Afghanistan: The Price of Peace

Al Jazeera (20250

Film Review

Over 176,000 US troops were killed in the 20-year US war on Afghanistan, a war costing the US taxpayer $2.3 trillion. When Biden withdrew US troops on August 15, 2021, the US puppet government in Kabul instantly collapsed.

Taliban leaders profiled in the film reveal the Taliban first formed in response to the civil war that broke out in Afghanistan after the 1969 Soviet withdrawal in 1979. Their main purpose was to end the epidemic of kidnappings, rapes and forced marriages that occurred after US-armed and trained warlords went to war with each other. Many original Taliban members were recruited in Pakistani refugee camps.

[Ed though not mentioned in the film, the US funded much of their training and rise to power: see Afghanistan: How the US Put the Taliban in Power. In fact, many of jihadist textbooks used in Pakistani madrasa were printed Nebraska see From US the ABC’s of Jihad]

After defeating warlord in southeastern Afghanistan in 1996, the Taliban took power in Kabul and the rapes, kidnappings, forced marriages, (and opium production) ceased. Bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan the same year and pledged allegiance (along with the Sulafi jihadist organization he founded) to the Taliban. When the FBI made Bin Laden (who was on dialysis for end-stage kidney failure) the scapegoat for the 9-11 attacks, the Bush White House refused negotiate (ie provide evidence of his guilt) to the Taliban government. He simply began bombing Afghanistan, while the CIA liaised the Afghan warlords and their armies in advance of a US invasion.

After two months, the warlords retook half of Afghanistan, including Kabul, murdering hundreds of Taliban and civilian prisoners and collaborating with the US to send others to Guantanamo. Although southern Afghanistan remained under Taliban control, in December 2001 a UN mandate authorized a provisional government headed by an American of Afghan origin named Hamad Karzi. Karzai successfully negotiated a peace treaty with the Taliban (which retained control of southern Afghanistan), which was never accepted by the US.

Meanwhile the US/UN escalated the war, with 20 countries providing troops. In 2004, the area around Kabul installed their first democratically elected government. When Karzai rejected the Taliban offer to surrender, they took up arms again.

By 2008,there were 60,000 NATO troops from 40 countries. Meanwhile the Afghan government was quick to alienate the civilian population (driving them to join the Taliban, owing to US troops’ habit of shooting civilians at checkpoints, commandeering their homes, terrifying them with low flying planes and mistargeted drones, fostering the  world’s heroin production scheme, and allowing private companies to siphon off hundreds of billions of dollars of humanitarian aid.

The war displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in the province. Receiving no support from the Afghan government, they turned to the Taliban for food and shelter.

By 2010, there were 120,000 (140,000 by 2011) NATO troops in Afghanistan, with 90,000-100,000 of them from the US. In 2013 alone, there were 3,000 civilian casualties, and three-fourths of Afghan civilians (all those outside Kabul) faced borderline starvation owing to impassible roads. US military corruption began to reflect that of the Afghan government. Twenty to thirty million dollars went missing in 2014 alone.

Beginning in 2017, the Taliban used social media to bring about the election of a Taliban government in every province but Kabul. At the end of 2018, Trump negotiated a treaty with the Taliban, signed in Qatar in 2020.  He then began the gradual withdrawal of US troops, while Afghan soldiers surrendered to the new Taliban governments in the provincial capitols. The US withdrawal was complete by August 15, 2021. On August 21, President Ghani fled and the Taliban seized the presidential palace.

In the current government, many bureaucrats from the former Afghan government of occupation work alongside newly appointed Taliban officials.