“We Condemn These Attacks in the Strongest Possible Terms”

Afghanistan has been at war for 38 years (1978-2016) and counting, the longest running armed conflict in modern history with no end in sight.  Just yesterday Taliban suicide bombers struck a bus convoy of newly commissioned police officers on the outskirts of Kabul killing 32 and wounding another 53.  “Residents in Qala Haider Khan, where the incident happened, have said that they were still collecting body pieces of victims that had been flung far from the blast site.  They also thought the casualty toll was higher than that issued by the government”  “Two women were begging here, but they were killed and I saw their bodies, one eyewitness said.”

Pretty routine stuff these days as are the inane and predictable pronouncements that follow from foreign embassies and international organizations operating here who all, “condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms.”  Tough response.  I’m not sure how much more of this “condemning in the strongest possible terms” the Taliban can take.  Surely they are close to being driven from the battlefield to the negotiating table?

It’s hard to say who the Taliban actually are these days with increasing defection from the security forces to the opposition and the general ambivalence within the ranks of the government’s own security forces.  According to a recent poll conducted by the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies among the Afghan police, 68% believe corruption is rampant with the police forces and 72% said resisting a corrupt government is justified.  Another 83% believe that armed resistance is justified against those who criticize Islam.  All this points to a likely “inside job” that planned and executed yesterday’s attack against the police cadets.

This is a miserably failed government and society on every measurable scale and level that has been eating itself alive for 38 years and is again plunging into total chaos.

“Most of the country, including several provincial capitals, is threatened by the Taliban, even as the insurgency devolves into a network of narco-criminal enterprises. In sixty per cent of Afghanistan’s three hundred and ninety-eight districts, state control doesn’t exist beyond a lonely government building and a market. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have established a presence in the east. Afghanistan can’t police its borders, and its neighbors give sanctuary and assistance to insurgents.  Afghanistan’s finances depend on foreign aid and opium. Corruption is endemic. After the departure of a hundred and twenty-seven thousand foreign troops, in 2014, the economy collapsed, unemployment soared, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans abandoned the country.” New Yorker, July1, 2016.

For 15 years after 9/11 the U.S. and other NATO countries who perceived themselves to have something at stake in Afghanistan have poured money, development expertise, and military resources into this country in an attempt to nudge it onto a path of some stability to little effect.  It’s actually gotten worse in many respects and the current government is likely to collapse this year because of gross ineptitude, lack of leadership in the Office of the President, and corruption.

Once again in an annual ritual NATO will meet in a few days in Warsaw to review its policy and military commitments to Afghanistan.  The Assistant U.S. Secretary of State said of the conference and of NATO that, “We will sustain our commitment to Afghanistan, including making a pledge of additional three years financial support to Afghan security forces through 2020.”  But no one has any enthusiasm for this anymore.  As NATO and the U.S. back away quickly from Afghanistan we will continue to pay the salaries of the poor souls that were killed on that bus yesterday and continue to “condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms” from afar.