Waziristan, one of the main reasons why the western coalition lost the Afghan war

Waziristan is a key player in the Afghanistan war. It is a very conservative Pashtun-speaking society with strong ties to the Afghan Taliban. It has been very difficult to control, both by the Pakistani government and by the Western occupation alliance in neighboring Afghanistan. Waziristan is a mountainous region in north-western Pakistan that borders Afghanistan. It has an area of ​​11,585 km². It comprises the area to the west and southwest of the Peshawar region between the Tochi rivers to the north and the Gomal rivers to the south. The population is approximately 1.5 million people, approximately 900,000 in Norh Waziristan and 600,000 in South Waziristan. In 1998, a population of 791 087 inhabitants was estimated. Waziristan is divided into two regions: North Waziristan, with 61,246 inhabitants (1998) and South Waziristan, with a population of 429,841 inhabitants. Its inhabitants speak a dialect of Pashto, called wazirwola (Pashtun is the main language in Afghanistan). In the first stage of the US invasion of Afghanistan, when the Taliban began to flee to Pakistan, local leaders, or Maliks, began a campaign among their locals to welcome foreigners. Since then, around 200 Malik have been killed by local Taliban through targeted killings. [Appointment required] To end the Waziristan war, Pakistan signed the Waziristan Agreement with the heads of the self-styled Islamic Emirate of Waziristan on September 5, 2006. Islamic militants in Waziristan are said to have close affiliations with the Taliban. [13] Waziristan is often mentioned as a haven for al Qaeda fighters. It is speculated that some al-Qaeda leaders have found refuge in the emirate-controlled area, which is a scene of militant operations in Afghanistan [14]. On June 4, 2007, the Pakistan National Security Council met to decide the fate of Waziristan and to address a number of political and administrative issues to control the "Talibanization" of the area. The meeting was chaired by President Pervez Musharraf and was attended by the main ministers and governors of the four provinces. They discussed the deterioration of the situation of law and order and the threat it represents to the security of the state. The government decided to take a series of measures to stop the "Talibanization" and crush the armed militancy in the tribal regions and the NTFP. Due to ongoing military operations against the Taliban, almost 100,000 people have already fled to the Afghan province of Khost to seek refuge. The UN and other aid agencies are assisting more than 470,000 people who have been displaced from Pakistan's North Waziristan region due to ongoing military operations. The Wazir tribes are divided into clans ruled by male elders who meet in a tribal jirga. Socially and religiously, Waziristan is an extremely conservative area. Women are carefully protected, and each household must be headed by a male figure. The capital of North Waziristan is Miramshah. The area is mainly inhabited by the Dawar tribe and the Utmanzai branch of Darwesh Khel Waziris, which are related to Ahmedzai Waziris of southern Waziristan, living in fortified mountain villages such as Razmak, Datta Khel, Spin wam, Dosali, Shawa and Shawal. The Dawars (also known as Daurr or Daur), who live in the main Tochi valley, cultivate in the valleys below in towns such as Miramshah, Hamzoni, Darpakhel, Muhammadkhel, Boya, Degan, Banda, Ngharkali, Palangzai, Mirali, Edak , Hurmaz. , Mussaki, Hassukhel, Ziraki, Tapi, Issori, Haiderkhel and Khaddi watered by the Tochi river. not under the direct administration of the government of Pakistan, South Waziristan is indirectly governed by a political agent, who has been a stranger or a waziri, a system inherited from the British Raj. In the South Waziristan Agency, there are three tribes, Wazir, Maseed and Burki. Burki and Urmarh are the same tribe. The South Waziristan Agency has its district headquarters in Wanna. Comprising some 6,500 square kilometers (2,500 square miles), South Waziristan is the most volatile agency in Pakistan. Its capital is Wanna.

¿Why are there so many countries whose names ends in -stan?

Some examples are Afghanistan, Kazakhstan or Pakistan

The suffix -stan is an anglicised version of the Persian for ‘place of’. It is connected linguistically to the Pashto -tun and to –sthāna in Indo-Aryan languages.

These derive from Proto-Indo-Iranian-European roots based on ‘stā’ meaning ‘to stand; where one stands’.

Its widespread use may be a result of commonly developing languages of various communities of nomadic people across central Asian areas over time.

The same root is also the source of the Latin ‘stare’ (to stand) and from there to English words such as stand, state and status.

