The news from Afghanistan last week was of the deaths of seven children in an Islamic school. They died in a US air strike. The barbarity was reinforced by a US commander justifying the killings on the basis that al-Qa’ida fighters had told the children to stay in the school. In his view, therefore, these children were expendable ‘collateral’. The weekend of 16-17 June, which saw a bus bombing in the capital, Kabul, was another stark illustration of a country spiralling out of control.
By Manny Thain, Socialist Party

Touted as a success in the ‘war on terror’ by US, British and Australian politicians, Afghanistan is really an example of the brutal consequences of imperialist intervention. They have helped create a failed and violent ‘narco-state’, fuelled by opium and ruled by gangsters, insurgents and corrupt politicians. The mass of the population is caught in the crossfire between Nato forces, the resurgent Taliban and powerful regional warlords.

After the horror of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, the US regime unleashed a massive airborne assault on Afghanistan, where the right-wing Islamist terrorist group, al-Qa’ida, had its main bases. The reactionary Taliban was driven out by this assault and by other warlords, acting as the western powers’ foot soldiers.

Afghanistan was devastated: its infrastructure smashed: thousands of civilians killed. Western governments promised to rebuild, and to deliver democracy, women’s rights, jobs, electricity and water to a population reeling from 20 years of armed conflict, dictatorship and invasion. Nato deployed 35,000 troops in 2003.

Today, millions of Afghan people languish in dire poverty. The security situation deteriorates daily. Aid fails to reach the workers and poor. Matt Waldman, Oxfam’s Afghanistan organiser, wrote in the guardian (26 May) that life expectancy in Daikundi province is 42 years and one in five children dies before the age of five. Nearly half of US aid goes to the five biggest US contractors in the country. Over 100,000 people have lost their homes in the volatile southern province of Helmand.

Murderous attacks

The hard-line tactics of US/Nato forces - air strikes, dawn raids, shooting civilians in streets and at checkpoints - are undermining what little support the Afghan ‘government’ has. They are also boosting support for the Taliban, and raising tensions within Nato. Although US special forces have the worst record, British and Canadian troops are also responsible for the marked increase in civilian casualties.

In early May, US marines shot dead 19 civilians. On 8 May, an air strike in Helmand killed over 20 - local people say 80. On 27-29 April, US air strikes killed 57 villagers in the western province of Herat: 17 were children under ten, 14 were old men, and ten were women. A foreign official commented that “the Americans went after one guerrilla commander and created a hundred more”. (New York Times, 13 May)

Even the US stooge, president Hamid Karzai, has had to voice the widespread anger. In May, the hand-picked upper house of Afghanistan’s parliament called on Nato to stop attacking insurgents, and for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops.

The US is also pushing for massive poppy eradication. Without large-scale aid and alternative employment, however, this just hits the poorest farmers. And, under US guidance, hundreds of truck drivers and go-betweens are being arrested, while the main drug dealers - often linked to government officials (put in place by the US), warlords and the Taliban - operate with virtual impunity.

The opium trade is the largest single employer and export (worth around $3 billion), the equivalent of half the legal economy. Afghanistan is supplying 90% of the world’s opium and this year’s harvest is set to break all records. The social cost is enormous. The UN estimates that there are a million opium addicts among the 30 million population. Sixty thousand of them are children. (The Observer, 13 May)

Soon to be British PM, Gordon Brown, has hinted that more troops should be deployed to Helmand. There are now around 6,000 British soldiers in place. Fifty-four have been killed so far on operational duty. But the occupation of Afghanistan can no more deliver liberty and prosperity to Afghanistan than it can to Iraq.

George W Bush, of course, never had that intention. The bombardment from 2001 aimed to deliver a swift ‘victory’ to the US as a springboard to the long-planned invasion of Iraq. All the promises were false from the start. As Afghanistan slides remorselessly towards ever-increasing conflict, its peoples are left to suffer the dire consequences of imperialist lies and intervention.