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Authored by U.S. Marine Corps infantry veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sgt Devon Read, Cpl Rick Reyes, Cpl Jake Diliberto and Cpl Cameron White.
Recently the ongoing war in Afghanistan has fallen into the spotlight as the most hotly debated and important part of our nation's foreign policy, and rightly so. As he took office, President Obama called it "the good war" and has indicated he would do whatever is necessary to succeed there, but exactly what that means has recently become the topic of quite a good deal of debate and discussion between the White House's national security team and the Pentagon. Many conservative news outlets have begun dragging up every patriotic and sentimental reason why the President should immediately redouble his efforts in the region.
Many of those patriotic and sentimental reasons, however, are based on myths about the situation in Afghanistan and we rightly respect that the President is taking his time in making a decision on how to proceed and wish to present him a debunking of those myths in hopes that he will come to the right decision.
In September General Stanley McChrystal's classified report on the situation in Afghanistan to President Obama was leaked and it immediately caused quite a commotion. The General told CBS's 60-minutes that "I think that in some areas that the breadth of violence, the geographic spread of violence, places to the north and to the west, are a little more than I would have gathered,"1 and his report requests additional troops to complete the counter-insurgency mission he was given. There is some confusion as to exactly how many troops he is asking for; many news outlets report that the General is asking for an additional 40,000-50,000 troops, but some sources point out that deep inside his classified report he concludes that he needs 500,000 troops over five years. This figure may include local Afghani police and military, but there is a good deal of confusion surrounding it.
"The numbers are really pretty horrifying. What they say, embedded in this report by McChrystal, is they would need 500,000 troops – boots on the ground – and five years to do the job. No one expects that the Afghan Army could step up to that. Are we gonna put even half that of U.S. troops there, and NATO forces? No way." (source: MSBNC's Morning Joe, September 23, 2009) 2
Since the leak of this report the President has been portrayed as waffling on his commitment to the counter-insurgency strategy with many Republicans in Congress calling for him to immediately begin to fulfill Gen. McChrystal's request. However, it seems that President Obama has chosen to take his time in evaluating his options in Afghanistan instead of sending more of our brave young men and women in uniform into harms way without clearly defined goals, an exit strategy or even a clear purpose. 2009 is already the deadliest year for US troops in Afghanistan, suggesting a simple and direct correlation between the number of troops in Afghanistan and the number of troops that are killed there. Before any more troops are sent to the country, we ask that the President and the American people re-evaluate our mission there and take a close look at some of the commonly held misconceptions and outright falsehoods rattled off by the media's talking heads and the pundits pushing for an expansion of the war.
Myth: Al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans on 9/11, uses Afghanistan as it's major operating base.
Facts: After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. was forced to recognize the global actors of terror in a real way, which lead to the U.S. invading Afghanistan in an attempt to shut-down Al-Qaeda's training and operational bases there and defend our nation from further attacks. Unfortunately, we failed to recognize how exactly Al-Qaeda operates. It is a radicalized and extremist international criminal organization who operates out of Germany, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the U.S. as well as many other countries around the world. The initial invasion of Afghanistan very successfully routed or destroyed those members of Al-Qaeda in the region, and to date they have not returned. Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai claimed earlier this year that there are "no Al-Qaeda based in Afghanistan," a statement backed up by CENTCOM Commander, General David Petraeus on CNN, "I would agree with that assessment, certainly [about] Al-Qaeda and it's affiliates."3 This criminal organization continues to exist and operate around the world, but not in Afghanistan.
Myth: Al-Qaeda/The Taliban are conspiring together and fighting the Taliban is essential to fighting the Global War on Terror.
Facts: This is flawed for several reasons. The Taliban is a Pashtun/Afghani/Pakistani nationalist group who see themselvs as fighting a civil war against a corrupt government and the foreign occupiers that provide protection for that government. It would be easy to say that they are just another extremist group with "conspiracy theories" about the corruption in their government, but even General McChystal's report discusses at some length the deep problems within President Karzai's government, which is composed of corrupt top-level cabinet members, local officials and regional drug lords that came to power when the US supported the Mujahideen in expelling Russia from Afghanistan in the 1980's. Further evidence of corruption within the Karzai regime can be seen in the internationally disputed Presidential election results, with reports of widespread vote rigging, fraud and even reports of "a systematic cover-up to conceal the extent of electoral fraud by President Karzai."4
The Taliban have no interest in international military activities or terrorist attacks on American soil. They are not conspiring with Al-Qaeda to destroy America anymore than the US is conspiring with the U.K. to destroy Afghanistan. McChrystal's report even backs up the assessment that the Taliban's primary focus is fighting a corrupt central government. This is a US-invited problem because, despite all of these allegations of fraud, we continue to back Karzai's government and protect him with American troops and military contractors. The Global War on Terror came about because of the 18 people who attacked us on 9/11, who were from Saudi Arabian Wahabi traditions and not Taliban leaders.
