The Western coalition forces finally took control of Marja, an area with a population of 80 thousand, half of which fled during the fighting. The troops of the mightiest military coalition in the world took a few weeks to capture an Afghan town and declare victory. Hence, these troops can, for instance, focus on Qandahar tomorrow and defeat the Taliban there and declare another victory. Nevertheless, while the Western coalition led by the United States can indeed win battles, it cannot win the war. The victory in Marja or Qandahar or the entire Helmand province requires that the lands recaptured from the Taliban be held; however, this means that the coalition troops would have to stay on the battlefield on a long term basis, which is a difficult if not impossible matter. In truth, the Obama administration itself is not seeking a permanent presence in Afghanistan, and considers the war there to be a ‘war of necessity', or in other words, something compulsory that was imposed upon the administration. This is for example contrary to Bush's wars of choice, which led to America's economic and political demise. The ruling coalition in the Netherlands collapsed because of the participation in the war, and the government announced its intention to withdraw Dutch troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, with the legislative elections drawing near next June. The question that arises here is: Will Germany and Canada follow suit and withdraw their troops, whose mandate in Afghanistan will end late this year? This is all taking place while President Obama is asking the Western coalition countries to send additional troops to Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban. However, the war is unpopular in all these countries, with the exception of Denmark perhaps where it is supported by half of the population. The opposition to the war might also increase with increasing casualties, as the control of a medium size town led to many additional casualties for NATO in recent weeks. Last week, figures and numbers showed that American deaths in Afghanistan exceeded one thousand soldiers, while Britain has so far lost 264 soldiers, Canada 140 soldiers, France 40 soldiers, Germany 34 soldiers, and Denmark 31 soldiers. These figures must have also increased since the day I compiled them before the weekend. The opposition to the war in each of these countries mentioned above thus reflect these countries' losses in the battlefield. This prompted the U.S Defence Secretary Robert Gates to warn that the opposition to the war both politically and at the popular level in Europe might be misinterpreted in Afghanistan and the rest of the world as a sign of weakness, which might lead to miscalculations and aggression. This is true; however, each war, as I read one day, is popular in the beginning. The Afghanistan war has been ongoing since 2001, which means that the United State's involvement there is twice as long as its involvement in the Second World War, without any signs of a near end to this war in the horizon. The coalition forces can provide the people of a town like Marja with many services that the Taliban cannot, or do not think about, such as schools and hospitals. However, victory in the battles cannot be achieved without a price: the missiles fired by drones happen to kill civilians along with those targeted, and we heard that in the Marja battle, 12 civilians, mostly children, were killed in a raid, while three other civilians were killed in a different raid. However, the news of the civilian casualties are quickly buried, and only the news of the assassination of Baitullah Mehsud in a raid in Waziristan last August remain, or that of the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar recently, and other Taliban leaders afterwards. These are important achievements, and so is the cooperation between the Pakistani military intelligence with the CIA, which also led to a return to communications between Pakistan and India, after the intelligence services of the former were accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. These all are positive steps. However, winning hearts and minds, like the Americans want, is difficult, especially when the Afghan people finds itself today between the hammer of war and the anvil of corruption by the American-backed government which caused Afghanistan to be placed at the bottom of the worldwide Corruption Perceptions Index. Perhaps the reader will recall how the Afghan parliament rejected cabinet members in Karzai's government time after time, on corruption allegations. I also recently read that one billion dollars (in cash) are smuggled each year to the Gulf through the Kabul airport, mostly ending up in Dubai. It thus seems that the rulers of Afghanistan do not sense that they will remain in control of their country, and for this reason, they are looting it so that if they have to flee one day, they will manage to live comfortably abroad. In the meantime, President Hamid Karzai's audacity seems to know no boundaries: following the massive controversy stirred by the allegations of vote rigging in the presidential elections, President Hamid Karzai rewrote the election law in a way that removes significant oversight of the elections, and reduces the United Nations oversight of any future elections. He also gave himself the right to appoint the members of the electoral monitoring commission, or in other words, became himself the plaintiff and the judge, in a country without an efficient judiciary; in fact, the Americans are actually sending experts to establish courts in the provinces. The end result of all of this is that the Afghan people are suffering from collateral damage, or friendly fire, on the one hand, and a regime that is corrupt to the bone on the other hand. The coalition may indeed win battles, but it cannot win the war. [email protected]
