10 Years of Afghan War

Ten years ago, US forces began bombing Afghanistan in retaliation against its Taliban rulers who refused to hand over the al-Qaeda leaders responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. For many Afghans, the anniversary will be a time for reflection on what the war has meant for their country and how the withdrawal of all foreign combat troops by the end of 2014 will affect them in future.

 

An Afghan woman holds a placard at a protest in Kabul October 6, 2011. Hundreds of Afghans from the Hmbastagi party (Solidarity Party of Afghanistan) staged a protest to condemn the US-led invasion, which will mark its 10th anniversary on October 7.[Photo/Agencies]

Life in Afghanistan

 

As the US and NATO mark 10 years of war in Afghanistan on Friday, life is grim for Afghans.

Afghanistan is failing in two major areas in particular: Security and good government. Violence has gone up this year with increasingly brazen attacks, and has spread to the once-peaceful north of the country. And widespread corruption is bedeviling attempts to create a viable Afghan government and institutions to take over when the US and NATO leave in 2014.

Poll after poll shows that the biggest issue for Afghans is the lack of security. Even in southern Kandahar, the former Taliban headquarters where the US generals claim to have made progress, violence is a part of life.

Ehsanullah Khan, who has run an education center for girls and boys in southern Kandahar for the last six years, says his life is constantly in danger. It's not just the Taliban, but ultraconservative government officials, tribal elders, even his neighbors who object to girls going to school. Khan says he will be killed if he leaves Kandahar, and is unsafe even within the city.

"I play hide and seek," he said. "Where is the security in this country? Where is freedom?"

"Since the Americans and their allies came to Afghanistan, our security has deteriorated and they have also been involved in the killings of innocent Afghan civilians," street vendor Khan Agha said.

There were 2,108 clashes and other violent incidents per month for the latest quarter, up 39 percent from the same period last year, according to the United Nations. And last year was the deadliest of the war for international troops, with more than 700 killed.

The percentage of Afghans with access to health services had shot up from 9 percent in 2001 to 80 percent now, it said, according to the Public Health Ministry data.

But clinics are often closed and poorly equipped and staff are prone to mis-diagnoses that sometimes result in deaths.

Among the 430 people interviewed in 14 provinces were a married couple who were turned away by a hospital midwife because they could not afford the $15 service fee. Their baby was instead delivered in a remote village and died during birth.

 

War Costs

During the war, the dead have included 2,748 coalition troops — 1,796 of them Americans. Combined war costs since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have topped $1 trillion. Tens of thousands more have been wounded.

Monica McNeal (R) cries as she hugs a US Marine at the grave (L) of her 19-year-old son Eric Ward, at Arlington National Cemetery, in this May 27, 2010 file photo. [Photo/Agencies]

Figures from the United Nations indicate this year is on course to be the bloodiest yet for civilians, with 1,462 killed in the first half of this year.

On Oct 7, 2001, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan. At the time, President George W. Bush said to the country, "In the months ahead, our patience will be one of our strengths."

The nation, under Bush and Obama, saw its patience tested much longer than that.

Out of sight and off the minds of millions of Americans, the war is the most prolonged conflict this country has been engaged in since Vietnam.

One in three US veterans of the post-Sept 11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think that after 10 years of combat America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on its own problems, according to an opinion survey released by the Pew Research Center on Oct 5.

A CBS News poll released Oct 3 shows half of Americans in the wider public think the US-led war in Afghanistan has not been a success, and an overwhelming 69 percent of those polled said the war has gone on longer than they thought it would.

The findings highlight a dilemma for the Obama administration and Congress as they struggle to shrink the government's huge budget deficits and reconsider defense priorities while trying to keep public support for remaining involved in Iraq and Afghanistan for the longer term.

 

Corruption

 

A national poll by the BBC and other media taken in 2009 found that 50 percent of Afghans said corruption among government officials or police had increased in the last year. About 63 percent said corruption was a big issue, compared with 45 percent a year earlier.

Ordinary Afghans paid $2.5 billion in bribes in 2009, according to a UN report — roughly a quarter of the country's entire gross domestic product. On average a bribe runs about $160, a huge amount in a country where the average Afghan makes barely $425 a year, the report concluded.

Ainuddin, who runs a small shop on the ground floor below the abandoned cinema, says all the money in Afghanistan is going into the hands of warlords and government officials. Go to any government department, he said, and you pay a bribe.

He scratches his beard, heavy with dust and dirt. "When the Taliban left and all the foreigners came to Afghanistan, I thought there was nothing that could stop us," he said. "But all we have today is nothing."

President Karzai has been attacked for silently and steadily allowing corruption to take over his government. He has largely ignored calls to rein in corruption as well as international allegations of widespread fraud in his 2009 presidential campaign.

As the US and NATO plan to leave, they are giving support to the newly formed Afghan Local Police, set up to supplement the national police and army in remote areas. But privately, NATO soldiers who are training these village police in some parts of Afghanistan throw up their hands in despair.

NATO trainer Paul, who spoke on condition of using only his first name, said corruption makes impossible even a modicum of professionalism in the force. The first loyalty of most recruits, he said, is to the local warlord.

The new security forces sometimes also make life miserable for the local people. Mohammed Ali, a soldier in the Afghan army, said his first mission in northern Kunduz province was to stop local security forces from terrorizing a village.

"The Afghan government has responded to the insurgency by reactivating militias that threaten the lives of ordinary Afghans," a September Human Rights Watch report said.

Ordinary Afghans fear a return to civil war after 2014, and blame both neighboring Pakistan and the US and NATO for an emboldened Taliban.

"America is helping Pakistan, and Pakistan is helping the Taliban," said Hamidullah, an elderly resident of the northern Panjshir Valley who has seen war devastate his homeland.

Hamidi, the mayor's daughter in Kandahar, hears similar complaints about the US and NATO, who are actively pushing reconciliation with the Taliban to find a nonmilitary solution.

"More and more you hear the accusation that they are in bed with the Taliban," she said. "And sadly, it is a fact that many Afghans, men and women, say 'good for them' when a foreign soldier gets killed."

 

Taliban's Return

 

The Taliban have returned in part because Afghans have learned to expect little from a failed government and institutions wracked with corruption.

Moabullah, a Taliban fighter who would give only his first name, said that when the US first entered Afghanistan a decade ago, the Taliban fled.

"We didn't even have a place in the mountains then," he said.

Like many Taliban foot soldiers, he returned to his village and tried to get some funding to start an irrigation project. But before long, local government officials who had been thrown out by the Taliban on charges of corruption five years earlier returned. They demanded money and weapons, and threatened to tell the Americans that Moabullah was Taliban. He escaped to Iran.

Two years later, he came back and returned to the Taliban. Now the Taliban are welcomed even in Kabul, he said, where residents give them food and water.

"People too soon saw how the foreigners behaved, doing night raids, checking homes with women inside and bombs killing innocent people and children," he said. "And now ... the Taliban are in government, in police. They are very strong today."

Brig (retired) Mehmood Shah, a former head of security for Pakistan's north-western tribal areas, says the Americans made two mistakes which squandered their advantage.

"They focused on military objectives instead of stabilisation and development. And they soon went to fight a war of choice in Iraq, abandoning the war of necessity that had brought them to Afghanistan."

The lack of reconstruction, and rampant corruption among government officials at a time when millions of refugees were returning from Iran and Pakistan, led to widespread disenchantment and fuelled insurgency, he says.