BY LESLIE FEINBERG
With pomp and circumstance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation on August 11 took formal command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) "peacekeepers" in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. This is the first time in NATO's 54-year history that it has deployed its forces beyond the boundaries of the European continent.
The ceremony concluded the joint command of the ISAF by Germany and the Netherlands. All told, some 5500 troops from 29 countries have been deployed under the ISAF command, which was created with a December 2001 UN Security Council resolution. These troops' operations are strictly separated from the Pentagon-led "Operation Enduring Freedom" forces.
The August 11 handover was designed to convey an impression of military power and stability. Under the watchful eye of US Marine General James Jones, NATO supreme allied commander, outgoing German commander Lieutenant General Norbert van Heyst passed the green ISAF flag to NATO Lieutenant General Goetz Gliemeroth.
German defence minister Peter Struck looked on, as did Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, hand-picked by the US as the titular head of the government. The 300, mostly military, guests included NATO and diplomatic luminaries, as well as UN and Afghan officials.
But the scene outside the high school proved that the US-led occupation is anything but stable. The school auditorium was as heavily guarded as a bunker. Surrounding streets were blockaded with bales of barbed wire. Hundreds of armed troops and dozens of armoured cars bristling with machine guns fortified the building's perimeter. Snipers were positioned on the roof. Trained dogs sniffed for explosives.
Twenty-two months after Washington hastily declared victory in Afghanistan — its opening cannon blast in the "war against terrorism" — Kabul has become an island in a rising sea of opposition.
Attacks on US and supporting occupation forces, representatives of the puppet Afghan government and imperialist aid organisations are being carried out with greater frequency in many provinces, according to many world news sources.
The day before NATO entered Afghanistan, the UN announced it was suspending fieldwork in the south of the country after a series of attacks on its agencies. The south is the traditional stronghold of the Taliban, the religious group officially deposed by the US-led war. Other forces are also reportedly playing a role in the resistance.
A spokesperson for the Taliban told the Pakistani daily, The News, on August 10 that the group plans to extend its offensive against US-led troops and their Afghan allies to the northern provinces.
However, acts of resistance are reportedly also escalating in the capital. According to the August 12 Deutsche Welle, Kabul "could yet be overwhelmed by waves of violence from the countryside". German occupation forces alone have already lost 14 soldiers in attacks in Kabul.
Insurgents fired six rockets at a US base near the border with Pakistan on August 9. There are frequent rocket attacks on "coalition" troops' bases around southern and eastern Afghanistan. The news industry has played down US news of US casualties in Afghanistan, as well as reports of civilian deaths and injuries, the vast destruction of the infrastructure of that impoverished country, and the anger it is fomenting.
However, the pressure that Washington is exerting on other imperial powers to commit forces and funding for the military occupation speaks volumes about how the effort to bring Afghanistan under colonial control is going.
After decimating Afghanistan, the US administration has spent less than US$1 billion under the vague label of "reconstruction". Hunger and disease are rampant. The main road between Kabul and Kandahar has still not been restored. Thousands of students take classes outdoors in tents.
However, the Pentagon is generously shelling out $10 billion a year to keep 9000 to 12,500 US troops fighting in the field, mostly in the east and south of Afghanistan.
The authority of the puppet Karzai regime hardly reaches beyond Kabul, the only part of the country patrolled by the international forces. Karzai survived an assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar in September. Pentagon bodyguards saved his life.
While Washington was able to crush much of the Taliban's army and its meagre apparatus with merciless blanket bombing raids across the country, the US has not been able to establish a secure colonial state machine. There's no new, viable national army, police force or judiciary in place; there are too few US troops, spread too thin, to end the resistance.
That makes it difficult, for example, for capital ventures to control access to the oil and gas resources of Central Asia — one of the targets of the Goliath-versus-David war against Afghanistan. With resistance flaring in the south, and perhaps now in the north as well, the US-based oil company Unocal Corporation will find it hard to complete its multi-billion-dollar, 1500-kilometre pipeline project across Afghanistan from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
In an August 11 media conference, US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that Washington is "looking at ways of accelerating our work with more resources, both in terms of money and other assets that we can put to the task of rebuilding the country".
He means that the administration of US President George Bush, which balked earlier at letting its imperialist rivals in on the occupation of Afghanistan, now wants other powers to ship in ground troops and share the financial and political costs of empire-building. But without crushing the resistance, the plunder is more difficult to pillage.
NATO will discuss expanding its operations beyond Kabul, announced a NATO spokesperson on August 11, but it wants "some months" to settle into the capital city first, a spokesperson announced. The German government also announced on August 11 that it will extend the presence of its troops to Kundus, 250 kms north-west of Kabul, upon "insistence by the US government", reported the German edition of the August 11 Financial Times.
Bush, speaking to reporters with war secretary Donald Rumsfeld at his side, praised Germany on August 8. Bush said he intended to thank German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder: "Germany is taking a very active role in Afghanistan, and we're very thankful for that. As NATO steps forward, Germany has assumed a big responsibility."
Bush said he was focusing on Germany's role in Afghanistan to contrast "a change from six months ago," when the Schroeder regime opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The day after Bush's media conference, the vice-chairperson of Germany's Greens Party — which is part of Germany's government — spoke out in parliament against expanding his country's military mission in Afghanistan, warning against "Vietnamising" the area.
Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien also came under political fire domestically for sending 1900 soldiers to Afghanistan, reportedly over the objections of his generals. Canada had earlier refused to take part in the Washington-led war against Iraq.
Canada now has the biggest military contingent of any US ally in Kabul — some 35% of the ISAF operation. In an August 11 interview on CBC Newsworld, Canadian Major-General Andrew Leslie admitted that the dangers of casualties were high because of the level of resistance. Using a one-to-five scale, with five representing a major combat operation, the Kabul mission is "a solid four", he said.
[Abridged from the US socialist newspaper Workers World. Visit <http://www.workers.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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