Lack of ground forces led to greater reliance on airpower and as a result reports of civilian casualties rocketed. This was attributed to the lack of identifiable military infrastructure. According to one military planner “We are not running short of targets, Afghanistan is”.
Significantly, in comparison to previous conflicts, the number of civilians killed from air strikes was much lower. However, great expectations from the use of sophisticated technology made any civilian loss unacceptable, especially when the local populace was being displaced and sentiments against the coalition growing as a result. This was particularly evident when an Afghan marriage procession was bombed on July 2, 2002. In this case, celebratory gunfire was mistaken for hostile fire by an overhead air unit.
Coalition woes were compounded by their failure to win the battle of hearts and minds in Afghanistan. This owed to a lack of understanding of the ground situation. In one exercise, American Special Operation Forces went to a village to hand out blankets and medicines to the inhabitants, but realized they had school bags in their cartons instead. The bags were useless for there were no schools in the vicinity of the village.
Cultural resentment against foreign intervention in Afghanistan, and the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, manifested itself into a propaganda by extremists, that that the west was involved in a war against Islam. The civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan were a significant factor in the successful recruitment of militants to fight an Islamic Holy war against the “Crusaders”. This swelled the ranks of Al-Qaeda and its loose network of alliances, which targeted the new Afghan government.
The inadequacies of the coalition approach were acknowledged by the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, in an interview to the Radio Free Europe, when he said: “We have taken some actions in some parts of Afghanistan that everybody [thought] were wrong but we never apologized for it, including blind bombings and also long detention of people without trial”. “Another very important thing is not taking into consideration Afghan values. There have been many warnings about these issues before from the Ulema [clerical] council of Afghanistan and other bodies had said that such actions could lead to an increase in the violence.”
The growing pressures on the American administration to show effective results on the ground and repeated media chastising of Pakistan for turning a blind eye to the extremists within its own society, pushed the Administration into a tough spot. By turning a blind eye to Musharraf’s decisions in the border region, the administration overlooked a key reason for the rise of the Taliban.
Pakistan has been declared a frontline ally of the United States and its leader General Musharraf is viewed as the best solution in dealing with politically active Islamic Fundamentalists in a nuclear weapons state. However, Musharraf in order to cling on to power has adopted a divide and rule policy wherein he would support Pashtun Islamist parties like the JUI-F, patrons of the Afghan Taliban, in a bid to counter secular Baloch and moderate Pashtun forces, who staunchly opposed him. This alliance, paved way for a truce agreement between the Pakistani army and the warlords who control the lawless borderlands.
Thus, domestic political upheavals in neighboring Pakistan provided a favorable environment for the growth of radical Islamists sympathetic to the Taliban. This also provided a fresh impetus to recruitment and boosted the funding options available to the group. More importantly, it has led to the strengthening of the neo-Taliban in the provinces bordering Afghanistan, and this has been an effective safe sanctuary for Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders. This peace deal was as much a quick solution to Musharraf’s domestic political woes, as it was a shrewd tactic which owes its roots to the Soviet-Afghan war.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