If occupying countries who harbor Al-Qaeda is acceptable foreign policy for the US, why do we not invade Germany, Somalia or Yemen, three countries that Al-Qaeda has operated and planned attacks from? In fact, Mohamed Atta and other leaders of the group that attacked the United States on 9/11 operated, planned and trained in Germany for many years as "the Hamburg Cell." (source: The 9/11 Commission Report)
Myth: General McChrystal's surge strategy worked in Iraq so it will work in Afghanistan.
Facts: Iraq and Afghanistan have almost nothing in common. In Iraq the Sunni were losing a civil war against the newly empowered Shiites and were more than ready to back up the US surge effort, especially when it came with monetary payouts. The "Great Awakening" added 100,000 Sunni troops to General McChrystal's 30,000 additional American forces. There is no similar group in Afghanistan ready and willing to join a surge of American forces. Afghan's see US troops as a colonizing force, one like the many others that they have fought to repel over the country's history, and more troops would only exacerbate that problem.
Myth: We're liberating the women in Afghanistan and they want us to help them.
Facts: The cabinet and Supreme Court that President Hamid Karzai installed have the same fundamentalist and misogynistic views of women's rights that the Taliban did.
"For most Afghan women you would have to say that, although there have been improvements on paper in the Constitution and International treaties, for most Afghan women, life has stayed the same and for a very great number, life has gotten much worse." Ann Jones, author "Kabul in Winter"
"The perception of the women of Afghanistan having been severely oppressed only under the regime of the Taliban and then having been freed by the United States military intervention in 2001 is a false perception" – Kavita Ramdas, President & CEO, Global Fund for Women
According to Afghan Member of Parliament Malalai Joya "unfortunately there is no fundamental change in the situation of the women of Afghanistan."5 The women of Afghanistan now living under the US occupation are just as oppressed as they were before the invasion, but now they also live in a war zone where women "disproportionately suffer the effects of the war."6
There is no question that women in Afghanistan have long been oppressed by the fundamentalist and misogynistic attitudes of those in power, but the problem is, we're not helping. President Hamid Karzai recently signed a law that Amnesty International and the UN calls "the legalization of rape." As long as we continue to blindly support this corrupt and oppressive government, the people of Afghanistan and the women in particular will see us as directly supporting their oppressive policies. A recent BBC/ABC opinion poll done in March of 2009 revealed 80% of Afghanis do not want us in Afghanistan.
As Karzai continues in his struggle to maintain some semblance of control, he is continuing to use authoritarian and oppressive means and the US has not challenged him to change.
Myth: It's better to take the fight "over there" than let them bring the fight "over here."
Facts: In the early days of the War on Terror, Jerry Fallwell and Jesse Jackson debated the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jerry Fallwell repeated the phrase uttered by Donald Rumsfeld, "rather fight them over there than over here." Jesse Jackson wisely responded, "the fight is not one that should be dealt with through military intervention."
This statement needs some critical thought. Whomever we are fighting in Afghanistan, our considerations should be founded on the threat to our own nation. The Taliban is a Nationalist organization that has no interest in leaving their own country. Al-Qaeda operates all over the world, so fighting them "over there" clearly is not something that can be done through massive military intervention when "they" are actually spread out across the globe.
In 2008, the Rand Corporation did a study of 648 terrorist groups between 1963 and 2006. When they looked into how those groups ended they found that military force was effective only only 7% of the time.
"The United States cannot conduct an effective long-term counterterrorism campaign against al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups without understanding how terrorist groups end," said Seth Jones, the study's lead author and a political scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument."7
Relying on a policy of proper police and intelligence work to root out terrorist leaders is a more appropriate alternative to counter-insurgency-minded military-intervention and has historically been much more successful, "40 percent was through police and intelligence services either apprehending or killing the key leaders of these groups." Donald Rumsfeld, Jerry Fallwell and other supporters of the old conventional war-fighting framework refuse to change their worldview. The US must reshape our worldview and deal with the threat of international criminal groups like Al-Qaeda appropriately.
Additionally, the RAND corporation points out that; "Al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, than it was during its prior history and the group's attacks since then have spanned an increasingly broader range of targets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa,"
This is evidence that fighting the "War on Terror" by occupying Afghanistan has done nothing to reduce Al Qaeda's ability to mount attacks around the world.
