A Forever War Restored
Trump’s Taliban Talks Led by Neocon Operation Cyclone Agent & PNAC Member
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad,
the top American official in the negotiations, has been quietly overseeing the
destruction of Afghanistan for most of his political career — longer than the
Taliban has existed as an organization.
by Alexander Rubinstein
September 12th, 2019
By Alexander Rubinstein
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National Security Advisor John Bolton’s firing may be the 9/11 anniversary gift
the war-weary American public wanted, but the support he received from the
establishment demonstrates that the war machine is much greater than one man.
Bolton, the neoconservative movement’s standard bearer in the Trump
administration, took up a crusade against high-level talks between Trump and
the Taliban at Camp David — what appears to be the impetus for his firing. That
made him the momentary champion for the interests of the traditional GOP
establishment and the liberal establishment. In effect, he was trying to pull
the brakes on U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan.
The national security advisor’s reputation as a war hawk preceded him. He was a
director of the influential Project for a New American Century (PNAC) think
tank, which is widely credited for providing much of the political support
needed to invade Iraq, and a hype man for hire for the MEK. When Bolton met
then-Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis for the first time after joining the
Trump administration, the latter quipped “I’ve heard that you’re absolutely the
devil incarnate.”
The war in Afghanistan, phase one of the War on Terror, is going worse for the
United States than it ever has before, by a number of metrics. The
regime-change campaign against the Taliban may have been swift, but as with
other regime-change projects of the United States, the blowback would be
enormous and enduring. It meant the militarization of American police through
the Pentagon’s 1033 Program, more than two thousand American troops killed,
scores of innocent civilians murdered and the complete destruction of the
society — at a price tag of $975 billion by the end of 2019. That money has
largely fallen into the hands of contractors.
The occupation of Afghanistan itself will soon be old enough to enlist in one
of America’s forever wars.
“We should withdraw from Afghanistan,” Max Abrahms, a leading expert on
terrorism and Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, told
MintPress, adding “I don’t see a lot of progress. The Taliban’s territorial
holdings are substantial. The violence that the group wields is substantial… I
have no illusions that the U.S. staying there will dramatically improve the
country.”
One may be tempted to view the peace talks with the Taliban and Bolton’s
departure from the White House as signs of a turning tide; of Trump making good
on his anti-interventionist campaign promises. This, however, is a misguided
reading, even beyond Trump saying that the peace talks “are dead” in response
to the killing of an American soldier. Abrahms told MintPress News that the
negotiations are really a tactic to keep the United States in Afghanistan
indefinitely.
But perhaps the best single explanation for why the war in Afghanistan has
dragged on so long, why the tide is not turning, and why there has been so
little progress is that many of the U.S. officials and businessmen who worked
in support of the precursor to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan continue
find shelter in Washington as they try to put out the fire they started 40
years ago, politically unhindered by the repeated failures of U.S. policies
since.
Afghanistan Civilians
Afghans inspect their home damaged in a Taliban car bomb last week in Kabul,
Afghanistan, Sept. 10, 2019. Rahmat Gul | AP
As the number of civilian casualties continues to mount at the hands of
American forces and the U.S.-trained Afghan military, with bombings up and
peace now off the table, the dire situation in Afghanistan today is a direct
result of U.S. policies spearheaded in part by Zalmay Khalilzad, a neocon who
was able to quietly shape both the Afghanistan and Iraqi governments under
George W. Bush. For a time, Khalilzad even flirted with seizing power for
himself, but today he leads the United States in negotiations with the Taliban.
For Trump, the clear goal of the talks was to have some term-defining foreign
policy moment to bring into the 2020 election, but the advanced negotiations
with the Taliban have already proven undeniable diplomatic progress.
As such, the decision to call off the meeting that would have seen top Taliban
officials flown in to Camp David, Maryland brought a fresh breeze into the
swamp. Beltway creatures could go on with their business of selling bombs,
aircraft, and all other kinds of weapons of war to the United States and Afghan
military in the fight against the Taliban.
Former CIA director and Obama’s air force commander for Afghanistan, Gen. David
Petraeus, said the meeting’s “’symbolism would’ve been troubling.” Rep. Liz
Cheney (R-WY), former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, blasted the
proposed meeting on Twitter. Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News talking head and
supporter of the Iranian terrorist cult MEK, called out the president as well.
As Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen put it: “The establishment is surely
pleased with Trump’s decision” to cancel the peace talks. The meeting was
panned across establishment media.
