In recent weeks, much time has been spent scrutinizing the timing of the US military withdrawal instead of debating who has benefited most from the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan over the past two decades. Moreover, everywhere you look there is a strange degree of insensitivity whenever it comes to Afghanistan or the Taliban.
I can’t help but wonder why the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is the mainstream narrative instead of the violence Afghans have endured for decades. Why is the American withdrawal presented as a betrayal, as if the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had been a blessing? The foreign occupation has benefited the Afghan people much less than the Western people. military-industrial complex. The politicians and their pipers in the media and think tanks who were ultimately responsible for the invasion are not held to account.
The Taliban and America have more than a few things in common. They both lined the pockets of warlords who raided villages and summarily executed civilians, sidelining Abuse of human rights as soon as possible. With few exceptions, those ultimately responsible for the torture and extrajudicial executions were largely intact, if not pushed into the ranks. Abduction, mass arrests, searches, indefinite period detention and targeted assassinations have been common tools used by both parties, either directly or through CIA-backed militias.
In fact, while the Taliban were deploying suicide bombers as a stealth weapon, the United States wiped out villages and people attending weddings and funerals using drone and Airstrikesfollowed by “poor investigations and infrequent condolence payments”, according to Human Rights Watch. Simply put, both sides of this war killed civilians, often blurring the lines between civilized and barbarian. And yet, the world is saddened by the departure of the United States and dismayed by the arrival of the Taliban.
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We are horrified by the overthrow of the US-backed Afghan government by the Taliban, but forget that less than a million Afghans — 2.5% of the population — voted for Ashraf Ghani, the polarizing president who leak the country as the Taliban entered the capital.
While Western leaders are now busy blaming the previous Afghan administration for promising the impossible, our presidents, chancellors and prime ministers – as well as military leaders – must be held accountable for orchestrating the war, the casualties tragedies in human lives and epic neglect of how taxpayers money has been spent.
Yes, Afghan officials no doubt regularly pocketed money intended for their troops, sold weapons on the black market and lied about the number of soldiers in their ranks, but we knew it was a corrupt government and we supported it nonetheless. . Moreover, it is our leaders who repeatedly lied to us about this unwinnable war. We were told that “There is no military path to victory for the Taliban“as were the Afghan military”better trained, better equipped and more competent“.
Of course the Taliban are ruthless and ruthless in his methods, but he never lied to Western audiences. The ragtag guerrilla army has never claimed that its the enemy was losing momentum or that a diminishing threat needed a expansion force to counter it. Moreover, he never shifted the goals of protecting Afghan women and liberating oppressed people to nation building.
Although the United States invaded Afghanistan to avenge the 2,996 people killed on 9/11 and to punish Al-Qaida and its hosts as part of its gunboat diplomacythe murder of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 was an opportunity for Washington to cut its losses and walk away. Instead, he opted to double down, benefiting no one but the ever-increasing number military-industrial complex. While it took two months to overthrow the Taliban in 2001, it took America and NATO twenty years to recognize that a technologically superior force can still lose the war.
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It is true that since the invasion led by the United States in October 2001, Maternal mortality more than halved in Afghanistan; life expectancy went from 56 to 64; and the literacy rate rose from 8% to about 43%, depending on the world Bank. More … than 9 million children (40% of them girls) have been able to go to school, a nine-fold increase since the last time the Taliban were in power. However, many more have gone wrong since the Taliban last took control of the country.
Billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted on huge infrastructure projects that were ultimately wasted because canals, dams and highways quickly fell into disrepair. Billions more have been spent on counter-narcotics programs, but opium exports remain at an all-time high. Tens of billions have also been spent on training, equipment and financing 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, but they all suddenly disappeared before the Taliban advance.
In total, more 2 trillion dollars was dedicated to lifting the veil – perhaps it should be the burqa – on the extent of Western hubris personified by America and the NATO alliance in order to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. The Afghans, meanwhile, have paid a heavy price.
Why then do we express our disbelief at the misogynistic views of the Taliban, but have little to say about the disturbing record of murder, abuse and festering corruption left by US troops in NATO and the Afghan government that was put in power by the West? Since 2001, more than 170,000 Afghans were killed, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project, although Afghan deaths have never been considered worthy enough of record in the past 20 years, so we will never know the true numbers of the victims. Conversely, we know that precisely 3,592 international soldiers were killed, along with 3,846 American private security companies.
Why are these questions not at the center of this conversation? More importantly, will anyone ever be held accountable for the grotesque loss of innocent lives on both sides of the fence, not to mention the waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers’ money?
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The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
