Victory of sorts

After the carnage, the stock-taking. Iffat Malek considers the United States' record in the war in Afghanistan
The Taliban are history. Al-Qa'eda is in its death throes. The number of US body bags does not even stretch to double digits. A new government has just been sworn in in Kabul. Huge sums of aid for reconstruction are starting to flow into Afghanistan. The Afghans have been freed from an oppressive regime and Americans from the fear of another terrorist attack. George Bush is riding sky-high in the polls. All in all, an excellent war, particularly when one recalls the gloomy forecasts made at the beginning of the war and when both left and right-wing commentators pored over the military record of invading armies in Afghanistan and forecast a long and bloody guerrilla warfare that would take months, if not years, to yield results. This was the offered mix of fears and forecasts: the American public should ready itself for endless funerals of soldiers killed in combat; snow would come in and block the high mountain passes making approaches to Al-Qa'eda strongholds impossible; even if the Taliban were ousted from urban centres, they would hole up in the "impregnable" Tora- Bora cave complex; flushing them from there would be next to impossible. Further afield, sympathetic Muslim sentiment was likely to topple the Musharraf regime and threaten others.
It has not happened that way. History did not repeat itself. The doomsday scenarios did not materialise. And so, one would have thought, the Americans and their coalition partners have every reason to feel pleased with themselves, every reason to gloat before the prophets of doom, and count the war a success. Good triumphed over evil.
Unfortunately, in the real world, events are rarely so black and white. This war is not the straightforward victory its supporters suggest. It has been won at a price.
For one, there have been thousands of Afghan casualties. A study by an American academic, based on corroborated reports by aid agencies and others sources, puts the number of civilians killed between 7 October and 10 December at 3,767. It must be taken into account that this is a very conservative total, erring greatly on the side of caution, that dozens at least will have been killed since 10 December, and that tens of thousands have been injured.
And this is just the immediate toll. It does not take into account those who have died or will die of their injuries at a later date. Nor of those many hundreds who are dying slowly and unsensationally in the remoter central and western parts of Afghanistan because the campaign against terror prevented aid being sent to them. True, more aid is entering the country now, but that increase is outweighed by the worsening humanitarian disaster created by the war. Any conflict generates refugees and the World Food Programme estimates that this one has caused between 3 and 4 million people to flee their homes.
There are, of course, many counter- arguments to the above. Civilian casualties and suffering are an inevitable consequence of war. The ends -- ousting the Taliban, crushing Al- Qa'eda and preventing terrorism -- have justified the means. Thanks to this war thousands of lives that would otherwise have been taken by terrorists will be saved. Furthermore, unlike the hijackers who struck on 11 September, the US did not intend to kill civilians.
Such a defence makes it appear as if massive long-distance aerial bombardment, the strategy chosen by Washington to wage this war, was really the only option. Had that truly been the case, one could have accepted civilian losses as a necessary evil. But that was not the case. There were other options open to America, notably sending in American troops. Unlike indiscriminate aerial bombardment, a ground offensive would have been far more capable of distinguishing between Taliban fighters and civilians. The number of innocent Afghans killed in a ground war would have been far less.
But, equally, the number of Americans killed would have been far greater. Faced with a choice between risking American soldiers and Afghan civilians, the Pentagon did not hesitate to sacrifice the latter. However, even if the US had to rely primarily on bombing, it could have done so in such a way as to minimise civilian losses. Deliberate bombing of residential areas (on the grounds that Taliban were hiding there) and use of cluster bombs had the opposite effect -- the maximising of civilian deaths.
The figure quoted above is just for civilians. Military casualties easily run into several thousand. Many of those were legitimately killed in combat, but many more were killed after having surrendered: 520 were massacred at a school in Mazar-i Sharif, several hundred at Qila-i Jhangi and dozens in shipping containers en route to prison. Their deaths -- even though many of them had been responsible for oppressing ordinary Afghans and perhaps for terrorist acts -- can never be accepted as legitimate.
This was the second major price paid in achieving this "victory": compromises on respecting human rights and "civilised" rules of engagement. It started when the US -- unwilling to risk its own forces on the ground -- co-opted the Northern Alliance into the coalition against terror. One brutal, suppressive regime was tackled using an even more brutal and bloodied force. Once on board, the US could do little but stand by as the Alliance lived up to its fearful reputation. But what was far worse -- indeed unforgivable -- was how often Washington seemed unbothered, on the whole, with the extermination policy practised by its Afghan allies. In siding with the Alliance, the US was definitely tainted by them.
The third price was media objectivity. Reporting on a war without being biased or subjective is never easy. Partisanship inevitably creeps in. But at least an effort should be made to present a balanced and accurate picture. That effort was largely missing in the coverage of this war. Huge sections of the media appeared quite happy to act as mouthpieces for the Pentagon. Thus, we saw Afghan civilian casualties downplayed and US relief drops highlighted. Official explanations of events like the massacre at Qila-i Jhangi, i.e. that these people were determined to die a jihadi death, were unquestioningly echoed by the BBC and other international media.
The bottom line is that the media and others are judging this war to be a success because there is a hierarchy even in death. Thousands of Americans were killed on 11 September -- universally regarded as an awful tragedy. Thousands of Afghans have been killed since 7 October and for their families their deaths are an equally awful tragedy. However, for the West, and in particular America, these people are little more than a statistic. If the same value was placed on Afghan as on American lives, no one would be calling this war a success.
There are additional reasons for questioning this "great victory." Firstly, can the crushing of what was essentially a militia force by the world's sole superpower really be considered a huge achievement?
The historical precedents of mighty armies being vanquished by the Afghans, from the time of Alexander the Great up until the Soviets in the 1980s, may have been one advantage that the Taliban had but their lack of popular support prevented even that from working for them. Everything else favoured America.
Secondly, have those responsible for the 11 September attacks been found and punished? That, after all, was the primary aim of the war. Innumerable Al-Qa'eda members have been killed or taken prisoner but their camps, evidence of which is growing as the US carries out its investigations in Afghanistan, seem to have been out of operation. Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden, pinpointed as the mastermind behind the attacks, has yet to be found -- dead or alive -- and until he is, a major goal of the war will remain unfulfilled.
In the end, it is history that will judge. This war could prove a turning point in global terrorism. It could ensure that carnage like that of 11 September is never again repeated and mark a new dawn of peace and stability for Afghanistan. But, equally, the manner in which it was waged could prove a catalyst for greater hatred and terrorism. It could simply supplant Taliban oppression in Afghanistan with civil war and anarchy. Even if it proves to be the former -- and that is a very big "if" -- was the massive price paid worth it?
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