 in that country. The patience of the Afghan is worn out and their anger mounting high. It will only be prudent for the US to give up on military pursuit of resolving the problem there. It should concentrate on finding a political solution before it becomes a distant reality and they are forced to leave in haste and abandon Afghanistan like other great powers before them.

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By Ayaz Wazir (The writer is a former ambassador.)

Email: waziruk@hotmail.com

Thank You For Reading.

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The real target of America

American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was termed by some serious thinkers and intellectuals as the first step of the big game planned to reach the atomic assets of Pakistan at the end. Such cautions from people having the ideological belief, had very little response particularly from the ruling secular elite of that time headed by Musharraf, who lacked the courage to demonstrate resilience to the American illicit pressure. The final goal of the Crusaders in Washington was the dismantling of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals for which Afghanistan was to be turned into a launching pad. The series of events and recent developments give a clear indication towards that direction. America’s top leadership, both civil and military, have been seriously engaged during the past few weeks to demonize Pakistan’s armed forces, specifically the ISI to be responsible for the attacks at the heart of Kabul on the important American centres, including its embassy. They have accused the ISI to be backing the Haqqani network which has been incriminated to be responsible for these deadly attacks from North Waziristan Agency of Pakistan.If we go back into the retrospect, we find that Taliban were all prepared for dialogue on the Osama issue after the 9/11 episode. America could have achieved its purpose of Osama’s extradition through diplomatic channels and by using the good offices of Pakistan. America turned down every peaceful offer Taliban were making for the settlement of the Osama issue and launched her attack against Afghanistan. Pakistani leadership took a U-turn and offered its full support to America by providing all facilities of ground, air and sea to the aggressor to haunt the empty handed Taliban in the name of ‘war on terrorism’. Musharraf did all this for the sake of prolonging his illegitimate rule with the American support. Some political parties (calling themselves as leftists), a group of journalists and intellectuals completely endorsed the American policies of aggression in the region in the same way they had done when the USSR had attacked Afghanistan in the early eighties. This group of journalists and political intellectuals ran their media campaign so vigorously that Pakistani rulers did not heed the least to review their newly-adopted track under the American threat of, “With us or with the enemy”. Dislodging the Taliban and haunting the so-called Afghan insurgents, America grounded herself deeply in Afghanistan with all her might aided by the NATO and other allied forces in addition to the Northern alliance and Karzai’s puppet administration in Kabul. America gave ample room to the Indian interference, both covert and overt, and the Indian RAW took a glaring and active anti-Pakistan adventurism on the Afghan soil in full connivance of American CIA. The sabotaging activities in the country, particularly in the KPK, the naked aggression against Pakistan on the vulnerable points through the border line and the insurgency in Balochistan are good indicators to that situation. She has been promoting the idea of terrifying the West and all the anti-Islamic forces of the atomic weapons likely to fall into the hands of terrorists. To travel through all her journey, America has discovered very rightly that there are three very important hurdles in her way to reach her final goal, the atomic assets of Pakistan. At the top there is a very trained and disciplined army filled with the strength of deep conviction (Eiman) which is a source of Unity, Discipline and Jehad, the slogan of our armed forces. Second to the armed forces we have a world top ranking intelligence agency the ISI. America and all the inimical forces of this ideological country have joined hands in propagating a very negative picture of these inevitable organs of the security of the country. Through the media war, the Western media in general and that of America in particular are busy in disseminating all types of disinformation in order to undermine the credibility and prestige of our armed forces and the ISI both. To make this notorious campaign more effective and ambitious there are certain people within the country who are aiding the efforts of these forces in exchange of dollars. These include the so-called commentators and analysts who are trying to attribute every evil and activities of terrorism to be the planning of the security forces and the ISI. If one listens to the two programmes of the VOA, the Pushto channel of the Dewa Radio and the Urdu programme ‘In the News’ (Aap Ki Duniya) one can easily conclude how the state-run programmes are misleading the world about Pakistan. The Pushto programme particularly promotes the hatred against the armed forces and also accelerates the negative thinking already existing in the form of provincialism and nationalism. These programmes are always attributing all negative developments to the armed forces