From Afghanistan- Memorial Day and our “War on Terror”
As we honor our fallen on this Memorial Day we have to look at what we have done in the last 14 years.
After the initial success of bringing down the Taliban regime in the months after 9/11, Afghanistan seemed to be on the road to reconstruction thanks to the US armed forces and our NATO allies. And progress has been made. There are over a million girls going to school, maternal mortality is down exponentially, access to healthcare has increased and the quality has improved. Before 9/11 there were about 10 kilometres of paved roads, now cities have streets, and highways circle the country connecting the cities. In the recent past we had to travel to Pakistan just to make an international call, whereas now cellular service reaches approximately 90% of the estimated 30,000,000 population, with an ever-increasing number of people connected through 3G networks. For some years there was relative calm. But then we went to Iraq and forgot Afghanistan. Once we looked back things had taken a turn for the worse that has simply not been set straight.
The official war has “ended”, yet the Taliban are still with us. Violence is raging across the country more than ever. A year or two before we could travel to other provinces for work or even the occasional weekend picnic as there were safe areas. Compare that to the message the US Embassy sent out a few days ago: “Extremists associated with various Taliban networks and members of other armed opposition groups are active in every province of the country.” Afghan civilians are losing their lives at record numbers, as, even more so, are the Afghan army and police. The people here who once had so much hope are feeling hopeless and looking for ways out, and while progress has certainly been made, it feels dangerous, a country once again teetering on the brink.
We have to look at our role in this, as we have sacrificed and lost so much blood and money in this endeavour. Even those words seem hollow; they sound clichéd as they have been written countless times. But as over 2,300 American families and friends mourn the loss of their loved ones, and the government’s own Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issues reports weekly on the loss of billions of US taxpayer dollars through mismanagement or corruption, this war simply cannot be seen as a success.
Obama inherited this war, and I was part of his 2010 “surge” when I first came here as a civilian with USAID in May of that year. But that surge was based on attempts by our military leaders to do what, at the time, had seemed to have succeeded in Iraq. General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency doctrine, or COIN, was sure to win hearts and minds, if we dangled some low paying jobs their way under “cash for work” programs and other non-sustainable or mismanaged carrots. I know most involved had the best intentions and believed in the work they were doing and the orders they were giving. Our soldiers were sent here on a mission by those leaders and they served heroically. The armed forces, as well as the civilians, risked their lives to stop terrorism abroad so that it could not hit us again at home. But how we went about this failed. We have lost too many soldiers and Afghans are paying an even higher, more painful price.
And let’s not even mention the mess Iraq is in.
I am no military expert but the reality of the so-called “War on Terror” seems clear as day. It’s no more effective than the ‘War on drugs’. It has not ended terror, despite a need to publish “success stories” and claim hope with fingers crossed that things will turn around. Over the Memorial Day weekend we, as Americans, must call on our leaders to stop what they are doing, how they have been thinking, and to fully and completely reassess our role in war. What we have done in the “War on Terror” is not only not working; it’s a dismal failure, and we have lost almost 7,000 men and women in the process. They served and continue to serve honourably, heroically, but the top brass who put them in harm’s way must recognize the effort has failed and take responsibility for that failure before we move into the newer conflicts or back to Iraq or Libya or Syria and yet more American heroes die.
I heard last week that now, for the first time since 2001, all Americans at the US Embassy Kabul — along with all NATO/US military personnel and their contractors — are not allowed to travel the short drive from the Embassy and NATO/Resolute Support Headquarters to the airport, but must go by helicopter. The road linking them is a short, straight shot of only a few kilometres down one single road through the heart of the capital city. But after 14 years of fighting and rebuilding efforts, that simple road movement is no longer deemed safe. And that should no longer be deemed acceptable. We are not doing this right.
