Vietnam syndrome has begun in Afghanistan

“What is perhaps not known is that the resistance in Afghanistan is not confined to the Taliban; Entire tribes are involved in resistance activity of which Taliban are but one facet. The presence of foreign troops itself is the most important trigger for the resistance. No Afghan has ever attacked America; instead American soldiers are torturing and killing Afghans.”
_____________

By Saybhan Samat

(October 21, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The situation in Afghanistan is getting from bad to worse with the Taliban reporting 54 foreign troops killed on 15th October. Obama plans to send 45000 more troops and Britain to add another 500 troops. Meanwhile public opinion in the US, UK and other European countries is mounting for the withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan. In Pakistan too there is mayhem with daily attacks on its military.

The fundamental problem in Afghanistan is not about elections, corruption, drugs or even lack of education facilities for boys and girls. The real reason for the continued mayhem is the presence of 100,000 foreign occupation troops. They are not there to improve the condition of Afghans. This is a lie peddled to sooth the rising tide of public anger in Western countries that have troops operating in Afghanistan. Eight years after foreign troops invaded and occupied Afghanistan, the country has become more lawless and poverty has increased. There is no security for people, kidnappings have escalated, as have bombings and attacks. The only thing Western, especially American forces are good at is killing civilians. They have killed at least 100,000 civilians many of them women and children blown to bits in mud houses in remote villages. On account of the stiff resistance of the Afghan people the original intention of funding Osama bin Laden has all but been forgotten.

What is perhaps not known is that the resistance in Afghanistan is not confined to the Taliban; Entire tribes are involved in resistance activity of which Taliban are but one facet. The presence of foreign troops itself is the most important trigger for the resistance. No Afghan has ever attacked America; instead American soldiers are torturing and killing Afghans. It is unrealistic to expect the victims of US aggression will accept this as natural and will not resist those occupying their country or killing their women and children. There is no doubt that the resistance is growing by the day and foreign troop casualties escalating.

It might be of interest to know that besides the resistance taking over more territory, the resistance has now changed its name from Taliban to ‘Mujahideen’ which was the name it had when it vanquished the then army of Soviet Union. The reason for the name change according to Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a one time Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, is that 9 out of 10 Taliban fighters today are ordinary Afghans’ and not “True Taliban” fighters. The day is not far off when all of Afghanistan even the official US trained Afghan soldiers and policemen will join the resistance and fight the US and European invaders.

Even the most die-hard American commanders now admit that there is no military solution to the resistance in Afghanistan. This has been repeated by a number of other Western officials. However Obama insists that “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean a large safe-haven from which Al –Qaeeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

Such belligerence from a US president who was just awarded the Nobel prize has only intensified the resistance in Afghanistan and hatred for the Americans in Pakistan. The daily death and causality toll of foreign troops is slowly and steadily deflating the hubris balloon of the US administration.

The latest survey conducted by the International Council of Security and Development (ICOSD) indicates that 80% of the country has a permanent mujahideen presence, up from 72% in 2008, and that 97% of the country “has substantial mujahideen activity.” The ICOSD has tracked the mujahideen movement throughout Afghanistan since 2007.

Increased resistance activity has led to more occupation soldiers dying and an alarming escalation on air strikes that have caused massive Afghan civilian casualties. This in turn fuels the resistance to further daring attacks. The increasing death toll among the foreign troops results in demonstrations which demand that the governments of the foreign troops bring their soldiers home. This is exactly what happened in Vietnam. It is a syndrome all too familiar to the people in the US. The US and its allies appear to be trapped and sinking into the quagmire of their own making.

-Sri Lanka Guardian