The Guardian, Tariq Ali and Mike O'Brien discuss the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan, which began two years ago this week.
Dear Mike
It was hugely entertaining to see Hamid Karzai appear on the platform at the Labour party conference next to the Dear Leader. Two of Washington's favourite politicians doing their party turns for the faithful. Pity Sharon and Chalabi couldn't make it. Next year, perhaps?
The difference between Britain and Afghanistan, of course, is that in Afghanistan there is a strong opposition. Karzai is so confident of his popularity in Kabul (his writ does not extend beyond the capital) that no Afghan is permitted to guard him. Elsewhere the various factions of the Northern Alliance and remnants of the Taliban control the country.
The aim of the war and occupation was to capture and kill Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and shackle al-Qaida. The result has been a dismal failure. The video earlier this year of Osama and his deputy wearing their Chitrali hats and strolling cheerfully in the Hindukush was a cheeky reminder that on this front the war has been a dismal failure.
Removing the Taliban from power was always a secondary aim. The condition of the population is certainly not better today than before the war. The reconstruction has turned out to be a joke. The women's liberation talked about so eagerly at the time by the first ladies of Bush and Blair has come to nought. More money is being spent on feeding and housing Western troops than on the war-weary citizens of Afghanistan. And it will end badly, just like the Soviet intervention did in the 80s. I fear another civil war is waiting in the wings.
Yours, Tariq
Dear Tariq,
So scathing, so cynical, so wrong. When I drove through the suburbs of western Kabul, every building I passed had been damaged by 20 years of civil war. You impressively described those wars in your book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity.
But I saw a lot of people in those derelict homes making bricks and rebuilding. They were building because they had hope that the future could be better. I talked to people who were so glad that the Taliban were gone that they had tears in their eyes; women who no longer had to wear the burqa and who could send their daughters to school. I went to a school for the blind to present the children with some braille machines because the Taliban had destroyed them all. “Failure,” you say. It's not what they say.
Those who opposed intervention in Afghanistan would have denied hope to these people. But you are right on one thing. There are still mega-problems. There are drug warlords and poverty and injustice. There are terrorist incidents. The government needs the ability to better enforce its writ outside Kabul.
Yes, it will take years to sort out the mess created over decades. But there is today a hope that defies any hard-bitten cynicism. Those people impressed me with their determination to rebuild. Karzai is an ordinary man trying to do an extraordinary thing, to create a democracy from devastation. There are no guarantees that he will succeed, but we should do all we can to help. The UN and the world have not turned their back. There is a lot of money going in there. Rebuilding will be hard and will take time, but it is worth it.
Best wishes, Mike
Dear Mike,
You sound like a Pravda man I argued with in the early 1980s. He too accused me of cynicism when I denounced the Soviet intervention as something that would end badly. In reality the Russians did push through an effective modernisation in the towns that provided an educational system for all (including women), and the number of women working in schools and hospitals multiplied rapidly. That was the time when Reagan and Thatcher welcomed the bearded mujahideen and introduced them to the western media as “the equivalent of our founding Fathers”. They certainly were the founding fathers of the Taliban.
I doubt whether the current bunch can do anything that remotely resembles the Soviet modernisation. How can western regimes busy dismantling the welfare state and privatising everything at home create a social democratic paradise in Afghanistan?
The burqa is back in business, I'm afraid, enforced by the men who rule the country with Washington's blessing. Human Rights Watch has spoken to women who said they veiled themselves to avoid violence and harassment. Add to that the fact that ministers are busy demolishing homes (possibly not the ones you visited) to grab land, and that senior Afghan military commanders and officials are involved in corruption and violence on a daily basis. This is reality for the majority of Afghans.
There has been little reconstruction. Very little of the $4.5bn (