It bears repeating to an American audience that the Taliban did not conduct the
attacks on September 11, 2001 — the hijackers were based in the United States.
The Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden, who helped construct tunnels for the CIA
against the Soviets, and al-Qaeda, an organization that similarly grew to
prominence in the Afghan civil war, a conflict fueled by the $630 million
provided annually for weapons by the United States during the years prior. The
CIA itself endorsed bin Laden’s passage back to Afghanistan after the Taliban
took power, according to journalist Max Blumenthal.
The life’s work of a lesser-known neocon
John Bolton wasn’t the only veteran of the conflict in Afghanistan now charged
with resolving it. Nor was he the only PNAC veteran in the Trump
administration. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation
Zalmay Khalilzad, the top American official in the negotiations, was a PNAC
charter member and has been quietly overseeing the destruction of Afghanistan
for most of his political career — longer than the Taliban has existed as an
organization.
Khalilzad worked closely with late National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who took a leading role in Operation Cyclone under President
Carter. The secret CIA program pumped the Afghan Mujahideen up with cash,
weapons, training, and jihadist school books. The Brooklyn-based Al-Kifah
Afghan Refugee Center — a front for Maktab al-Khidamat, an organization
co-founded by Osama bin Laden — would become key to this endeavor.
Brzezinski’s aim, as he stated, was to give the Soviets their own Vietnam
quagmire. Back then, his message to the Mujahideen fighters that would become
al-Qaeda and the Taliban was: “Your cause is right and God is on your side.”
Even after the devastating attacks of September 11, Brzezinski defended the
decision to support the Mujahideen in the name of defeating the Soviet Union.
The United States’ support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and later Bosnia,
was intended to bleed the Soviet Union. It is no surprise that the same leeches
— the Taliban and al-Qaeda — that were trained by the United States, would turn
on their masters. In the case of the Taliban, clinging on to the U.S. for
nearly two decades, slowly sucking away all the while. In the case of al-Qaeda,
the attacks on the World Trade Center dealt massive blows. The end-game tactics
mirror the CIA’s philosophy in training the Mujahideen against the USSR.
U..S officials like Khalilzad would spend decades in luxurious buildings in and
around Washington while the people of Afghanistan would continue to suffer
nearly another two decades of conflict because of their policies.
Driven by prospects of an American oil pipeline through Afghanistan to combat
Iran and Russia’s energy dominance in the region, President Clinton sought to
build a coalition government that included the Taliban, according to The
Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise
of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump by Max Blumenthal. The consensus was that
they were the best defenders of such a project — and so they got the contracts
from the company, Unocal. Members of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda were flown
into the U.S. by the government and the company in 1997, where they were joined
by Khalilzad for a reception. He was spotted “chatting pleasantly” with
“leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime about their shared enthusiasm for a
proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline deal,” according to a story in the
Washington Post a few months after 9/11.
Khalilzad advised the company in 1996. According to the Institute for Policy
Studies:
“
[Khalilzad] had been an early supporter of the Taliban during the brutal
internecine fighting that accompanied the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. And
he remained in touch with the fundamentalist forces after they trounced
opposing warlords and took power in Kabul in 1996.”
By this time, Khalilzad had worked with Brzezinski under President Jimmy
Carter, served as a senior State Department advisor on the Soviet-Afghan war
under President Ronald Reagan and worked for the Pentagon under George Bush
senior. Under George W. Bush, Khalilzad worked on “preparations for a
post-Saddam Hussein Iraq” according to a White House press statement. That was
until 9/11, when his experience with Afghanistan propelled his rise in the
administration as Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan.
Zalmay Khalilzad
Zalmay Khalilzad views weapons handed over to a Provincial Reconstruction Team
(PRT) in Laghman, Afghanistan, June 19, 2005. Musadeq Sadeq | AP
Hamid Karzai, a former Mujahideen fundraiser, was installed as president by the
U.S. after the Taliban was toppled, largely thanks to the political support of
Zalmay Khalilzad. Karzai had been offered the post of ambassador to the UN by
the Taliban, but the regime never attained formal recognition.
Khalilzad would even play a leading role in the drafting of Afghanistan’s new
constitution. This under-scrutinized behemoth in the American foreign policy
scene would go on to help shape the new Iraqi government as U.S. ambassador to
the country. His continued “service” in the United States government is itself
a humanitarian threat.
A violent backdrop to a shaky peace process
The New York Times reports that American negotiations with the Taliban have
been “undergirded by increasing battlefield pressure by the American military.”
