UNKNOWN AFGHANISTAN

The framing of war, organized and systematic murder, creates a distorted prism to view human beings, their motivations and their actions.

Violence is the method of domination and control in the guise of creating peace. Opposition to the invasion is inextricable and dehumanized. Matthew Rosenberg in The New York Times gives the inside account of an Afghan soldier who shot at the soldiers of the American overlords. He describes the context:

Cultural clashes have contributed to some of the insider attacks, with Afghan soldiers and police officers becoming enraged by what they see as rude and abusive behavior by Americans close to them. In some cases, the abusive or corrupt behavior of Afghan officers prompts the killer to go after Americans, who are seen as backing the local commanders. On rare occasions, like the killing of an American contractor by an Afghan policewoman late last month, there seems to be no logical explanation.

But behind it all, many senior coalition and Afghan officials are now concluding that after nearly 12 years of war, the view of foreigners held by many Afghans has come to mirror that of the Taliban. Hope has turned into hatred, and some will find a reason to act on those feelings.

“A great percentage of the insider attacks have the enemy narrative — the narrative that the infidels have to be driven out — somewhere inside of them, but they aren’t directed by the enemy,” said a senior coalition officer, who asked not to be identified because of Afghan and American sensitivities about the attacks.

The result is that, although the Taliban have successfully infiltrated the security forces before, they do not always have to. Soldiers and police officers will instead go to them, as was the case with Mr. Mahmood, who offered a glimpse of the thinking behind the violence in one of the few interviews conducted with Afghans who have committed insider attacks.

Then there is the claimed resizing of the military operation by the Imperialists, masquerading as a Withdrawal, but not the failure that was the Soviet withdrawal in 1986 – a history that the Pastun Resistance remembers well and has long anticipated. Still there is plenty of murdering to be done elsewhere among the many other poor and dehumanized people of the world, who by definition are targets for drone attacks and other callous technology, so as the blood flows, the grief and suffering continues inflicted under the pretext of civilization, the flood of money and expropriation is set to continue.

At some point, in Afghanistan as in Japan, South Korea and perhaps the Philippines the bases will be removed, if if not as quickly as happened in Vietnam. The prospect in Afghanistan, given its recent history, are not promising. Peace cannot be sustained framed in violence and mistrust.

Some are seeking to address the possibilities of human well being on the smaller scale.

Related articles

• Peter Hart, Some Cluster Bombs More Newsworthy Than Others (Common Dreams)
• Michael Brenner, Drone Denial Syndrome (Counterpunch)
• Afghan warlord Hekmatyar denies links with Pakistani Taliban (dawn.com)
• Michael Moore, I Do Not Support The Troops (Common Dreams)
• Afghan troops attack Spanish soldiers on New Years Eve (longwarjournal.org)
• John Glaser, Comparing US and Soviet Failures in Afghanistan (Antiwar.com)
• Danish News: 2012 was the year where Nato’s Afghanistan strategy completely collapsed (adventuresandjapes.wordpress.com)
• Jason Liosatos,  Interview with  David Swanson (Global Peace TV)