Biden's Claim To Be Ending America's Longest War Misleading
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - April 15, 2021 1 Covert Magazine
American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division at Bagram Air Base in
2013.
U.S. soldiers at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. [Source: nytimes.com]
Special Forces, Pentagon Contractors and Intelligence Operatives Will Remain
On Wednesday April 14th, President Joe Biden announced that he would end the
U.S.'s longest war and withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on the 20th
anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Over 6,000 NATO troops will also be withdrawn by that time.
"War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,"
Biden said during his remarks from the White House Treaty Room, the same
location from which President George W. Bush had announced the war was
beginning in October 2001. "We were attacked. We went to war with clear
goals. We achieved those objectives. Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is
degraded in Afghanistan and it's time to end the forever war."
Livestream: Biden Speech On Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal : NPR
Biden announcing troop withdrawal on April 14th. [Source: npr.org]
Biden's claim that he is ending the forever war is misleading. As The New
York Times reported, the United States would remain after the formal
departure of U.S. troops with a "shadowy combination of clandestine Special
Operations Forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives."
Their mission will be to "find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or
Islamic state threats, current and former American officials said."[1]
The Times further reported that the United States maintains a constellation
of air bases in the Persian Gulf region as well as in Jordan, and a major
air headquarters in Qatar, which could provide a launching pad for
long-range bomber or armed drone missions into Afghanistan.[2]
Muwaffaq Air Base
U.S. Air Base in Jordan [Source: enroyanews.tv]
Matthew Hoh, a disabled combat veteran who resigned from the State
Department in 2009 in protest of the war, stated that a genuine peace
process in Afghanistan is "dependent upon foreign forces leaving
Afghanistan."
U.S. official resigns over war in Afghanistan
Matthew Hoh [Source: nbcnews.com]
Further, Hoh said that "Regardless of whether the 3500 acknowledged U.S.
troops leave Afghanistan, the U.S. military will still be present in the
form of thousands of special operations and CIA personnel in and around
Afghanistan, through dozens of squadrons of manned attack aircraft and
drones stationed on land bases and on aircraft carriers in the region, and
by hundreds of cruise missiles on ships and submarines."
Mercenaries R Us
The meaninglessness of President Biden's announcement becomes apparent when
we consider that the Pentagon employs more than seven contractors for every
serviceman or woman in Afghanistan; an increase of one contractor for every
serviceman or woman a decade ago.
As of January, more than 18,000 contractors remained in Afghanistan,
according to a Defense Department report, when official troop totals had
been reduced to 2,500.
mercenaries
The Dogs of War: Mercenaries in Afghanistan. [Source: isiria.wordpress.com]
These totals reflect the U.S. government's strategy of outsourcing war to
the benefit of private mercenary corporations, and as a means of distancing
the war from the public and averting dissent, since relatively few Americans
are directly impacted by it.
Most of the mercenaries are ex-military veterans, though a percentage are
third-country nationals who are paid meager wages to perform menial duties
for the military.
One of the biggest mercenary companies is DynCorp International of Falls
Church Virginia, which has received over $7 billion in government contracts
to train the Afghan army and manage military bases in Afghanistan.
From 2002-2013, DynCorp received 69 percent of all State Department funding.
Forbes Magazine called it "one of the big winners of the Iraq and Afghan
Wars;" the losers being almost everyone else.
A group of people posing for a photo
Description automatically generated
DynCorp International's Afghanistan Operations team, which supports almost
all its programs in Afghanistan. [Source: dyn-intl.com]
A blueprint for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is the 1959-1975 secret war in
Laos, where the CIA worked with hundreds of civilian contractors who flew
spotter aircraft, ran ground bases and operated radar stations in civilian
clothes while raising its own private army among the Hmong to fight the
pro-communist Pathet Lao.[3]
He towers over a couple of his Montagnard commandos while serving in Laos
during the "Secret War" of the early 1970s. The little commando on his right
was Poole's radio operator. The commando on his left was his interpreter.
Photo provided
CIA officer Tom Poole with two Hmong soldiers who were trained as part of
the CIA's Hmong clandestine army. [Source: donmooreswartales.com]
The CIA and Special Forces have again attempted to recruit tribal elements
in Afghanistan and, like in Laos, have become enmeshed in inter-tribal and
sectarian feuds.[4]
PHOTO: Former Special Forces Maj. Jim Gant, center, insisted that his troops
dress like locals in eastern Afghanistan to better win their trust.
