And power and profit is definitely the name of this not-so-great game. As we noted here a few weeks ago:
[Frida] Berrigan notes the naked profit motive underlying Obama's grand strategy of "Afghanistanization" -- i.e., building up the military and security forces of the American-implanted Afghan government. As in Iraq, the aim is not so much "nation building" as "market building": setting up yet another conduit to pass American taxpayer money directly to weapons dealers:"What's Hot?" is the title of Vice Adm. Jeffrey Wieranga's blog entry for Jan. 4, 2010. Wieranga is the director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is charged with overseeing weapons exports, and such pillow talk is evidently more than acceptable at least when it's about weapons sales. In fact, Wieranga could barely restrain himself that day, adding: "Afghanistan is really HOT!" Admittedly, on that day the temperature in Kabul was just above freezing, but not at the Pentagon, where arms sales to Afghanistan evidently create a lot of heat.You ain't just whistlin' Dixie, Vice Admiral. There will be "acquisition work" out the wazoo as the war goes on -- and for decades afterward. But of course, these "free" arms sales are just like the samplings that pushers pass around outside the high school gates. Because once the mark is hooked, once the native military and security forces are thoroughly entrenched, they will need constant replenishment with more weapons, new technologies, and more lucrative "training" from American sources, both public and private. This in turn will leave the client state saddled with crippling public debt -- necessitating the usual "shock therapy" of "economic reform," i.e., shredding "inefficient" social programs -- like, education, sanitation, health care, etc. -- and turning the material wealth and natural resources of the country over to a few select private investors, foreign and domestic.
As Wieranga went on to write, the Obama administration's new 2010/2011 budget allocates $6 billion in weaponry for Afghan Security Forces. The Afghans will actually get those weapons for free, but U.S. weapons makers will make real money delivering them at taxpayers' expense and, as the vice admiral pointed out, that "means there is a staggering amount of acquisition work to do."
Meanwhile, the ruin of human lives goes on and on, as Turse details:
Rampant depression, among both men and women, has led to self-medication. While opium-poppy cultivation on an almost unimaginable scale in the planet's leading narco-state has garnered headlines since 2001, little attention has been paid to drug use by ordinary Afghans, even though it has been on a steep upward trajectory. ...
"Three decades of war-related trauma, unlimited availability of cheap narcotics, and limited access to treatment have created a major, and growing, addiction problem in Afghanistan," says Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of UNDOC. Since 2005, the number of Afghan opium users nationwide has jumped by 53%, while heroin users have skyrocketed by 140%. According to UNODC's survey, Drug Use in Afghanistan, approximately one million Afghans between the ages of 15 and 64 are addicted to drugs. That adds up to about 8% of the population and twice the global average.
There is much more in Turse's grim catalogue, so you should read the
whole thing, if you can stomach it. But I want to point out one more
startling fact he has unearthed: After nine years of America's benign
and benevolent care, Afghanistan is now, officially, the worst place on
earth to live.
In the near-decade since Kabul fell in November 2001, a sizeable majority of Afghans have continued to live in poverty and privation. Measuring such misery may be impossible, but the United Nations has tried to find a comprehensive way to do so nonetheless. Using a Human Poverty Index which "focuses on the proportion of people below certain threshold[s] in regard to a long and healthy life, having access to education, and a decent standard of living," the U.N. found that, comparatively speaking, it doesn't get worse than life in Afghanistan. The nation ranks dead last in its listing, number 135 out of 135 countries. This is what "success" means today in Afghanistan.
The two major military escalations launched by the Peace Laureate have
only worsened the security situation, which has lead, inexorably,
inevitably, to more and more degradation of life in Afghanistan. But in
this, the Great Continuer is only following in the footsteps of his
predecessors. Not just his shout-out buddy George W. Bush -- whose
Terror War policies he has faithfully replicated and expanded -- but a
whole string of temporary imperial managers, going back to Jimmy Carter:
the pious, peace-loving Democrat who actually launched the rise of an
armed, extremist international "jihad" movement in order to hamstring
the Soviets. American presidents poured tens of billions of dollars into
arming and funding fringe groups of rabid extremists, training them in
terrorist tactics and diligently expanding their organizations.
As we noted here a few weeks ago, quoting an article in Foreign Policy
by Mohammad Qayoumi, Afghanistan was not always a land mired in
tribalism and obscurantism. Half a century ago, much of the country was
striving toward its own form of modernity, where men and women freely
mixed, pursued their educations, practiced their professions, even went
to the movies, danced to rock-and-roll. It was not a perfect state by
any remote stretch of the imagination -- yet compared to the utter
hell-hole that we have made out of it over the past few decades, the
Afghanistan that Qayoumi once knew was a paradise lost.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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