What is being opaquely alluded to is the increased bombings and engagements
under Trump, with 2018 marking the most bombings on record and 2019 so far
outpacing even that. Meanwhile, the White House is reportedly seeking to up the
CIA’s arsenal of supposedly anti-extremist mercenaries to transition through
the withdrawal of 5,400 of its 14,000 troops under the conditions of the
unofficial agreement with the Taliban. As MintPress News has previously
reported, some of these CIA-backed death squads are able to call in airstrikes
and are frequently accused of torture. One medical worker whose home was raided
by one of these units even mistook them for ISIS. “I thought it was the
caliphate people,” he said.
The Taliban’s five-year regime was quickly shut down within months of the
American invasion. It’s likely they want to maintain the territorial gains they
have since fought so hard to reclaim. While the U.S. abruptly stopped tracking
the amount of area controlled by the government and the Taliban in late May,
Washington think tanks estimate that about 49 percent of the country is
contested and 16 percent of it is under Taliban control. According to the BBC,
the Taliban now controls more territory than it has since the United States
expelled them in 2001.
Prof. Abrahms favored the cancellation of the Camp David meeting and has been
generally critical of the negotiations, arguing that the United States could
withdraw from the country and promise the group a swift return should they
again harbor terrorists:
“
It seems to me that negotiations are actually an impediment to the United
States reducing its military involvement in that country. If we wait for
negotiations to go through the U.S., the Taliban and the Afghan government,
then we’ll never leave that country.”
Abrahms went on to call the peace process a “tactic to keep the U.S. there
indefinitely,” adding that he had not come across any solid arguments in terms
of U.S. national security interests. He went on to characterize the threat from
the Taliban:
“
The Taliban is a murky group. It is different from say ISIS in terms of its
target selection. You don’t see Taliban attacks all over the world. This is
true in their target selection and their code of conduct. ISIS was following a
playbook calling for indiscriminate targets all over the world. If you look at
the Taliban’s guidelines for the places where it’s permitted to strike — which
I have — they’re local and not civilian. The focus of Taliban violence is
against what it considers government targets: the Afghan government, NATO
targets, and not indiscriminate ones against civilians.
That said, the Taliban does have a lot of blood on its hands against Afghan
civilians. The Taliban doesn’t attack American civilians. The Taliban doesn’t
do terrorism against Americans.”
The Taliban certainly has no shortage of innocent blood on its hands and
deserves absolutely zero material support given its treatment of women,
homosexuals, and ethnic and religious minorities. Yet so far in 2019 the United
States and the Afghan military it oversees have killed more civilians than has
the Taliban, according to a July 30 report from the UN Mission in Afghanistan.
The UN body found 717 deaths attributable to the U.S. and its partner on the
ground compared with 531 to “anti-government forces.”
Representing the Taliban at the most recent talks with the United States in
Doha, Qatar were co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Sher Mohammad Abbas
Stanikzaim, both of whom are former Mujahideen fighters. Baradar was advocating
for a peace process in 2010 when he was arrested by Pakistani authorities at
the request of the United States. He was released at the direction of Zalmay
Khalilzad after the first round of talks, which Khalilzad has been heading for
the Americans.
Stanikzaim came to the United States in 1996 as the Taliban’s foreign minister
to ask the Clinton administration to extend diplomatic relations with the
government. According to journalist Michael Rubin, Khalilzad “arranged for a
senior Taliban official to come to the United States to meet with Clinton
administration officials and business leaders.” While the attempt to get
recognition from the White House was unsuccessful, the Clinton administration
continued to use the bin Laden-connected Al-Kifah Afghan Refugee Center to
funnel misguided young American Muslims to the killing fields in Bosnia.
Dr. Frankenstein chases his monster
Though al-Qaeda and the Taliban’s relationships with the United States are both
closing in on four decades, the nature of the two have differed dramatically.
Unlike the Taliban, which has spent the post-9/11 era in open conflict with the
United States, al-Qaeda went on to resume its role as an American ally of
convenience.
Over the past year, the United States has been trying to stave off a Syrian
government liberation of the Idlib province. In 2017, then-Special Presidential
Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Brett McGurk called Idlib “the
largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11, tied directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri,”
the leader of al-Qaeda. McGurk added:
“
The approach — I obviously will not talk about anything the U.S. government has
done in certain parts of Syria on this problem — but the approach by some of
our partners, to send in tens of tons of weapons and looking the other way as
these foreign fighters come into Syria, may not have been the best approach,
and al-Qaeda has taken full advantage of it.”
