ON the night of Oct. 7, 2001, as the cruise missiles and the laser-guided bombs from the first wave of Stealth bombers struck home on their initial Taleban and Al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan, the world held its breath. Was Washington’s devastating revenge for the enormity of the 9/11 crimes going to be the hoped-for knockout blow for international terror? Five years on to the day, we know it was not. Rather this devastating onslaught, which quickly drove the unsophisticated Taleban from power, marked the start of a grim catalog of American errors, which has left the world even more vulnerable to Al-Qaeda’s killers.
If George W. Bush had not chosen to settle his father’s unfinished business with Saddam Hussein and plunged his soldiers into the military mire and the Iraqi people into the nightmare bloodbath that is now post-invasion Iraq, the current position of Afghanistan might have been very different. Washington could have maintained its focus on Afghanistan and deployed sufficient ground forces and intelligence resources to defeat the fleeing Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies in detail. After the ground-breaking Loya Jirga, which paved the way for the election of the Karzai coalition government, the United States could have led the way with other major donors, such as the Kingdom, in pouring aid into the country and overseeing both the repair of damaged roads and installations and the creation of a swathe of new infrastructure to bring power, sanitation, education, medical care and public amenity to every region of this woefully poor country.
In the early days of the interim Karzai administration, this publication was not alone in arguing that economic assistance for the new Afghanistan should be unstinting, even if it meant that corrupt officials and politicians stole some aid. The important issue was to demonstrate incontrovertibly that the rugged land was no longer going to be ignored nor forgotten. Tragically however, Bush turned his sights upon Saddam and thus so undermined the victory in Afghanistan that it is now actually just conceivable that it could become eventually another humiliating defeat.
The key to the revival of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda is the Afghan opium poppy production. This evil harvest was once all but eradicated thanks to the strict Taleban rule. Now, to their shame, the Taleban are taking finance from the drugs lords who have used the unstable security position to restart production, which this year is reportedly reaching its highest ever levels. Poppies need farmers to grow them who in turn need an income. If Washington had stuck with Afghanistan, it could have finished the poppy eradication work that the Taleban had begun by providing the prosperous alternative crops, technology and equipment the Taleban could never have managed.
Only now is Washington, through the vehicle of a partly unwilling NATO, confronting the security issue in the lawless opium producing south. Many believe it is too little and too late. The opportunity to physically build for Afghanistan a new and vibrant economic future may already have gone.
