Even a cursory review of the history of the Afghan wars reveals that denying facts on the ground, rather than adapting to them, is a proven shortcut to defeat for foreign armies. That’s why this week’s statement by an American general that he’s satisfied that US forces are doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties resonates so ominously.
The UN, the Associate Press and the leading umbrella group of Afghan aid organizations – all have recently reported that in the first five months of this year the number of civilians killed by international forces was roughly equal to those killed by the Taliban and other insurgents.
Yet Brigadier General Joseph Votel told a Defense Department news conference that the claim is “absolutely not true” and that deaths caused by insurgents are “significantly greater.”
“We think the procedures that we have in place are good,” he said. “They work, they help us minimize the effects” on civilians.
Significantly, neither the US or NATO can prove that: they don’t keep count of civilian casualties.
Meantime, the embattled Western-sponsored president of Afghanistan, whatever his own shortcomings as a leader, recognizes a losing strategy when he sees one. That’s why Hamid Karzai’s language has become harsher and harsher, as the death toll has risen, warning his Western patrons that they risk an Iraq-style erosion of public support.
Karzai last week denounced foreign forces as behaving as though they believe Afghan lives “are cheap.” Heard in that context, Gen. Votel’s comments strike the ear with the hollow thud of denial. We can be forgiven for asking: just how comfortably numb do they come out of the Pentagon these days?
For those of us who have covered for some length of time the escapades of foreign armed forces in Afghanistan, the general’s attitude is sadly familiar. American policy makers have displayed, over these past three decades, a marked disinclination to recognize shifts in the political and military winds and adapt to them. Even when confronted with cold hard evidence, there is a tendency towards stubbornness, and a wilful belief that Washington knows best.
Needless to say, the growing controversy over the West’s failure to constrain its “collateral damage” is music to the Taliban’s ears. Al Qaeda loves this stuff. General Votel and the entire community of US and NATO war planners haven’t seemed to take on board the multiple calamities created by misplaced bombs: the rising ire of civilians; the loss of confidence among key allies; the gleeful glint in the eyes of every terrorist along the Northwest Frontier.
Twenty years ago, American diplomats, Congressmen – even spies – were given clear, repeated warnings of another dysfunctional element of their policy on Afghanistan. Most of the US tax dollars channelled by the CIA through Pakistan’s military to support anti-Soviet Afghan guerrilla groups were winding up in the hands of the most undemocratic – and murderous – of leaders, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
“You don’t understand,” we were told by American officials: “Hekmatyar’s killing Russians, and that’s what this is all about.”
In reality, Hekmatyar was one of the least effective resistance leaders. What he excelled at was ordering the cold-blooded murders of genuine Afghan freedom fighters, intellectuals and democrats. His anti-American traits were there for all to see. Yet only a decade later, when he began bragging of helping Osama bin Laden escape the US bombing of Tora Bora, did nostrils in Washington finally begin catching whiffs of caffeine.
Now the man who was once America’s most-favoured Afghan son is near the top of the West’s list of most-wanted terrorists. And still supported by elements of Pakistan’s military intelligence, the ISI. And rebuilding his organization across Afghanistan: gathering support, in large part, through the use of the most vitriolic kind of anti-American propaganda.
That US officials should be contributing new material to that propaganda effort is sad but unsurprising. It is no exaggeration to say that the broader consequences for the West’s Afghan initiatives stand to be nothing less than disastrous. This is because everything from NATO’s war effort to the UN’s aid programs depend mainly on American financing and firepower. America dominates policy, practice and war planning.
So Gen. Votel’s blunder, if left uncorrected, will be borne by all the allies – while Afghan civilians wonder what the good general’s “procedures” will mean for themselves, and their families.