Other derivatives are the Russian word стан (stan) referring to settlements/camps of semi-nomadic people of Central Asia; some Slavic languages where stan originally meant ‘settlement’ but more recently has come to mean 'apartment'.

The root can be found in various Germanic languages for exemple in Stand and Stadt (German), stad (Dutch/Scandinavian), Stan (Polish) and stead (English; as in ‘homestead’).

The –stan suffix often simply meant ‘land of the …..’. So Uzbekistan = land of the Uzbecki people; Afghanistan = land of the Afghani people; and so on.

Pakistan does not follow this construction. The name Pakistan is not derived as the land of some (historical) ‘Paki’ people but means Land of the Pure. The difference is because Pakistan is a new, and invented, name to describe a politically-defined area and not a historical word for the traditional homelands of a single long-established cultural/ethnic group of people. I

In a number of languages the –stan ending is also used more generally within everyday words: as in the Urdu rigestan (a place of sand ie desert), as in golestan (a place of roses ie rose garden); as in qabristan, (a place of graves ie cemetery or graveyard); and as in the Hindi/Sanskrit devasthan (place of devas ie temple).

In English there are seven ‘obvious’ recognised countries whose names end in –stan. These are: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

The same linguistic root also shows through in the names for different countries in other languages. For example Arabestan (Persian for Saudi Arabia), Armanestan (Persian for Armenia), Bulgaristan (Turkish for Bulgaria), Chinastan (Armenian for China), Ermenistan (Turkish for Armenia), Hunastan (Armenian for Greece), Hayastan ( Armenia in Armenian), Gurjistan (Georgia in Persian and Turkish), Lehastan/ Lehestan (Armenian and Persian for Poland; and the older Ottoman use referring to the Polish empire ; derived from name of ancient Lęch tribes), Macaristan (Hungary in Turkish), Parsqastan (Iran in Armenian), Rusastan (Armenian for Russia), Vrastan (Armenian for Greece) and Yunanistan (Turkish for Greece), Engelestan (Persian for England). Hirvatistan (the Turkish name for Croatia) and Sırbistan (the Turkish name for Serbia).

These are far from fixed names. There are older usages that have become obsolete. Language is an evolving thing and this is as true of names of places as for other changes in language usage. Some regions are regarded as ‘independent’ by some groups but not by others.

What counts as a country can be a complicated question. For a good summary the reader is referred to the Economist article ‘In quite a state: How many countries in the world?’ (www.economist.com/node/15868439). This describes how on one set of criteria a place may be included as a country on some lists yet be excluded on other lists (because not officially recognised by the owners of that list).

Many of the regions whose names end in –stan are in areas that are diverse and multi-ethnic with boundaries that are the result of historical events. The boundaries, name, or existence of some –stans may therefore be matters for disagreements.

Even for disputed territories, however, the linguistics can still apply: Chechenestan is the Persian and Turkish name for Chechenya. South Ossetia is another self-proclaimed state which has varying degrees of formal recognition. Iriston/Iristan (from aryi+stan) is a self-proclaimed name of Ossetia.

Regions/ towns whose names end in –stan (an extensive but probably incomplete list; includes some descriptions that might be disputed by groups seeking independence of / or opposed to independence from certain historical arrangements).

Arabistan — refers to Arabian peninsular lands in Middle East; was also historically used in some reports to refer to Khuzestan

Ardestan — a town, founded in ancient Sassanian times, in Isfahan Province, Iran.

Avaristan — the Avari name for homeland in Western Dagestan (fromC12th to C19th).

Baharestan - is an area in downtown Tehran where the Iranian Parliament is located.

Balawaristan — (balawar = highlander); another name for northern Pakistani Kashmir; alternative name for Gilgit- Baltistan).

Balochistan/ Baluchistan — regions in Iran, in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Baltistan — a mountainous northern region in Kashmir Pakistan.

Bantustan — used to refer to Apartheid-era South African black 'homeland' areas. Bargustan/Borgustan — an area to the north of modern Kislovodsk, Russia. Bashkortostan (Bashkiria) — a constituent republic of Russia. Baloristan (Gilgit-Chitral) - the name of a region of Pakistani Kashmir.

Cholistan Desert — a desert region in Punjab, Pakistan. 
Dagestan —(literally "place of mountains") an ethnically-diverse, North Caucasian, constituent republic of the Russian Federation.

Dardistan — ‘area inhabited by the Dards’; is a region spreading over northern Pakistan, Indian Punjab and North Eastern Afghanistan.

