American Savagery

  

American Savagery

Peter Schultz

 

                  The following, which is from the book, No Good Men Among the Living, by Anand Gopal, is an account of US allies in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, called the

“mujahedeen.”

 

“Like victors in a medieval battle, the mujahedeen attacking Afshar hauled captives and booty away. Some…were forced into slavery…. After two days of bloodshed, most of the population of Ashar was dead or missing….Sometimes [the] killing was not enough. A man named Fazil Ahmed was decapitated and his limbs sawed off; his body was found with his penis stuffed in his mouth.

 

“What is certain, however, is the Ashar violence had clear enough political motives: to eliminate a Hazara militia stronghold….At the top of the chain of responsibility sat the operation’s architects, Massoud and Sayyaf….A number of their sub-commanders bear direct culpability, yet every one of them has emerged politically unscathed. Marshal Muhammad Fahim, who oversaw the operation and commanded an important outpost during the siege, became a key American ally during the 2001 invasion, earning himself millions in CIA dollars. Eventually, he became vice president of Afghanistan. Baba Jan, who also helped plan and execute the siege, became a key Northern Alliance commander. After 2001, he grew extravagantly wealthy as a logistics contractor for the US military. Mullah Izzat, who commanded a group that led house searches, also struck gold after the invasion….Zulmay Tofan, complicit in the house searches and forced labor, reaped his post-2001 windfall by supplying fuel to US troops.

 

“The twin dislocations of the Soviet invasion and CIA patronage of the mujahedeen irrevocably reconfigured Afghan society, leading directly to the horrors of the civil war, then to the Taliban, and ultimately to the shape of Afghan politics after 2001. Still, when Zbigniew Brzezinski…was asked in the late 1990s whether he had any regrets, he replied: ‘What is more important in the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” [66-67]

 

Brzezinski seems to think that his answers are, self-evidently, the correct ones and indisputable. But, of course, the USSR was on its way to collapsing and probably would have done so even it had not been attacked by the US and its mujahedeen allies in Afghanistan. But let’s say it did not collapse. Wouldn’t the world and Afghanistan have been a better place if the savagery created by the USSR, the US, and mujahedeen had not occurred? Had the USSR prevailed in Afghanistan, women would have been much better off, as would many Afghan men. The Taliban would not have appeared, and its tyranny would be unknown. In fact, it would seem that the best outcome for Afghanistan would have been the rule of the Communists. It would also have meant that the 9/11 attacks would not have occurred. Brzezinski tries to turn the US involvement with the mujahedeen into a melodramatic turning point in world history. Maybe it was, but it is far from clear that if it was, it was a turning point that improved the human condition. It certainly did not improve the condition of Afghanistan and Afghanis as savagery was imposed upon them. But, then, savagery is precisely what realists like Brzezinski embrace, even taking it as proof of their virtues.