Afghanistan: another occupation going off the rails. posted by Richard Seymour

The recent chaos in Afghanistan with military attacks by 'coalition' forces sweeping Helmand and other areas in the south under Operation Mountain Thrust has brought the country back into the news. It had been assumed that all was well, that the ludicrously rigged elections had produced a stable government, that the association of warlords united under the rubric of the occupation would hold firm and keep the country in check. It's curious to note, then, a series of admissions that have been trickling into the British press about what is happening. First, the new Defense Secretary has stated that the UK had 'energised' the Taliban through its repression. Naturally, this is hedged and qualified with the usual claims that the operations are targeted against 'Al Qaeda' and the Taliban. Excuse me? It was supposedly the case, was it not, that the Taliban had dried up faster than a light summer rain following the invasion, and that their support was close to zero even in southern Pashtun areas? Well, bear in mind that the US is now obliged to acknowledge that the Taliban isn't the only source of opposition in the country. Indeed, this has been admitted sotto voce in the press, even though there is still the pretence that they're all really evil-doers of some kind, drug-traffickers and tribal leaders and what have you. The trouble with that is that it is well-known that the occupiers have protected the opium traffickers, whose business has soared since the occupation began.

One strongly suspects, of course, that what is happening is that indigenous forces of resistance are developing that are not to do with the Taliban or 'Al Qaeda' or any of that noise. There have been civilian riots against the occupiers in he capital. It isn't as if they have no reason to be pissed off: the US has committed a number of war crimes, not least their favourite little hobby of blowing up weddings. They have 'disappeared' hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in their torture centres in Bagram and elsewhere, the places where the obscenities at Abu Ghraib were tried and tested. Occupying soldiers, wherever they have been deployed, have been found to have intimidated local residents. The recent military actions have killed scores of villagers, despite occupation claims that they targeted only 'Taliban' fighters.

And while the US has engaged in war crimes and drafted war criminals into its puppet administration, the money sent as reconstruction aid has largely been spent on firms like Halliburton and on the erection of a modern mini-city for occupation bureacrats, NGOs and credulous reporters in Kabul (oooh, they've got the internet, wow). The police engage in routine corruption and brutality, such as the attempt to rape girls in school dormitories.

As in Iraq, reporters largely take the word of the occupiers to account for their activities - we are told that bombs have killed 40 'suspected Taliban' in a 'secret hideout', for instance. Even Karzai has had to utter a word or two of meek criticism, noting that between 500 and 600 Afghanis had been killed over four weeks and that "Even if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land." (This could be in part because one official has had his family fired on by the occupiers). Similarly, the Independent bemoans the end of a "liberal wind of change" in Afghanistan, a frankly astonishing apologetic term that is in no way commensurable with the situation on the ground for most of Afghanistan. An embedded Canadian reporter produces this Orientalist bilge in which Afganistan is a "winsome" "trickster" that enchants the imperial observer only for the reality of lurking evil-doers to emerge in a few colourful scenes. It is no surprise that several writers have been obliged to reach into the history of British imperialism in Afghanistan. The recent revival of the language and history of imperialism on the hard right and even among many liberals, and the unavoidable day to day reality of the American Empire has made such analogies compulsory.