August 17, 2003
ZURICH - Two years ago, the idea of sending Canadian troops to remote Afghanistan would have seemed as laughable as dispatching the Swiss Army to Bolivia. Yet this is exactly what happened, thanks to the 9/11 attacks and President George Bush's ham-handed war on terrorism.
Some 1,900 Canadian troops are joining the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (more Orwellian Pentagonspeak) in Afghanistan, the alliance's first deployment outside Europe, and a mission recalling the relief of besieged Beijing by European and Japanese troops during China's 1901 Boxer Rebellion.
These ISAF soldiers are called `peacekeepers' by uninformed media; their mission is hailed as a humanitarian operation to bring `stability' to war-ravaged Afghanistan.
We should understand these soldiers are not true peacekeepers, like Canadian in Cyprus, but rather auxiliaries of US occupation forces in Afghanistan whose strategic mission is to secure control of Central Asian oil.
The Canadians and other NATO troops garrisoning Kabul are duplicating the role of US Marines sent to Beirut in 1982. Washington billed the Marines as `peacekeepers' in Lebanon's bloody civil war. In reality, the Marine were sent to prop up the Israeli-dominated Christian Phalangist regime in its war against Syrian-backed Muslim groups. When 240 Marines were killed by a truck bomb, Americans were outraged their `peacekeepers' had become a target. Americans — and the Marines — simply did not understand they had been dropped in the middle of a civil war as full-fledged combatants.
NATO troops are in Kabul not because the alliance wanted to get involved in Afghanistan's 24-year old conflict, but because Washington browbeat Canada and its European allies into helping share the burden of garrisoning a conquered nation. Better, figured NATO governments, to placate Washington by sending troops to lower threat Afghanistan than to dangerous Iraq. Just as the Soviet Union compelled its Warsaw Pact alliance during the 1980's to send troops to Angola, so the US has forced its reluctant allies into Afghanistan.
The NATO Kabul garrison's sole mission is propping up the US-installed `Vichy' Afghan regime of Mohammed Karzai, an amiable but powerless figurehead and old CIA asset. However, real power in Kabul is held by the Northern Alliance, which is armed, financed and largely direct by the Russian security services.
The Alliance's three main components: Panjshiris of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, a covert Soviet ally during the 1980's war; the old Afghan Communist Party, now led by former secret police general Mohammed Fahim; and the Uzbek militia of serial war criminal, Gen. Rashid Dostam.
South of Kabul, the nation is a patchwork of local tribal warlords, whom the US heavily bribes to combat Taliban, al-Qaida and other nationalist forces. Some 9,000 US troops are stuck in a low-grade guerilla war in Afghanistan costing US $500 million monthly. The security situation in Afghanistan now ironically resembles late 1982: a Soviet-installed puppet regime in Kabul, propped up by the Red Army and combat-shy Afghan government troops, with scattered but growing armed resistance to the foreign occupation. NATO will now join what Afghanistan's own king calls this `stupid and useless war.'
Not only are the US and its allies mired in an intensifying guerilla war in a chaotic nation, they now find themselves in league with world-class drug dealers. Afghanistan was the world's leading grower and exporter of opium, the base for morphine and heroin. When the Taliban regime drove the Afghan Communists from power in 1996, they vowed to eradicate opium, though it was the dirt-poor nation's only cash crop. By 2001, according to UN drug agencies, Taliban had totally eradicated opium production in areas it controlled. The only production of opium during the Taliban era was done by its bitter foe, the Northern Alliance. The Bush Administration was giving millions in anti-drug aid to Taliban until four months before the 9/11 attacks.
After 9/11, Taliban was demonized by the Bush Administration and US media for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden without first seeing evidence of his guilt. The US invasion followed, Taliban was overthrown, and retreated into the mountains. When the Northern Alliance seized power in Kabul with help from Russia and the US, it revived opium
growing and soon began producing morphine base and refined heroin, processes formerly performed in Pakistan.
Today, Afghanistan, a US protectorate, is again the leading producer of heroin, accounting for 4,000 tons annually, 75% of total world production. The head of Russia's anti-drug agency calls the situation in Afghanistan `catastrophic.' Yet it is the Northern Alliance-run regime, and its US, Russian and NATO supporters, who are responsible for this drug epidemic. After Indochina and Central America, the US once again finds itself in bed with major drug dealers. The Bush Administration has reportedly ordered its own Drug Enforcement Agency agents in Pakistan to turn a blind eye to the narcotics dealing of its Northern Alliance allies.
NATO troops now join the endless Afghan war as part of the imperial garrison in Kabul. By helping protect Karzai and the Northern Alliance, NATO, like the US, has become an unwitting, but very real, accessory to the international heroin trade, and the partner of the unsavory regime in Kabul.
Foreign Correspondent
