Afghanistan: Blair's new opium War
The Americans have lost interest in Afghanistan and seek to off-load more responsibility to NATO. As always, Blair has stepped in where other more prudent European leaders fear to tread and accordingly John Reid has today announced a further British military commitment to take up the slack. The new contingent will bring Brit forces up to a peak of around 5700 troops with 3,300 of those operating in the south, in the province of Helmand - an area increasingly prey to insurgent attacks and suicide bombers. It is also the centre of the Afghan poppy trade - which accounts for around 80% of the country's income.
Reid has said that it is not a 'counter terrorism' mission - which I guess is supposed to make us feel more comfortable with the decision. How he is defining 'terrorism' is anybody's guess - for the purposes of this exercise he is probably using the narrow definition of al Qaida. The Brits are likely to be facing the Taliban, miscellaneous war lords, drug traffickers and anybody else with a grudge. Interestingly the Lib Dems, Tories and neolabour are all in support of this action - which is a worry in itself.
In January this year Simon Jenkins wrote the following for the Guardian:
The extraordinary folly of Britain's new opium war
In the next few weeks, an army of 3,400 British troops expects to be deployed to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. This is nearly half the number deployed in Iraq. Everything I have heard and read about this expedition suggests that it makes no sense. British soldiers are being sent to a poor and dangerous place whose sole economic resource is opium. They will sit there as targets for probably the most intractable concentration of insurgents, Taliban, drug traffickers and suicide bombers in the world - until some minister has the guts to withdraw them.
Even the context of this expedition is obscure. The Afghan war was supposedly won and the Taliban defeated in 2001. It is fashionable, even in circles opposed to the Iraq war, to claim Afghanistan as a triumph. The Americans and British bombed the hell out of whatever was left of Kabul by the Russians, and the Afghans themselves. A ramshackle army of warlords and mercenaries was helped back into power and the status quo ante the Taliban was restored. That would have been the best time to leave.
As it was, neoimperialists in Washington and London couldn't resist attempting that Everest of nation-building, a new Afghanistan. Their engaging puppet, Hamid Karzai, rules an increasingly insecure landscape, wholly dependent on western aid and a booming narco economy. Outside Kabul, the country appears to be in the hands of a disparate federation of local rulers, tribal warlords and Taliban commanders, all afloat on a sea of opium - the basis of half Afghanistan's domestic output and virtually all its export and personal wealth.
The Americans are wisely treating this country as history. They are reducing their troops to some 10,000 based at Bagram, dedicated to pursuing George Bush's Scarlet Pimpernel, Osama bin Laden. The rest is being handed over to role-hungry Nato. But Nato has no clue what to do. The French, Germans and Spaniards want no part in the madcap venture. The Canadians and Dutch are nervous, so much so that the Dutch may pull out. That leaves the British, mostly with the turbulent province of Helmand, which is sliding under the control of drug warlords in alliance with a resurgent Taliban.
The defence secretary, John Reid, said last month that the expedition's mission is to promote security, which is "absolutely interlinked to countering narcotics". This is to be achieved "by helping growers with an alternative economic livelihood". This cannot make sense. There is no way 3,000 British troops can handle the Taliban now reinforced by drug profits. As for countering those profits, opium is to Helmand what oil is to Kuwait. Read more
Reid has said that it is not a 'counter terrorism' mission - which I guess is supposed to make us feel more comfortable with the decision. How he is defining 'terrorism' is anybody's guess - for the purposes of this exercise he is probably using the narrow definition of al Qaida. The Brits are likely to be facing the Taliban, miscellaneous war lords, drug traffickers and anybody else with a grudge. Interestingly the Lib Dems, Tories and neolabour are all in support of this action - which is a worry in itself.
In January this year Simon Jenkins wrote the following for the Guardian:
The extraordinary folly of Britain's new opium war
In the next few weeks, an army of 3,400 British troops expects to be deployed to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. This is nearly half the number deployed in Iraq. Everything I have heard and read about this expedition suggests that it makes no sense. British soldiers are being sent to a poor and dangerous place whose sole economic resource is opium. They will sit there as targets for probably the most intractable concentration of insurgents, Taliban, drug traffickers and suicide bombers in the world - until some minister has the guts to withdraw them.
Even the context of this expedition is obscure. The Afghan war was supposedly won and the Taliban defeated in 2001. It is fashionable, even in circles opposed to the Iraq war, to claim Afghanistan as a triumph. The Americans and British bombed the hell out of whatever was left of Kabul by the Russians, and the Afghans themselves. A ramshackle army of warlords and mercenaries was helped back into power and the status quo ante the Taliban was restored. That would have been the best time to leave.
As it was, neoimperialists in Washington and London couldn't resist attempting that Everest of nation-building, a new Afghanistan. Their engaging puppet, Hamid Karzai, rules an increasingly insecure landscape, wholly dependent on western aid and a booming narco economy. Outside Kabul, the country appears to be in the hands of a disparate federation of local rulers, tribal warlords and Taliban commanders, all afloat on a sea of opium - the basis of half Afghanistan's domestic output and virtually all its export and personal wealth.
The Americans are wisely treating this country as history. They are reducing their troops to some 10,000 based at Bagram, dedicated to pursuing George Bush's Scarlet Pimpernel, Osama bin Laden. The rest is being handed over to role-hungry Nato. But Nato has no clue what to do. The French, Germans and Spaniards want no part in the madcap venture. The Canadians and Dutch are nervous, so much so that the Dutch may pull out. That leaves the British, mostly with the turbulent province of Helmand, which is sliding under the control of drug warlords in alliance with a resurgent Taliban.
The defence secretary, John Reid, said last month that the expedition's mission is to promote security, which is "absolutely interlinked to countering narcotics". This is to be achieved "by helping growers with an alternative economic livelihood". This cannot make sense. There is no way 3,000 British troops can handle the Taliban now reinforced by drug profits. As for countering those profits, opium is to Helmand what oil is to Kuwait. Read more
posted by exoplanet at 10:11 PM
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