and those political parties and groups which believe in the ideological structure of the country. The third main hurdle in the way of the enemies of Pakistan is the Tribal citizens of Pakistan, whom the Quaid-e-Azam had named as the hands-and-arms of Pakistan. History is witness to the fact that the present Azad Kashmir on the Pakistan side is a gift of these tribal ‘mujahids’ who had reclaimed it from the Hindus after partition. We also know that during these six decades we did not need deployment of any security forces on our western border since our tribal brethren were manning these frontiers without any remuneration. They had proved their worth as the unpaid, informal and traditional force with all their capabilities of thwarting any untoward aggression from the west. During the rein of the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban of Afghanistan our west was safe to an exemplary standard. To create cracks in the solidarity between our armed forces and the tribal Pakhtuns, America worked on the multi-dimensional conspiracies and created a gulf between the two organs, responsible for the security and solidarity of the country. Through manipulation of the situation in these areas by importing terrorism in the shape of Mullahs, saboteurs, suicidal bombers, target killers, invisible Raymond Davis etc the most patriotic armed forces were forced for confrontation against the ill-informed but undoubtedly equally patriotic tribal Pakistanis. America has been struggling through all this decade-long terrorist activities to widen the gulf between the two important elements of strength and solidarity for Pakistan. She seems to be successful to a great extent in her nefarious designs as is evident from her threats of unilateral action on this soil if we do not take up our sleeves against the Haqqani network, a nightmare for the American generals and the civil administration in the White House.We Pakistanis do remember that conspiracies against Mr. Z.A. Bhutto were hatched by the Americans and he was murdered since he boldly denied bowing before America on the issue of initiating the project for the nuclear arsenals. How can the same America see the atomic assets in the hands of Pakistan, considered by Israel and India as their arch enemy? The troika consisting of America, Israel and India has perfected all its offensive regarding reaching our nuclear installations. The network of terrorists established by these forces have been carrying out all their destructive activities in the mosques, funeral prayers, public places and every where it finds a chance. It makes no difference if all such terrorist acts are being carried out through the fugitives from Pakistan drained out as a result of Army action or the ones purchased from the Northern Alliance or more sophisticatedly trained the like of Raymond Davis. We had been very categorically cautioned by the Iranian President, Ahmadinejad in June this year that America has completely drawn out its notorious plan of attacking our nuclear assets. He had claimed to have this information through very authentic sources. Anyhow, the Pakistani rulers did not take this note seriously. Attacks of Abbottabad and on the PNS Mehran in Karachi were a test case and probably a rehearsal for the purpose under reference. We should see writing on the wall and seriously ponder over the situation since Obama has already approved American attack on our nuclear assets. In a complicated situation like this, the All Parties Conference convened on Sept. 29th seems to be an important event showing solidarity of the nation behind their armed forces for the defence of the country. However, the message conveyed across the spectrum was very weak and it did not mention even the name of America, who has created this dubious situation for us. It seems like an FIR, in which the name of the accused and the crime committed is missing. Under these uncertain circumstances, we need to review our past policies viz-a-viz our partnership with the US in the so-called war on terror. Some of the suggestions are as follow.We should bring all the mutually agreed items of action in a written memorandum prepared on the basis of equality as is done between the two sovereign states. We should redefine clearly and unambiguously all the elements of our engagement with US with clear conditions specifying the limits to which we can go.The limits to which both the parties can go should clearly be mentioned and the red lines indicated very neatly and conspicuously which should not be transgressed by any of the parties in all circumstances. The logistic facilities we have given to the US and NATO must be recompensed specifically mentioning every segment that is under use for the purpose.We should have a clear commitment and guarantee of the US that India must remain within the limits as far as her interference in the Afghan affairs are conflicting to our interest.America should fully guarantee that there will be no future armed incursion in our country as repeated many a time during the past few months on the borders of Dir, Chitral and Bajaur Agency. We should have a clear guarantee of the US Administration that there will be no secret agents on our soil. We should also emphasize on the Americans to take note of the activities of the Indian consulates working on the soil occupied by the American occupation forces. Any problem/issue arising between the two should be addressed through dialogue and finding mutual solution rather than to resort to threats and pressure.