Dashtestan — a region in Bushehr Province, Iran. East Pakistan (or Bangalistan / Bangistan - refers to the historic name for preindependence Bangladesh).

Frangistan/ Frengistan/ Frankistan - a central Asian term used to refer to Western Europe in general (Based on Europeans being known as Franks).

Gulistan/Golestan - a province in northern Iran and a city in Uzbekistan. Hazarastan/ Hazaristan - the homeland of the Hazara people in central highlands of Afghanistan.

Hindustan — (land of the Indus/ Hindus). Coined by the ancient Persians. Also used by the British ruling in the former British India when generally talking about South Asia. Now primarily refers Republic of India.

Hunistan — ‘kingdom of the Huns’; in Semnon Province, Iran.

Kabulistan — (‘The Kabul land’). An old term used in many historical books and old Persian literature books for an area around Kabul, larger region than today's Kabul Province.

Kafiristan — (‘land of the infidels’). An historic region in Afghanistan until 1896, now known as Nuristan. A similarly named region exists in north Pakistan.

Karakalpakstan — an autonomous republic of Uzbekistan. Khuzestan — a province of south-western Iran. Kohistan — there are several districts with this name in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Tajikistan and in Iran. Kurdistan — a Kurdish region spanning Eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, North western Iran and Northern Syria. Lazistan — a name for a region in the Caucasus; home of the Lazuri speaking people. Has been part of a series of occupations and empires. In 1922 the area was split between the then Soviet Union and Turkey. Lorestan/ Luristan/ Larestan — a province of Iran. Moghulistan (Mughalistan) — an historical geographic unit in Central Asia that included parts of modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Xinjiang. Nuristan Province — Afghanistan; formerly was an area that was known as Kafiristan (land of the infidels) but changed its name to Nuristan (land of light) when area converted to Islam.

Pashtunistan or Pakhtunistan or Pathanistan — what many Pashtun nationalists call the Pashtun-dominated areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Registan - (meaning "place of sand") a UNESCO World Heritage Site in central Samarkand, Uzbekistan. This large open space was a public gathering area between three madrassas.

Sakastan — historically, a region of Afghanistan/ Pakistan where the Scythians or Sakas lived in the 2nd century BC.

Sarvestan — a town in Fars Province, Iran. Seistan or Sistan — a border province between North Eastern Iran and South Western Afghanistan.

Tabaristan — an historical region along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. Takestan/ Takistan — a town in Qazvin Province, Iran.

Talyshistan — an ethnolinguistic region in the SE Caucasus and NW Iran.

Tangestan — a region in Bushehr Province, Iran. Tatarstan — a constituent republic in the Volga District of the Russian Federation.

Tocharistan, Tukharistan or Tokharistan, also known as Balkh or Bactria — the ancient name of a historical region in Central Asia, located between the range of the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya (Oxus). Turkistan/Turkestan — an ethnolinguistic region encompassing Central Asia, northwest China, parts of the Caucasus and Asia Minor; Russian Turkestan refers to that portion of Turkestan that was in the Russian Empire, later becoming Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. There are also Afghan Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan, Xinjang area). The city of Turkestan is in present-day Kazakhstan.

Waziristan (North and South) —semi-autonomous regions of northwest Pakistan. Zabulistan — an historical region in the border area of today's Iran and Afghanistan, around the city Zabol.

Zanjistan, or Zenjistan — a term used in medieval texts to refer to the homeland of the Zanj, ie black slaves of East African origin, ie area around Zanzibar. 
Reference:
http://thewordsthething.org.uk/Countries%20ending%20in%20Stan.pdf

The Hazara, a discriminated and threatened people of Afghanistan

The Hazara people are a Persian-speaking, predominantly Shia ethnic group, who are mainly native to the mountainous region of Hazarajat in central Afghanistan. They represent 28% of the 31 million Afghan population (9 million).

They have a long history of persecution because of their religion and ethnicity, going all the way back to the 1890s.

They have not only faced violence at the hands of the Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), but also decades of institutional hostility and discrimination from Afghanistan's dominant ethnic groups. Until the 1970s, for example, Afghan law barred the Hazaras from holding office, enrolling in university, or holding any position of national authority. Discriminatory laws were also in place under the Taliban rule in the following decades.

