Afghanistan: time to bring our troops home

Part Two of Two

According to informants, in the 1980s our CIA and the Saudis actually employed our current nemesis, Osama bin Laden, to carry suitcases full of “baksheesh� money to fund tribal resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Osama, they said, was also contracted to oversee the construction of tunnels in southern Afghanistan as safe haven defenses against Soviet helicopters.

So what went wrong? Why did Osama turn against us? Was it a business contract dispute? According to some, Osama turned against us after the first Gulf War in 1991 when we defended Kuwait, because of a misunderstanding about the stationing of U.S. troops too close to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. In any event, al-Qaeda became our international enemy number one, and 9/11 followed.

Most Americans know about “Charlie Wilson’s War,� thanks to George Crile’s book and the movie of that name. The idea was to equip the “freedom fighters� with shoulder-held Stinger missiles and other weapons to fight the Soviets.

However, what several “talib� leaders (religious scholars/teachers) informed me of at that time (circa 1990) was that the U.S. CIA had kindly shifted a substantial share of military and financial aid away from the regular “freedom fighters� to the more extreme faction, today known as the Taliban, on the theory (wrong, as it turned out) that the Taliban would provide greater resistance to the Soviets.

The CIA not only helped expand the Taliban in Afghanistan, they also worked with the ISI Pakistani intelligence services to introduce Taliban fanatics into the northern territories of Pakistan, to help ensure that India would stay out of Kashmir.

This, too, has backfired. Today, Pakistan is in the bizarre position of fighting the Taliban in Pakistan while continuing to support the Taliban in Afghanistan. Furthermore, much of our aid to both countries is “taxed� as tribute to the local Taliban leaders, so we are effectively funding the resistance to our own troops.

Finally, informants at the time warned that the U.S. CIA was introducing opium production and fostering the opium trade in Afghanistan, again in the hopes of destabilizing the Soviet regime. Historically, opium was commonplace in China and a number of other Asian countries, but rare in Afghanistan and opposed by the Taliban on religious grounds.

Today, Afghanistan is the leading producer and exporter of illicit opium in the world. Profits from the opium trade are “taxed� locally by the Taliban and used to make IEDs and buy weapons to kill American troops. Once again, a U.S.-made Frankenstein monster has been unleashed on the world, out of control, and it is costing American lives.

The United States has a notoriously poor record of trying by military and clandestine cloak-and-dagger means to promote democracy and laissez-faire “free� market capitalism in the Middle East. It is time to recognize that we have reached the limit of what we can do militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have to shift to a diplomatic strategy, at local and regional levels.

We have to face the fact that what is going on in Afghanistan is a civil struggle for power. The diverse factions will come to the negotiating table, but only when and if the U.S. military steps out. If we are invited to the table, we should send qualified persons who know the region and have the capacity to listen to and understand the diverse needs and values of the Afghan people. You don’t gain that expertise by living and working in Kansas City or Washington, D.C.

Our best defense against international terrorism is to avoid provoking it in the first place and concentrate our energy and resources on diplomacy, good intelligence work abroad and good police work at home. It’s time to bring our combat troops home.

Sharon resident Anthony Piel is a former director of support program for the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean region.