Myth: We are helping to bring stability to the Afghanistan/Pakistan region.
Facts: The US-led war in Af-Pak is one in which 25 million Afghanis and 172 million Pakistanis are engaged in a geopolitical and social nightmare.
Afghanistan is the third poorest country in the world with little-to-no natural resources.
Before there is true stability an entire infrastructure is needed in this region; an infrastructure that the UN, the Arab League, NATO and the rest of the western world have not adequately directed funds to create. This should be the goal of the US budget for Af-Pak, not military interventionism. Indeed, the US Senate foreign relations committee in August of 2009 stated about Afghanistan;
"Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is not a reconstruction project—it is a construction project, starting almost from scratch in a country that will probably remain poverty-stricken no matter how much the U.S. and the international community accomplish in the coming years."8
Due to rising civilian casualties caused by Predator drone strikes, local Afghans are now seeing the US occupation the same way they saw the Soviet Hind Helicopters from 3 decades ago. As stated by the Rand Corporation, the Cato Institute, and many scholars, the rising civilian casualties are, "A recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban."
Additionally, we should also re-evaluate the very basis of the assumption that it is in the best interests of our national security to rebuild failed states, because it "ignores that terrorists can move to governed spaces. Rather than setting up in weak, ungoverned states, enemies can flourish in strong states because these countries have formally recognized governments with the sovereignty to reject foreign interference in their domestic affairs. This is one reason why terrorists find sanctuary across the border in Pakistan."9
Myth: Afghanistan's opium trade is run by the insurgents as a method of funding their activities.
Facts: Before the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban government, with the support and collaboration of the UN, "had imposed an impressive drug eradication program, leading to a complete ban on poppy cultivation. By 2001, prior the US led invasion, opium production had collapsed by more than 90 percent." In fact, "in the history of the Vienna based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), no other country was able to implement a comparable program."10 Since the invasion, however, opium production in the region has grown dramatically, increasing twenty-two fold by 2004.
Many pundits argue that Taliban insurgents are responsible for these increases, but according to UN Office of Drugs and Crime, the insurgents control only 3% of the Afghanistan drug trade. Who controls the other 97%?
Myth: Our Country and our Troops are obligated to fulfill this task in Afghanistan.
Facts: The Department of Defense's primary responsibility is to protect our Constitution and our citizens from the military forces of other states. Our military is not suited for or trained to conduct operations of state-building and foreign-government protection. Even if it were, we do not have the 600,000 troops truly needed to pacify this region. The leadership of the United States needs to recognize the very real limits of our capabilities.
According to the Department of Veterans affairs, approximately 43,000 troops with PTSD and TBI are being redeployed to Afghanistan for combat duties. We need to make a priority of dealing with the damage already done to our troops by eight long years of war before stretching our men and women in uniform even further.
Myth: The cost of the war, both in dollars and in lives, is negligible because it assures our further national security.
Facts: Most Americans fail to grasp exactly how costly these wars have been. We are spending 4-6 billion dollars a week to continue them, which we are paying for via loans from foreign governments and "quantitative easing." These absurd costs have made their way through congress as "emergency" warfunding bills and have been pushed through the House and Senate with minimal debate for eight years.
To date we have spent over $228 billion on the war in Afghanistan and see no end in sight. At a rate of $60 billion or more per year, how long can we keep this up?
This year has already seen more American troops lose their lives in Afghanistan than any year previously. As of Sunday, Oct 4, 2009 at least 779 members of the US military have died in Afghanistan.11 Unfortunately, there is no quantifiable or logical connection between the war in Afghanistan and our own national security.
Myth: If we leave we will lose our place as the world leader and the country will fall back into the hands of terrorist-sympathizers or even terrorists themselves.
Facts: This is an absurd discussion. Our strength as a nation in this world did not fall when we were attacked on 9/11; the events of that day only increased the world's sympathies for the United States.
Every day that we conduct military operations against the largely civilian population and violate international law we alienate the entire muslim world. We should be engaging the international community in regards to the problems in Afghanistan. The world wants the US to be a leader for the ideals of freedom and fairness that we once represented, not the leader in state-building disasters like Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be.
The Taliban have recently publicly stated that they have no interest in attacking other countries, but that as long as there are foreign occupiers in their country they would continue to fight them.