Under former Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration, however, the Hazaras got a chance to reclaim their place in Afghanistan's public and political life. They also made some gains under the Ashraf Ghani-led government, but are unhappy with their limited representation in power and some national policies that limit their social and political empowerment.

But ever since the start of the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan, the Hazaras' worries about their future in Afghanistan have deepened. The decision of the United States to hold peace talks directly with the Taliban, a group particularly hostile towards the Hazaras, only exacerbated these concerns.

The peace talks between the Taliban and the US collapsed last week with US President Donald Trump declaring the negotiations "dead". However, the Hazaras are still on edge, as they are aware that in the current environment, it is all but certain that the Taliban will play an important role in the building of a new, post-conflict Afghanistan. Moreover, the incumbent Afghan government appears less than committed to protecting Hazara interests in this process.

For now, the prospects for sustainable peace for the Hazaras remain distant, to say the least, for two main reasons: the Taliban's deep-rooted hostility towards them and the Afghan government's reluctance or inability to propose a detailed peace plan which addresses their specific concerns and fears.

The Hazaras have a reason not to trust the Taliban

Amiri was kidnapped in the Jalriz district of Maidan Wardak province, on Highway 2 which connects Afghanistan's capital Kabul to Hazarajat - the 116,550sq km (45,000sq miles) region of highlands and pastures where Hazaras have traditionally lived.

The Hazaras have suffered so many deadly attacks, ambushes and kidnappings on this particular highway that connects their homeland to the heart of the country in the past decade that it has been dubbed "the Death Road". According to a recent report, at least 108 Hazara passengers have been kidnapped and killed while travelling on it since 2012.

The Taliban's targeting of the Hazaras is not limited to individual kidnappings and killings; it has involved violence on a much larger scale, as well as relentless intimidation, abuse and oppression.

In late October 2018, for example, the Taliban orchestrated attacks in the Hazara-populated Khas Uruzgan district in Uruzgan province, which resulted in the death of dozens of civilians and displacement of at least 500 families.

In early November, the group extended its attacks on the Hazaras to Malistan and Jaghori districts in the adjacent Ghazni province. In these attacks, 67 people, including 25 Afghan army commandos, were killed and 70 others were injured, while around 60 to 70 percent of the people living in the attacked areas were displaced according to a member of the government's fact-finding delegation.

These attacks reminded the Hazaras of the atrocities the Taliban committed against them in the late 1990s. From 1998 to 2001, the Taliban perpetrated at least three documented massacres against the ethnic group.

In August 1998, the Taliban killed at least 2,000 civilians, most of them Hazaras, in the multiethnic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Two years later, in May 2000, the group killed dozens more Hazaras in the Robatak Pass. In January 2001, yet another massacre was committed by its members in Yakaolang district in Bamiyan province.

These mass killings which are a testament to the Taliban's deep-rooted hostility towards the Hazaras also demonstrate how the group will likely treat this ethnic minority if it were to return to power in any capacity.

While in the current climate, especially after the collapse of the peace talks with the US, such a comeback is unlikely, it is nevertheless certain that the Taliban will have some say in deciding the future configuration of the state, if and when the conflict comes to an end.

The Afghan government, which claims to be actively working to kick-start intra-Afghan talks, seems less concerned about how ethnic groups, particularly the Hazaras, will fare following a peace deal with the Taliban. 

The Afghan government's peace plan will not deliver peace 

On February 28, 2018, President Ghani offered to recognise the Taliban as a legitimate political group "without preconditions" as part of a proposed political process that he said could lead to intra-Afghan peace talks. Nine months later, on November 28, he presented an updated version of his government's peace plan to the international community during the Geneva Conference on Afghanistan.

This time around, he set some preconditions: the constitutional rights and obligations of all citizens must be ensured; the 2004 constitution must be accepted and any amendments must be made through legal mechanisms; the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and civil service must be preserved; and any armed groups with ties to terrorist networks, international criminal organisations, or other state/non-state actors seeking influence in Afghanistan must be barred from joining the political process.

Supporters of President Ghani and his team have boasted that not only can his "grand plan" deliver peace, but also "justice, equality and development". The entire peace plan is based on the idea of preserving the Afghan republic rather than transforming it into an emirate, as the Taliban has demanded.

This, however, by far does not guarantee an equitable distribution of power, resources and opportunities. A republic can be repressive towards minorities, the media, civil society organisations, and democratic processes. Examples of that abound in Afghanistan's neighbourhood - Iran and China are just two obvious ones.