Throughout the war on Syria, the United States funneled weapons to the
so-called “moderate rebel” groups fighting to depose President Bashar al Assad.
But as they were often in the same trenches as al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate,
those weapons invariably ended up in al-Qaeda hands.
Abrahms painted a more complex portrait of Afghanistan than Syria, which he
argued was in many ways less complex. The professor has been a consistent
advocate against U.S. military assistance to the anti-government jihadist
factions of Syria. “I never want to be in the position of actively supporting
al-Qaeda,” Abrahms said.
In January, al-Qaeda took over complete control of Idlib, a move which has not
yet stopped the United States from defending the last bastion of its proxy
insurgency against Syria’s Assad.
Syria Tanf
Unidentified Syrian rebels surround a piece of US weaponry during training by
an American special forces member in Tanf. Photo | Hammurabi’s Justice News
In Yemen, the United States also finds itself partnered with allies of
al-Qaeda. The Arabian Peninsula affiliate of the terrorist organization has
fought alongside the Saudi-led Coalition against the Houthi government, being
allowed safe passage out of cities they have pillaged and looted for spoils to
fill their war chests.
The Taliban has offered the exact deal that the United States is now trying to
reach before — one that would see the group refuse to provide a haven for
future attackers in exchange for a troop withdrawal. They offered “legal
guarantees” that Afghanistan would not be used as a launch pad for terrorist
attacks in 2009, which the Obama Administration ignored.
“There was a time when … leaders of the Taliban movement were seeking peace but
at that time the Americans and the Pakistanis … both were against peace in
Afghanistan,” former President Karzai has said. But it wasn’t just Karzai and
the Taliban vying for power in Afghanistan during the Obama years. Khalilzad
reportedly tried to have himself installed as ruler of the country after
leaving the Bush administration.
While Prof. Abrahms characterizes negotiations as a means of forestalling a
meaningful withdrawal, it is not for that reason that the meeting at Camp David
was so unanimously opposed by the Beltway elite, which wants the war in
Afghanistan to go on forever in order to keep weapons contractors’ pockets
lined and to keep an eye on Iran. While “post-9/11 wars have caused military
contracts to increase to their highest levels since World War II” according to
the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University,”
the number of contractors in Afghanistan has increased by 65 percent under
Trump.
John Bolton is far from the only player with such inclinations, and a handful
of PNAC holdovers continue to subvert peace around the world, with the Trump
administration as their vehicle.
Progressive icon Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who famously grilled PNAC member
Elliott Abrams during hearings related to his nomination into the Trump
administration, called supporters of the Camp David meeting “hypocrites.” The
implication was that Trump — not herself, as has been the narrative in right
wing media — was soft on the Taliban. These kinds of knee jerk responses to
Trump’s dovish posturing do not support peace.
If progressives in Congress really want to support peace in Afghanistan and put
an end to an 18-year-old bloodbath of an era of United States foreign policy,
they should renew their own push for a troop withdrawal as an alternative to
Trump’s proposal and refuse to confirm any more appointees with ties to the
Project for a New American Century, or any of Washington’s pro-regime-change
outfits. They should also call for the resignation of policy makers like
Khalilzad, who have consistently failed over the years at huge cost to human
life and the pockets of U.S. taxpayers. They should call for a new era of
accountability in Washington so that the American public doesn’t continue to
get lied into wars and the American government can no longer arm.
The impunity granted to the likes of Bolton, Elliot Abrams, and Khalilzad
established their permanency on the scene. There will be no peace with former
PNAC cadres in power.
Americans should demand that the United States stop its tacit political support
for al-Qaeda’s mission in Syria’s Idlib and demand that Afghanistan is given
the opportunity to be the master of its own destiny. This is the only way to
put an end to the cascading violence that has continued through the Cold War
and into the War on Terror, starting with the deranged experiment in
Afghanistan. It is up to the United States to decide whether the world will
have a future without the scourge of terrorism.
Feature photo | Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay
Khalilzad speaks at the U.S. Institute of Peace, in Washington, Feb. 8, 2019.
Jacquelyn Martin | AP
Alexander Rubinstein is a staff writer for MintPress News based in Washington,
DC. He reports on police, prisons and protests in the United States and the
United States’ policing of the world. He previously reported for RT and Sputnik
News.
