This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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The US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan should not be sold as ‘job done’
By: []
Date: 2021-08
On Monday 12 July, the head of US military operations in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller, completed his deployment and handed over to Marine General Frank McKenzie. In a telling change of command, McKenzie will be based thousands of miles away from Afghanistan in Tampa, Florida, where he heads US Central Command.
During the 20-year campaign, the Americans lost more than 2,400 troops, with more than 20,000 wounded, many of whom have suffered life-changing physical and mental illnesses. The losses to the Afghans were massively higher. As Associated Press journalist Kathy Gannon wrote in the Military Times, “71,344 civilians; 78,314 Afghan military and police; and 84,191 opposition fighters died during the conflict”. The figures, which were calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War Project, “do not include deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war”.
Neither do they include the impact of mass displacement of people, and refugee flows, especially to neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 2.7 million Afghans have already been displaced this year because of the violence, and warns of “a looming humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as the escalating conflict brings increased human suffering and civilian displacement”.
Taliban gains
Meanwhile, the Taliban movement is making gains that are worse than the fears of many analysts. Earlier this month, it took over a key border crossing with Iran in the west of Afghanistan, where it is now collecting bountiful revenues. Even more recently, on 15 July, it was reported to have taken another lucrative border crossing, this time with Pakistan at Spin Boldak in Kandahar Province in the south-east.
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Across Afghanistan as a whole, the Taliban now controls most rural districts and is contesting almost all the rest. It is even encroaching into some provincial capitals, not least the key centre of Lashkar Gar in Helmand Province, Afghanistan’s main opium poppy region and an even greater source of Taliban finances.
As the Taliban campaign accelerates, its activities go well beyond the rural areas and include sophisticated targeting of government facilities and people. One of the ‘assets’ that the US has left behind is a cadre of fully trained Air Force pilots who are key to the government’s attempts to maintain control from the skies, and who are now prey to assassination when they are off duty. One senior officer, Major Dastagir Zamaray, was so concerned for his family’s well-being that he planned to move them to a safer part of Kabul. He was killed by a gunman as he visited an estate agent to discuss the move.
One country-wide Taliban tactic is to target IT and energy infrastructure. Nearly 70% of Afghanistan’s electricity supply comes from neighbouring countries and 39 pylons have been damaged in the past six months. Afghanistan has a small but rapidly developing IT infrastructure so the Taliban targets telecommunications antennas, with 28 destroyed in the past three months. When it took over the border town of Islam Qala in west Afghanistan, it destroyed fibre optics and system equipment. This is all part of a policy of damaging power and communications across the country, making life more difficult for the government and depriving people of news from outside their immediate communities.
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