Moreover, many fundamental questions that will determine the sustainability of any peace agreement, the prospects for equitable political participation and just and balanced development were not addressed in the proposed plan.

Afghanistan is an ethnically diverse country, but the current configuration of the state, as detailed in the 2004 constitution, has largely failed to deliver equal political participation, development and stability to all ethnic groups, particularly to the Hazaras. Among many other problems, the present constitution gives too much authority to the central government and does not allow provinces and districts to elect their own local authorities, set their own development priorities, and prepare their own budgets.

Hence, a peace plan that proposes to preserve the current status quo and simply includes the Taliban into the existing system would result in nothing other than the further victimisation of minority communities, the Hazaras being the first among them.

Moreover, Ghani's peace plan also fails to offer any protections for the Hazaras and other groups that would likely continue to be targeted by the Taliban even after the official end of hostilities between the Afghan government and the armed group.

The way forward

Talks between the US and the Taliban may be "dead", but ultimately no US-Taliban agreement will bring lasting peace to Afghanistan. Only intra-Afghan talks between the Taliban, the Afghan government and other Afghan parties - if and when they actually take place - can determine the future of the country.

For such talks to lead Afghanistan to sustainable peace and stability, they should involve agreements on decentralisation and distribution of power at the district and provincial levels, equal political participation of all ethnic groups, social justice and an economic plan for balanced development. This would guarantee that all ethnic and religious groups feel empowered and able to participate in Afghan political life on an equal footing.

As history has shown, various regimes and constitutions the country has had since the collapse of the monarchy in 1973 failed to keep it stable and peaceful precisely because they did not manage to deliver on these issues.

The current Afghan leadership has a chance to make history and get Afghanistan out of the cycle of violence and conflict. But to do so, it needs to listen carefully to the demands of all Afghan citizens, including the most persecuted communities like the Hazaras. Only then it would be able to come up with a plan that could pave the way for peace and stability.

Bismellah Alizada

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/peace-means-afghanistan-hazara-minority-190917151220650.html

Did Trump endorse Soviet intervention in Afghanistan… or disavow US backing of jihad there?

Offering an explanation of why US should withdraw from Afghanistan, President Donald Trump appeared to endorse the Soviet intervention there in the 1980s and by extension, disavow US support for jihadist insurgents.

“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan,”Trump told reporters on Wednesday, following a cabinet meeting at the White House.

Arguing that Russia, India and Pakistan were all in Afghanistan’s neighborhood and should fight terrorism there rather than expecting the US to, Trump offered an impromptu history lesson.

“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there,” he said. “The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally, they went bankrupt.”

Trump: "Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia."
Trump then goes on to endorse the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Via Fox.

Trump’s apparent endorsement of the Soviet intervention did not sit well with his critics, who exploded in outrage and called it an abandonment of Ronald Reagan’s values and policies.

It seems impossible, but it's true: President Trump just endorsed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Who's he working for?

In his rambling WH discourse, @POTUS just said regarding Afghanistan that "the Russians were right to be there" -suggesting they were going after terrorists not, in fact, advancing their “evil empire”. This contradicts the assumptions of not only Reagan & Bush, but even of Carter.

"The reason Russia was in Afghanistan" was because of terrorism. "They were right to be there." (So, POTUS overlooks the USSR's communist invasion of Russia as part of Moscow's Iron Curtain foreign policy & offers the, presumably, Putin line on it was about terrorism.)

In criticizing Trump’s comments, one NBC journalist even brought up the end credits of Rambo III, a 1988 American action movie dedicated to the “brave mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan.”

There’s a lot of “Wow, Republicans sure aren’t the party of Reagan anymore” lamentations these days but it’s kinda hard to top endorsing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

hat line of criticism seems ironic, however, given that the US sponsored the mujahideen – Islamic “holy warriors,” literally – against Afghanistan’s secular government prior to the Soviet intervention in December 1979. It was President Jimmy Carter who signed the directive to start aiding the mujahideen in July that year, on advice of his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The aid was going to induce a Soviet intervention, Brzezinski told the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur in 1009. When Soviet troops crossed the border, Brzezinski said he wrote to Carter that the US had the “opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”

“Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire,” he said in the interview.

It's crazy how Zbigniew Brzezinski took credit for creating the groups that later did 9/11 3 years before 9/11 in an interview for Le Nouvel Observateur.