American Special Forces under the direction of Jim Gant dress as locals in
an attempt to recruit them for anti-Taliban operations. [Source:
abcnews.go.com]
For years, U.S. Special Forces operatives have also been training Afghan
security forces as a proxy army and running Phoenix-style snatch and grab
and assassination missions, which are poised to continue-despite the formal
troop withdrawal.
What Uncle Sam Really Wants in Afghanistan
Republican war hawk James Inhofe (R-OK) lambasted Biden's withdrawal plan,
stating that this was a "reckless and dangerous decision. Arbitrary
deadlines would likely put our troops in danger, jeopardize all the progress
we've made, and lead to civil war in Afghanistan-and create a breeding
ground for international terrorists."[5]
James Inhofe [Source: defensenews.com]
Inhofe's assessment is flawed because, among other reasons, the U.S. has not
made much progress in 19 years of war-the Taliban, according to the Council
on Foreign Relations, is stronger than at any point since 2001 and controls
about one fifth of Afghanistan-and Afghanistan was never really a breeding
ground for international terrorists. The 9/11 hijackers mostly came from
Saudi Arabia and the Taliban agreed to turn over Osama Bin Laden to an
international court after the 9/11 attacks, which they never supported.
Members of the Taliban in Laghman Province last year.
Members of the Taliban in Laghman Province. [Source: nytimes.com]
The Afghan War will go on indefinitely not because of the threat of
terrorism-which is accentuated by the U.S. military presence-but because the
United States will not concede ground in the Middle East.
The U.S. has announced intentions to retain at least two military bases in
Afghanistan after the official troop drawdown, and set up over one thousand
bases during the war.
US soldiers at an army base in Afghanistan. Donald Trump's announcement that
all US troops in the country would return home by Christmas surprised the
Pentagon
U.S. troops at one of many U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. [Source:
ft.com]
Uncle Sam also covets Afghans mineral wealth. A 2007 United States
Geological Service survey discovered nearly $1 trillion in mineral deposits,
including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial
metals like lithium, which is used in the manufacture of batteries for
laptops and blackberries. An internal Pentagon memo stated that Afghanistan
could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium."
In 2001, when the U.S. first invaded Afghanistan, it was in the process of
expanding its military infrastructure in Central Asia. Afghanistan provided
a key way-station to this new "oil dorado," which holds as much as 200
billion barrels of oil-about ten times the amount found in the North Sea,
and a third of the Persian Gulf's total reserves.
Afghanistan was further valued at the time as a key location for an oil
pipeline that would transport Central Asian oil to the Indian Ocean while
bypassing Russia.
Map
Description automatically generated
Pipeline route. [Source: iakal.wordpress.com]
In the 1990s, the Southern California oil company, Unocal, began taking
steps to build the pipeline, even courting the Taliban. In 2018, ground was
broken on a new pipeline project backed by the United States that will carry
oil from Turkmenistan to northern India.
The U.S. ruling establishment's greatest fear is that a complete U.S.
withdrawal from Afghanistan might result in the U.S. losing a strategic
foothold to its main geopolitical rivals, China and Russia, in Afghanistan
China has recently increased its trade and investment in Afghanistan-with
which it shares a border-and has sought to cultivate better relations with
the Afghan government and Taliban.
FILE: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping
in Kyrgyzstan in June 2019.
Chinese Premier Xi Jingping and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kyrgyzstan
in June 2019. [Source: gandhara.rferl.org]
Russia, meanwhile, reopened a cultural center in Kabul in 2014, rebuilt an
abandoned Soviet friendship center, expanded its embassy staff, expanded
economic investment, and provided 10,000 Kalashnikov rifles to the Afghan
government. It also supported Afghan housing projects and took advantage of
contacts in Kabul to renew ties with ethnic power brokers in the North while
quietly courting the Taliban.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Afghan counterpart Salahuddin
Rabbani shake hands after their meeting in Moscow, Russia, February 7, 2017
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Afghan counterpart Salahuddin
Rabbani shake hands after their meeting in Moscow, Russia, February 7, 2017.
[Source: rand.org]
As a previous CAM article documented, the current Afghan government led by
Ashraf Ghani is largely a creation of the United States. Its military is
funded by the United States at a cost of around $4 billion per year. This
support is going to continue-unless Congress cuts it off-alongside
large-scale U.S. foreign aid programs that amount to nearly one billion per
year.
The U.S. wants to keep Ghani in power, or replace him with another proxy
that can help it win the geopolitical competition with Russia and China,
which is little different from the 19th century "great game" between Great
Britain and Russia.
As long as the U.S. empire remains intact, the war as such will go on, and
on-and on.