"We did not have any agenda to harm other countries including Europe, nor we have such agenda today," the group said. "Still, if you want to turn the country of the proud and pious Afghans into a colony, then know that we have an unwavering determination and have braced for a prolonged war." 12
Obviously the U.S. does not want Al-Qaeda to find a safe haven in Afghanistan, but there are far better methods to prevent that from happening than simply occupying the country until it embraces Western Democracy or until every last Taliban fighter is dead or captured.
As a U.S. Marine Corps Infantryman, Corporal Rick Reyes deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 to destroy Al-Qaeda's bases of operations there. Recently he went back to meet with locals and NGOs and understand better what is currently happening in the country. The following is his assessment of the situation as well as his recommendation for how he suggests we should proceed.
The most effective weapon we have in combating and suppressing Taliban extremists in Afghanistan is the very system we are currently systematically destroying, the tribal nature of the country. Working with and supporting rural areas and with tribal leaders directly is the best chance we have for winning in Afghanistan. Using this system is the only effective way to get anything done there.
On my recent trip back to Afghanistan, I met with the UNDP. They've had a very successful disarmament program with which they've been able to reach out to 30,000 villages and they have disarmed 28,000 of them.
Women for Women International-Afghanistan is undergoing a pilot program that has also proved to be very successful. They are getting large groups of men into classroom settings and teaching these men about women's rights, they are in their second batch now and these men are taking the message back to their villages.
I also met with the minister of Afghanistan's reconstruction and rehab agency who has also had a very successful rebuilding program. They ask the participating villages for a 10% stake in all projects. Therefore, the village has vested interest in the reconstruction projects and allow no one, not even the Taliban to interfere with them. They continue to stand strong today.
I met with Chris Eaton, the executive director to Agha Kan, an NGO, who has also been very successful in his program. This NGO has been in Afghanistan for five years. The first year, when they chose to use private security to protect their group, they were attacked. They quickly figured out the best form of security is no security at all. Once they took a more personal approach with the villagers and did away with ALL security, they immediately began having better success and have not been attacked or threatened in the last four years.
On the final day of my stay I met with Mohamed Akram, the President of PTS Commission 13, Afghanistan. His organization is heading the peace and reconciliation program, an effort to reach out to village elders to make contact with known Taliban fighters and convince them to lay down their weapons and join the peace process. I also met with a former Taliban leader who was one of the 29 blacklisted before he made contact with the PTS Commission. He is now working for the organization.
They've been able to bring through their program 9,000 Taliban, with 13,000 more going through right now. The Taliban members agree to leave the Taliban, undergo a process of picture-taking, document signing and finger-printing. Once complete, they are integrated back into society as civil servants.
The common thread I found between all these programs is that they utilize the tribal systems already in place to reach out to elders and tribal leaders. The programs that they have implemented have proved very successful, all without any support or protection from US or NATO forces.
When the Taliban's governance of Afghanistan collapsed in 2001, the UN lead a very successful peace-keeping operation of aid and security. It is my firm opinion that any security and policing that is needed has to be done by the UN initially, and then Afghan police if it's going to have any hope of being successful as the US is currently seen by the majority of the country as a colonizing force.
Every day, tribal elders continue to convince more Taliban members to lay down their weapons and go to the PTS Commission and they've been very successful thus far. These village elders are also convincing the young men of their tribes not to join the Taliban. With very little infrastructure and virtually zero industry in the country, it's a constant challenge.
It is the village elders who are working with the UN to disarm fighters, it's the village elders who are enforcing women's rights with Women for Women international, and it's the village elders who are helping the Afghanistan rebuilding program to be successful. It will be them that will suppress and eventually eliminate the Taliban and not allow safe havens for Al Qaeda because they know it's what their country needs. They will be the ones to secure and rebuild. Unfortunately, it is our occupation of the country that is compromising the success of these programs, directly and indirectly.
Our current foreign policy is the problem and our troops will be targeted regardless of the task they are intending to achieve, even if it's planting daisies. We need to think outside the box, we need to look at this war differently and not from a viewpoint clouded by fear of "terrorists." America is suffering from an acute case of PTSD and it's time we cure ourselves and begin to have some solidarity with the people of Afghanistan. We are at a stale-mate with no chance of a military success. We need to withdraw on our own terms rather than running from complete defeat as the Soviets did. But we can do something that they failed to do when they left. We can support Afghans in ways that will help Afghanistan become more stable, both for their own sake, and for our own.
Sources:
1 CBS News
2 Huffington Post
3 Youtube video
4 Times Online
5 Youtube video
6 Anand Gopal, Afghanistan correspondent for the Wall Street Journal
7 RAND Corp. Study
8 Senate Foreign Relations
9 Huffington Post
10 UNODC
11 Washington Post
12 NPR
13 Defense Link News