Careful observers will note that Trump’s version of history actually overlaps with this statement of Brzezinski’s, which has since become the conventional wisdom in Washington. The policy of aiding the mujahideen continued under Ronald Reagan, who sent money and weapons to Afghanistan, including anti-aircraft missiles. One of the recipients of this aid was Osama bin Laden, who led a contingent of Arab volunteers.

Aspiring holy warriors from many Muslim-majority countries went to Afghanistan to fight. They shifted the focus of their zeal to the West in the mid-1990s, after the government of president Najibullah was killed and Afghanistan plunged into chaos of civil war. In 1996, Bin Laden declared a holy war on the US.

About time a US president denounced the Brzezinski policy of supporting jihadis in Afghanistan. A truly catastrophic policy, not only for the USSR but for everyone else.

Asked about this in January 1998, Brzezinski was unapologetic.

“Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea,” he told Le Nouvel Observateur. “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

By August that year, Bin Laden’s operatives would bomb the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In October 2000, they would attack the destroyer USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. And in September 2001, they would destroy the World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon using three hijacked passenger airplanes.

None of it led to Brzezinski disavowing his comments from the 1998 interview, or expressing regret about getting the US to back Bin Laden and Afghan “holy warriors” in his personal jihad against the Soviet Union.
Reference;
https://www.rt.com/news/447968-trump-afghanistan-soviet-jihad/

United States, cruel and clumsy imperialism

Afghanistan: seventeen years of war and still going

The shock of 9/11 drove the United States to apoplexy. The immediate aftermath left Americans with little appetite for namby-pamby contemplation of the attackers’ grievances, much less a desire to u+nderstand the internal political dynamics of the country on which they were keen to vent their outrage. (Which would have been difficult in any case, considering that, in 2002, only 1 in 6 young American adults aged 18 to 24 could locate Afghanistan on a map.) It certainly wasn’t the moment to ask, rhetorically, what Jesus would have done. It was time for vengeance, served at the sizzling temperature of a white phosphorus incendiary bomb. All but blind to the indigenous cultural landscape, they went in swinging.

Afghanistan hosts a complex web of rival tribal factions; the 2004 constitution recognizes 14 different ethnicities. In 1992, a coalition of Tajiks and Uzbeks wrested power from the Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group. In response, the late Mullah Omar formed the Taliban in order to reassert Pashtun hegemony and establish strict Islamic law in place of what had been virtual anarchy during the civil war and communist rule before that. Ali A. Jalali and Lester W. Grau recall that the Taliban — which, in Pashto, translates literally to “students” — “received extensive support from Pashtuns across the country who thought that the movement might restore their national dominance.” The Taliban is as much an ethnic movement as it is an Islamist organization.

American leaders might have realized this, too, had they bothered to ask questions first and shoot later. Instead, Chua explains:

The United States… joined forces with the Northern Alliance, led by Tajik and Uzbek warlords and widely viewed as anti-Pashtun. The Americans then set up a government that many Pashtuns believed marginalized them.

… Although many Pashtuns loathed the Taliban, few were willing to support a government they viewed as subordinating their interests to those of their deeply resented ethnic rivals.

Needless to say, it was a poor recipe for winning the trust of the people among whom the U.S. and its allies would be operating for the next 17 years and counting.

Blood and Treasure

The human cost of the Afghan adventure has been staggering. If and when statistics of the war’s casualties receive public attention, they’re almost always those of Western forces: over 3500 coalition fatalities as of 2018, more than 2,400 of whom were American, and over 20,000 injuries to U.S. troops.

Unless you go out of your way to seek the data, you’re unlikely to encounter the rest of the story — which is to say the bulk of it. Since 2001, over 30,000  Afghan civilians have died violently, and more than 100,000 have died in total with another 40,000 civilians injured on top of that. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) notes that in 2018, civilian casualties numbered above 5,000 for the third year running, more than double the 2009 level.

The full human toll is also not entirely visible. More than 138,000 U.S. veterans of Afghanistan are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2009, it was reported that 2 in 3 Afghans had mental health problems. Worse still, as the world’s main source of opium and heroin, Afghanistan is gripped by a drug addiction crisis.

