Lost aim: Western-backed fighters at Bagram front in 2001 had victory in their gunsights

On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, the West’s effort to rid southwest Asia of the menace of terrorism is collapsing in a surge of bloodshed and corruption on a truly damning scale.

One fact stands shamefully above all others.

Today the least worried combatants in all of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the warlords who enjoy an untroubled sleep each night and by day dispatch killing force with virtually no fear of retaliation, are Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his leadership council, safe in the protective embrace of Pakistan’s military in Baluchistan province.

The U.S.-led coalition of international forces in Afghanistan is unwilling to tackle this most pressing of objectives, even by political and diplomatic means. Yet until the zealots of Omar’s rump Taliban leadership feel the heat in Pakistan, there’s no prospect of easing the pace and ferocity of violence in Afghanistan.

Today in Kabul, no Afghan man, woman or child, nor even America’s top general, Stanley McChrystal, can be certain the next pair of eyes they meet will not belong to a suicide bomber or gunman, a random glance that will be their last sight on earth.

McChrystal’s new mantra, that U.S. strategy will shift to “protecting the Afghan people” is less credible than a box full of ballots from Paktika.

The good general seems oblivious to the most basic fact confronting him and his Western legions. The only way to protect Afghans is to end the war, and the only way to end the war is to put pressure, real pressure, directly upon the Taliban leadership where they live and command their fighters’ war effort: Pakistan.

Even this week’s conviction in Britain of three would-be airline bombers, who took their orders from Pakistan’s tribal areas, has done little to dent the dome of denial Western governments maintain over the dirty secret of Pakistan.

History tells us we should have learned from past mistakes. Here’s a story this reporter filed to the Calgary Herald on Oct. 28, 2001, some 47 days after the 9/11 attacks on America, and about two weeks before the forced exit of Mullah Omar’s regime from Kabul, along with Osama bin Laden’s Arab fighters and their foreign cohorts.

How little has changed, and not only with regard to the collateral killings of civilians by air strikes aimed at Taliban fighters.

The Arab fighters heard over the radio, and the Talibs – most fled to refuge in Pakistan. They have operated from those Pakistani havens for eight long years. As we see from today’s carnage in Afghanistan, no amount of official denial can alter that fact.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan Oct 28, 2001 - As the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan enters its fourth week, the Bush administration’s bold promises of an intense, effective war against terrorism have been buried beneath the rubble of the homes of Afghan civilians and the ruins of the Americans’ political initiatives to undermine the Taliban.

Coalition nations such as Canada, recruited by Washington to support strategies formulated by U.S. war planners, have been transformed from long-standing providers of aid to the people of Afghanistan, into partners in a military adventure that more and more resembles previous disasters in this savage 23-year-old conflict.

Over the weekend, misdirected U.S. bombs killed ten civilians in Kabul and at least two villagers unlucky enough to be living here on the front line north of the capital, where Taliban troops are dug in within shouting distance of their Northern Alliance enemies.

While the Taliban remain defiant – there have been no significant defections on this front since the bombing began – Afghan families trapped by the fighting openly wonder who, exactly, the American-led coalition is out to punish for the September 11th terrorist attacks:  the terrorists, or themselves.

Meanwhile, the secret political initiative launched by the Americans several weeks ago, backing the attempt by the former anti-Soviet resistance leader, Abdul Haq, to draw support among the dominant ethnic Pushtun tribes of the south away from the Taliban, ended tragically and shamefully in Haq’s capture and execution. 

It’s more than just a setback in the clandestine war against the extremist regime and it’s al Qaeda confederates:  the Haq initiative, sold to the Americans by Pakistani officials, caused the Bush administration to constrain its military cooperation with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

Thus Abdul Haq’s death not only leaves Washington scrambling for another hopeful Pushtun political challenger, it leaves most of Afghanistan’s towns and cities and battlefields pretty much as they’ve been for the past three weeks. Dangerous places to be, especially for civilians, but still firmly in the hands of the Taliban.

Perversely, on Sunday, while families wept for the dead in Kabul and Bagram and in Abdul Haq’s home village near Jalalabad, there was laughter crackling over the radios from Taliban front line positions on the Kabul front.

The Herald spent the afternoon in the company of a group of young Northern Alliance militiamen near the shattered fuel dump at Bagram airport. There was much anticipation about the promised new intensity – and sharper aim – of U.S. warplanes. The day’s tally?  One jet, one bomb, one possible hit on a Taliban tank, dug in to a ridge overlooking the battlefront.

“No good, no good,” the 19 year old commander of the group, Farhad, told me. He swept his arm across the scorched fields and crumbling buildings that make up the front:  it’s a lot more territory than any one jet, or all the raids so far carried out here by the U.S., could soften up for a Northern Alliance offensive.

The boys shouldered their Kalashnikovs and went downstairs for tea. Farhad’s second in command, a grinning prankster named Zahir, reached for his walkie talkie.

“Ahmed, Ahmed, Ahmed,” he spoke happily in to the radio, as if he were calling a buddy to come over for a game of volleyball, a favourite on the front. A voice answered, they traded greetings.

“Taliban, Taliban,” one of the other Northern Alliance fighters whispered excitedly, and we spent the next fifteen minutes listening to Zahir poking fun over the radio at his old schoolfriend, Ahmed, who was reclining, in all likelihood, inside his own post, a Taliban bunker, just half a mile away.

Though this reporter’s Afghan language skills are extremely limited, Ahmed’s did not sound like the voice of a man on the verge of surrender.  He laughed out loud at Zahir’s suggestion that as a good Muslim, he should shun the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and come right over to the Taliban side. They talked a while longer, wished each other a pleasant afternoon in the crossfire, and then, with a polite goodbye, signed off.

But someone else had been listening in:  another voice came over the radio.

“Arab!” one of the Alliance boys spat. No one among us spoke Arabic, but soon the message from this foreign legionnaire of the Taliban trenches became clear. It was abusive and profane and aimed straight at the Northern Alliance militiamen, a counterattack for Zahir’s pitch to Ahmad to switch sides.

When the Arab Talib laughed in to the radio, other voices laughed with him, lots of voices, lots of Talib ‘brothers.’ That seemed to disturb the Northern Alliance fighters for a moment, though they soon gave back as good as they were getting and laughed riotously at the Talibs.

I went outside and searched the sky. Nothing. No more winged avengers, no more bombs today for the Taliban on the Kabul front line. Hopefully, that would hold true, as well, for the many civilians living and working nearby. 

The majority of the Afghan people, like people everywhere who long for peace and an end to terrorism, began by hoping, three weeks ago, for deliverance. Now they’d settle for a better aim from the United States and its allies. Week four will see if they get that wish, or if civilians, more than Taliban soldiers, will continue running scared.

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