A pointless waste
The Afghanistan war has been allowed to slip down the memory hole yet the disastrous policy of intervention which took us there is still with us today. In 1979 Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski started arming Islamists in Afghanistan in order to draw the Soviet Union into a long drawn-out conflict, which would eventually destroy it. Brzezinski later boasted this was his most important achievement.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher intensified this policy. Under Operation Cyclone, Reagan gave Afghan rebels training and equipment worth $4 billion.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdThere were complaints from CIA officers on the ground that the local Afghan mujahideen were not ruthless enough so volunteers from the Arab world were recruited, funded and trained by the US and Britain. One of those trained was the Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden.
Afghanistan was then abandoned in 1989 by the West. The result was chaos. These circumstances gave rise to the Taleban, who brought order of sorts.
That first interference in Afghanistan was a disaster. Culpability for Afghanistan today lies with every US president since Carter and every UK prime minister since Thatcher.
All Nato forces should leave Afghanistan and let its people sort themselves out.
Alan Hinnrichs
Gillespie Terrace
Dundee