Mujib remembers how his father watered the area where the rocket hit, for years, hoping the bomb would eventually rust and never explode. Now he worries that Afghanistan is headed toward an explosion of violence.
"And the fear is that in that space of war, things only get more extreme," he told the Times. "The violence only gets more extreme. The brutality gets more extreme. That if this slips into another generational conflict, what we've seen over the past 40 years in terms of the brutality will probably pale in comparison to what will come."
I recently watched a video of a talk given in June of this year by Dr. Zaher Wahab, an Afghan professor in Portland, Oregon, who laments the intensifying havoc and violence war is causing in Afghanistan. He and his wife lived there for six years, until about a year ago, when they concluded that the city was unlivable.
Dr. Wahab believes there is no military solution to Afghanistan's woes and calls for the United States to demilitarize as soon as possible. But he also offers ways forward.
Wahab urges forming a multinational trust fund to justly assist with reconstruction in Afghanistan, including efforts to clear mines and clean up unexploded ordnance. Billions of dollars would be needed, commensurate to the sums spent on funding the war. He believes the United Nations should form a peacekeeping presence in Afghanistan relying on non-NATO countries.
The publication of the "Afghanistan papers" late last year highlighted the failure of the United States to accomplish any of its stated missions in Afghanistan. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, expressed his astonishment over the "hubris and mendacity" he had witnessed on the part of U.S. military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan.
Despite its failures, the United States continues to bomb Afghan civilian areas. In 2019, the U.S. dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions on Afghanistan.
For Afghan civilians, ongoing war means continued bereavement, displacement, and despair. Bereft of income or protection, many Afghan householders join militias, pledging their support and possibly their willingness to fight or even die. Hence the rise of the Afghan Local Police, numerous militias fighting for various warlords, the Afghan governments' fighting forces, including "ghost soldiers" who appear in name only, CIA-trained paramilitaries, and military contractors working for NATO contingents.
Afghanistan is a cauldron waiting to explode.
U.S. Army Major Danny Sjursen, retired, notes that in the 2020 election, neither presidential candidate questioned status quo norms about U.S. foreign policy being based on threat, force, and killing. Sjursen assures that pressure to change must, necessarily, flow from the grass roots.
The United States has landed in Afghanistan like a rocket in a garden. It refuses to rust, it poisons the Earth, and even U.S. voters can't budge it. Normal life can't continue with us there.
Meanwhile, an inevitably arriving Taliban-led government -- one already in control of most of the country -- is growing more fanatic and deadly.
Many U.S. voters, and too many Afghans, weren't yet born when the current war was begun by the United States in 2001. Much of the U.S. public regards the Afghan people with deadly indifference.
Year after year, President after President, Americans continue to pretend the despair and futility we've caused in Afghanistan isn't our fault. We don't hold ourselves accountable.
But the forever wars, illegal and immoral, bankrupt our economy and our society as well. The military contractors become a sort of mafia. They are like a bomb in our garden, liable to explode.
And, unlike our Afghan counterparts, it's not a bomb we can complain about. After all, we put it there.
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