Gerald Warner: Stage set for last act of farcical Afghanistan adventure

Published on Sunday 11 December 2011 01:58

HAMLET without the prince does not come any more extreme than last week’s assembly of 90 countries in conference at Bonn to debate the future of Afghanistan, with the meeting boycotted by Pakistan.

Apart from Germany absenting itself from a Eurozone summit it is difficult to imagine an empty chair that could more devastatingly subvert the entire proceedings.

It is now ten years since diplomats last assembled in Bonn to tell the Afghans how they would live in future, after the BBC’s John Simpson waddled into Kabul to liberate the Afghan capital and create a world safe for MTV. Those events of 2001 are still routinely referred to, without any sense of irony, as “the fall of the Taleban”. It is curious that a “fallen” Islamist force has somehow contrived to kill 2,823 coalition soldiers – an approximately similar number to the fatalities in the Twin Towers that unleashed neocon revanchism on the world. Among the allied dead were 391 British troops and the toll is still rising.

Among Afghans the casualty rate is much higher, though unquantifiable. It is likely now to worsen, since to tribalism, warlordism and jihadism there has now been added sectarianism. On the day after the power-brokers assembled in Bonn, some 60 Shias, including children, were killed by bomb explosions in Kabul and two other towns. The Taleban denied responsibility, which was claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Pakistan-based group linked to al-Qaeda. This was probably an embarrassment to the Sunni-dominated Taleban which wants to create, if not exactly a big tent, a moderately comprehensive pool of support for its overthrow of the Karzai regime and resumption of power after the coalition leaves in 2014.

When even the Taleban cannot keep order within the insurgency, that is a portent of the coming chaos. The bombings perpetrated by an al-Qaeda ally were a reminder of the tensions between the late Osama bin Laden’s organisation and the Taleban, which the West should have set out to deepen. The incomprehension of the British warmongers was characterised by the mantra: “Would you rather fight them in Kandahar or on the streets of Birmingham?” The obvious military preference would have been the latter, where the enemy would have been on alien ground; but it was always a false dichotomy. The Taleban was not a threat to Britain’s security, although al-Qaeda was.

Decades ago, Britain would have bought off the Taleban, or strategic warlords who could contain them. Where were all the Middle East experts in the Foreign Office when they were needed? Put out to grass, is the answer, in favour of an “ethical” foreign policy. Realpolitik was abandoned. Behind the rhetoric about security lurked a different agenda, in which American neocons, Democrats, Blairites and Guardianistas converged in an unholy alliance. Men (and they were all men) in robes and beards making a fetish of religion, denying girls education, maintaining the family as the axis of society, eschewing democracy – that was intolerable to the New World Order.

Add to that a post-9/11 thirst in America for revenge and you had the perfect storm. The neocons have imploded; but the alternative American delusion is still articulated in the demented ravings of Hillary Clinton who believes, in her guts, that Gloria Steinem should be running Afghanistan instead of Hamid Karzai. Not that his regime has been a resounding success: the corruption of everyday transactions in Afghan government would make the mayor of Palermo blush. For the incoming Taleban/warlord coalition government, however, Barack Obama is the gift that just keeps giving.

First there was his courteous notification to the Taleban of the schedule of American troop withdrawals, which must have been helpful to them in drawing up their own plans. Then he demonised the Pakistan government in public instead of putting ruthless pressure on it in private, compounded by the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a bungled anti-terrorist raid. Now Pakistan is closing drone bases, Nato supply routes, withdrawing such intelligence co-operation as there was and – most effectively – boycotting Bonn.

There is a real prospect that America and Britain will be marginalised from decision making on the future of Afghanistan, even in theory. Pakistan, India – even Russia – are waiting in the wings. The Western allies have blown it.

General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, wants Obama to suspend US troop withdrawals throughout 2013. He is pushing on a locked door: with a presidential election next year Obama has to be able to offer the folks in Peoria some prospect of a reduction in incoming body bags. There should never have been any, American or British. The Afghan adventure was totally pointless and will leave that country in worse disorder than when John Simpson and the Blue Peter team liberated it.