It is not strange that few people are talking about Afghanistan right now, with the exception of repeated scandal information. While we hear of the war winding down, like Iraq it is unlikely to end in a happy solution. Cost of Iraq to date (http://usliberals.about.com/...) over one $1trillion. Cost of Iraq for 2012 is about $10 billion according to the Washington Post (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...). We left Iraq like the Russians left Afghanistan, we paid off the warlords, gave everyone a load of weapons and then made the photo opt retreat. When the experts are asked why the level of violence seems to be rising in both Iraq and Afghanistan they have a variety of illogical answers, the only one that fits the history of Afghanistan is that everyone makes money when the foreigner is there, when they leave so does the money. By intensifying the attacks the Taliban extends the money train and any other answer is simply inconsistent with the history. Every other group facing foreign invaders gets into the same situation. Then when the enemy leaves everyone goes at it as they did before. They simply change uniforms and sides when the colonial force is present. This "makes progress" for consumption at home and results in investment and aid, which fuels corruption and rebellion, which requires more money for troops and cash for "allies."
For more detail see below.
Matthew Green’s article in Feb 12/13 2011 Financial Times, “US hopes tribal highway
will be path to stability,” addresses the issue of how to pacify tribal areas in Pakistan without a reference to history. The Obama administration's policies have not changed an iota and the situation is simply a reproduction of the same old play book of the Soviets and the British. The American military has learned nothing since Vietnam, except how to market itself and its defeats. One might recall the efforts in this from Vietnam (both the French and Americans) but a more pertinent example would be the Soviets. In building roads the British depended on this strategy in the 19th Century and model villages were tried in the 1950s and 1960s by the USA as Stephen Farrell noted in his
February 2010 article in the New York Times,” The area was settled with hundreds of new families in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be “model villages” under a vast scheme to rejuvenate the entire Helmand River Valley — using an American company that helped build the Hoover Dam.”
Roads have not resulted in pacification as the Jamestown Foundation noted, “The Kabul-Kandahar portion was first made into a modern highway by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1961 and
1966, with most of the funding provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) At around the same time, the Soviets constructed the highway between Kandahar and Herat. ”. In both cases, the interventions led to corruption and disruption of local economies, created antagonism against the builders and made matters generally worse. The current proposal for Pakistan’s Waziristan will fail to produce the stated goals but will line some pockets on both sides of the border and increase chaos, cost lives and leave matters worse when the builders leave.
As the war enters its 21st year in Iraq with no peace in sight, the vapid exercise of shuffling troops in and out and calling it and end to combat operations is such a farce that one is surprised that it has not spawned and Saturday Night Live spin off. With the return of Sadr things are already getting hotter for troops there and 2011 is shaping up to be the worse year in the decade. One can only hope that the crazy Tea Bag Republicans will surprise everyone by voting down funds for the occupation as they did voting down the Patriot Act. Who would have thought?