While media attention has been focused on the U.S. quagmire
in Iraq, an equally failed war in Afghanistan has received little coverage. As
in countless militaristic U.S. nation�building fiascos, �mission creep� in
Afghanistan is leading to another foreign policy disaster.
Although the escalation in Afghanistan has not been
announced publicly, a reliable source with connections at the Pentagon tells me
that the Joint Staff has been ordered to plan for a surge in that country, and
the Department of Defense Comptroller has been asked to budget the money for
it. As in Iraq, however, the escalation just promises to sink the United States
deeper into the nation�building morass.
Historically, U.S. nation�building adventures have followed
a familiar pattern. Once on the ground, U.S. troops, sent for a limited
purpose, often have their mission expanded. That expansion tends to ensnare
them more deeply in the bog. In Lebanon, for example, during the early 1980s,
the Reagan administration sent U.S. forces to keep the peace among the rival
factions in Lebanon�s civil war. Once there, however, their mission was
expanded to training, equipping, and patrolling and fighting with one side in
the war against the other -- that is, with the Christians against the Muslims.
Shi�ite Muslim militants, none too happy with this turn of events, blew up the
Marine Corps barracks, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. Ronald Reagan then
withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon. Osama bin Laden regularly cites this episode
as marking his realization that the U.S. superpower could be made to end an
occupation through hit�and�run attacks.
In Somalia during the early 1990s, �mission creep� caused
similar problems. Initially, U.S. forces were sent merely to guard relief
supplies for that nation, which was engulfed in internecine conflict. The
mission then was expanded to include stabilizing the country by fighting the
warlord Mohammad Farrah Aideed. Again, the United States fell into joining the
fight of on one side of a civil war. U.S. forces were withdrawn from the
country after 18 U.S. personnel were killed and some of their bodies were
dragged through the streets.
Initially in Iraq, the U.S. plan was to decapitate the
regime of Saddam Hussein, and replace him and only his top henchmen with loyal
U.S. lackeys. The U.S. mission quickly evolved into holding democratic
elections and rebuilding the wrecked country. As the ongoing U.S. escalation in
Iraq unfolds, the United States again will be fighting on one side of an
escalating civil war. It is already clear that the militias from the majority
Shi�ite sect are melting away and will not resist the augmented U.S. forces. As
a result, U.S. troops will be fighting and diminishing only those insurgents
from the minority Sunni sect. The Shi�ite militias intend to wait until the
U.S. again reduces its troop presence, before ethnically cleansing the weakened
Sunni sect.
In Afghanistan, �mission creep� has taken a slightly
different form. Initially, the purpose of the invasion was to capture or kill
Osama bin Laden, his top deputy, Ayman al�Zawahiri, and other top �al Qaeda�
leaders, and to remove the Afghan Taliban government that was harboring them.
Those �al Qaeda� leaders were never captured, because key U.S. intelligence
assets and Special Forces troops were moved out to support the invasion of
Iraq. Although the government was removed, the continued presence in
Afghanistan of U.S. and NATO forces for nation�building fueled a Taliban
resurgence against the foreign occupiers. This winter, despite Afghanistan�s
weather -- not usually conducive for fighting -- Taliban attacks have increased
dramatically, and they promise to spike as the mountain snows melt and the spring
campaigning season begins. The unpublicized U.S. escalation there is designed
to counter this expected Taliban offensive.
Even worse, the U.S. nation�building mentality in
Afghanistan has gone a step further: it now involves reducing opium production.
But each time the United States eradicates opium in this poor nation, it
increases the probability that opium farmers and drug lords will support the
Taliban. In addition, the failed U.S. war on drugs raises the price of opium,
thus increasing the revenues available to drug lords with which to buy the
Taliban weapons.
Thus, another U.S. escalation in Afghanistan, even in the
unlikely event that it could be sustained simultaneously with the U.S. surge in
Iraq, will fail, because U.S. policy is fueling the very Taliban insurgency
that the larger U.S. force is there to combat, and because the U.S. government
has lost sight of the original mission: to neutralize the top leadership of �al
Qaeda.�
Ivan
Eland is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Director of the
Institute�s Center on
Peace & Liberty, and author of the books The Empire
Has No Clothes, and Putting �Defense�
Back into U.S. Defense Policy.