 By Muhammad Faheem (Frontier Post)

The secret US war in Pakistan

General (R) Musharraf had agreed that would convince his nation that, officially, the US was not allowed to carry out any secret operation inside Pakistan without the consent of the regime, but the JSOC would continue its mission, Blackwater was also directed to deny its presence in Pakistan.
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By Musa Khan Jalalzai

There are many stories available in leading Pakistani newspapers about the US’s secret operations, run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), in major cities, specifically in Karachi, Peshawar and Lahore. The notorious private contractor, Blackwater, has been at the centre of the killing fields and targeted assassinations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001. According to well-placed military sources in Pakistan, members of this militia are gathering secret information to help direct the drone attacks in FATA and Waziristan regions. Blackwater also controls drone strikes and gathers intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. There are debates in the Pakistani press about Blackwater and JSOC military operations and under what law they have retrieved the licence to kill.

Not going into the details of the story, the case is simple. On May 9, 2011, The Guardian reported a secret agreement signed between General Pervez Musharraf and US President George Bush in 2001, which allowed US special forces, the CIA and JSOC to carry out secret operations and drone attacks inside Pakistan. This agreement was renewed in February 2008. Afterwards, The Guardian reported that both sides agreed on the point that Pakistan would protest the incursion. Having referred to the recent Abbottabad operation, a government official in Islamabad said that the US had just implemented the said agreement.

Before signing the deal, General Musharraf had agreed that he would convince his nation that, officially, the US was not allowed to carry out any secret operation inside Pakistan without the consent of the regime, but the JSOC would continue its mission. Moreover, in all major cities of the country, Blackwater was also directed to deny its presence in Pakistan. The deal is still a secret but the recent operation in Abbottabad has exposed the intentions of US imperialism in Pakistan. Political parties criticised the army and ISI for their connivances and some demanded the resignation of the ISI chief, and Mr Pasha himself offered to resign.

At the government level, the prime minister expressed concern over the US operation in his National Assembly address and said that Pakistan had some differences and reservations regarding this operation and complained that US forces had violated the country’s sovereignty. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad created many doubts and misunderstandings among the politicians, ISI and army generals. This unauthorised operation further dilapidated relations between Pakistan and the US. The Pakistan Army chief conveyed a warning message about future attacks: “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the US.” Several questions are being asked such as why the US did not inform the Pakistan Army. Some people ask about the ability of the Pakistan Army to protect the country while it was not even aware of a major military operation taking place a short distance away from one of its top military academies.

The US’s secret operations and the unlawful activities of Blackwater across the country have created some doubts about the US’s secret agenda in Pakistan. Opposition parties have raised some questions about the presence of CIA contractors while Interior Minister Rehman Malik offered his resignation if the presence of the private contractors is proved in Pakistan. According to recent revelations within Blackwater circles, the company’s members are working for the CIA and JSOC in Pakistan. Sources within the company have recently confirmed that it has established various facilities in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan.

During the Musharraf regime in 2007, the secret operation programme of JSOC in Pakistan was started under the leadership of William McRaven, who took over the post from General Stanley McChrystal who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008. Blackwater, as a private military and intelligence force, is operating under the instructions of JSOC in Karachi and coordinating every plan with the task force based in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. US military intelligence says that Blackwater classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC.

Sources in the Afghan defence ministry told this author that Blackwater signed its first contract with the CIA in 2002 for operations in Afghanistan while Afghan intelligence sources say that the company and JSOC operation in Karachi is referred to the base in Qatar as the planning centre for the US invasion of Iraq. Blackwater is not only making strategies for drone attacks in Waziristan, FATA and Afghanistan, but in Karachi it also makes plans for the CIA and JSOC against extremist groups. In August, the New York Times reported Blackwater jobs in hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In its underground places, members of Blackwater assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft. In September last year, Pakistani newspapers reported a secret ISI report about the suspicious activities of Blackwater and a federal minister who had been providing houses and helping them clear shipments of weapons and vehicles through Port Qasim in Karachi.

The arrest of Raymond Davis in 2011 in Lahore further increased the hurdles of opposition politicians who have often demanded a thorough investigation into the secret deal between the Musharraf regime and CIA. The print and electronic media in Pakistan reported various politicians alleging that the government and military establishment know about the secret activities of Blackwater on their soil but officials vehemently deny these charges. Who is Raymond Davis? Nobody knows in Pakistan but it is clear that he was not a regular diplomat. As we mentioned earlier, Pakistan had already agreed on the diplomatic status of the members of Blackwater during the Musharraf regime, and therefore Raymond Davis was treated as a diplomat as well. According to newspaper reports, Davis also worked for Blackwater. The same story is being repeated in Afghanistan. American secret agencies distribute money among the members of President Hamid Karzai’s administration so as to control the president and his decision making machine.

The recent political inclinations of the president towards China and Russia further increased the headache of American policy makers. The US is reeling under the $ 100 billion package a year and is negotiating a new strategic partnership agreement with the Afghan president. Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated recently, but much of that is due to stepped-up military operations, drone attacks and private criminal militias. The current Afghan structures are untenable and cannot sustain themselves. After the withdrawal of US forces and the winding down of operations, the US may maintain some military bases in Afghanistan.

The writer is the author of Britain’s National Security Challenges and can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com