Nobody reads history any more...
Afghanistan, the “Graveyard of Empires” is back in the news after the top U.S. commander there, General Stanley McChrystal, called for a revamp of strategy in the country and likened his forces to a bull instinctively and self-defeatingly charging a more mobile opponent.
As the Guardian reports
McChrystal has already begun to implement the new strategy, ordering his forces not to fire or drop bombs if there is a risk of civilian casualties. He has also shifted the focus from the eradication of the poppy crop, which alienated farmers, to attacking drug traffickers.
Now if eradicating farmers’ poppy crops alienated them, what makes the good general think eradicating their buyers isn’t going to do likewise? Holy fuckamoly, I’ve said it before here and here, the answer is to legalise poppy farming.
U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke (who apparently had a screaming match with Hamid Karzai a few days ago) has floated the idea himself, calling the strategy of poppy destruction
“The single-most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy”
Given this, I simply cannot understand why legalisation isn’t being seriously considered, given the wailing and teeth-gnashing that is coming out of that place. Profits made by mercenary corporations like DynCorp (who are contracted to destroy crops) at risk? The knock-on effect it would have on the whole broader misguided “War on Drugs”? Christ, what a mess.
It’s wryly amusing (if you like your humour of the pitch black variety) to look back to 2002, when Michael O’Hanlon, a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution could blithely state that
The military campaign in Afghanistan has been, for the most part, a masterpiece of creativity and finesse. It may wind up being one of the most notable U.S. military successes since World War II.
If these people want to win and rebuild the country, bring farmers and the rural populace onside, totally alienate the Taliban and save a whole shedload of money, blood, sweat and tears, ye gods do it now or pull out! Those are the only two options.
Other than Rudyard Kipling’s suggestion:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
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