The United Nations estimated in 2015 that there were perhaps 1.6 million drug users living in Afghan cities — a 70 percent increase from 2009 — and as many as 3 million more in the countryside. That would represent a jaw-dropping 13 percent of the country’s population, dwarfing the opioid crisis currently ravaging parts of North America. Land use dedicated to poppy production in Afghanistan has tripled since the war began. Efforts have been made to destroy the poppy fields to deny the Taliban a source of revenue, even though doing so could be financially ruinous to many ordinary Afghans as well since opiate exports make up a quarter of Afghanistan’s GDP.
Author: Brad Stollery
Reproduced from:
https://medium.com/s/story/the-graveyard-of-empires-eac97e6af1c

Private armies are carrying out most American wars and this is going to grow further in the future.

Upon departing as commander of US Forces Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson recently said that America's military strategy, revised a year ago under the Trump administration, is working.

At the same time, Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater [currently known as Academi], apparently doesn't share the view of the US Forces Afghanistan commander who expressed that the military strategy in Afghanistan is working.

And of course, as shrewd businessman he is offering to Donald Trump to renew his offer to replace US military forces with Private Military Contractors, or PMCs.

Despite the differences, and any similarities, the military solutions for peace in Afghanistan offered by Nicholson and Prince are both delusional.

In saying that the latest US military strategy is working, Nicholson believes the current military solution is having the effect of "advancing us towards reconciliation" with the Afghan Taliban.

"I believe the South Asia Strategy is the right approach," Nicholson said during a brief teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon before the link was disrupted.

"And now we see that approach delivering progress on reconciliation that we had not seen previously. And I think that was because we clearly communicated to the enemy they could not wait us out."

While Nicholson believes that the military strategy of using troops to train and assist the Afghan military is going to work, he failed to point out that the US at one point had some 100,000 combat troops there and still couldn't defeat the Taliban. Today, there are no more than 10,000 soldiers who are not in a combat role but are there to train the Afghan military.

Nicholson's assessment comes despite the fact that the Taliban today has control over more than 50 percent of the country and has little trouble launching attacks on government buildings in the Afghan capital Kabul.

When the US attacked Afghanistan in October 2001 because the Taliban, in control of the country at the time, refused to turn over Osama bin Laden who launched a terrorist attack on the US the previous month, the Taliban were virtually eliminated from the country.

Only after the US diverted its attention to attacking Iraq in March 2003, the Taliban began to return to the country from neighboring Pakistan which not only harbored the insurgent group but actually created it under the auspices of its own military and intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Even though the US war in Afghanistan is in its 17th year, Trump is sticking with his strategy that he implemented a year ago although privately he is expressing increasing frustration with the results.

Prince, whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, believes it's time to review his offer of PMCs and privatize the war in Afghanistan.

"I know he's frustrated," Prince said referring to the Trump's outlook on the progress of defeating the Taliban militarily in Afghanistan. "He gave the Pentagon what they wanted…And they haven't delivered."

Prince said that Trump's advisers who oppose his plan are portraying "as rosy a picture as they can" of the fighting on the ground and that "peace is around the corner" in efforts to enter discussions with the Taliban. They "over-emphasize the fluff and flare of these so-called peace talks."

Erik Prince admits he hasn't spoken yet to the president to renew the request. While Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo oppose Prince's plan, the current military strategy may not show results until at least next summer, if then, something which may prompt Trump to consider Prince's offer.

However, National Security Advisor John Bolton has been strangely silent on Prince's proposal. In coming days, Prince said he intended to launch a media campaign to convince the president to favorably consider his plan of action.

Prince's notion that his PMCs will get the job done where the military couldn't is equally unrealistic. Prince's Blackwater PMCs have been operating out of the United Arab Emirates since 2011. His mercenaries hail from such countries as Australia, Chile, Columbia, El Salvador, Panama and South Africa.

They originally were hired to provide training and defense inside the UAE since its own forces are incapable of doing so. In 2012, the mercenaries, nicknamed mercs, were deployed to fight pirates off the coast of Somalia. Then in 2015, repeat began to surface that Prince's mercs were launching attacks inside Yemen.

It was part of an effort by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to undertake a more aggressive military strategy in the region. This more aggressive effort is part of an initiative by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, nicknamed MbZ, who is the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the UAE's armed forces. He united with the Saudis, particularly its current crown prince and defense minister, Mohammed bins Salman Al Saud, to undertake this military strategy.

While it was thought at the time that Prince no longer was dealing with the emirates, more recent reports suggest otherwise. In 2016, Yemeni Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Sharaf Ghalib Luqman pointed out that the Saudi-led coalition was hiring contractors, among them were 400 from the US private security firm Blackwater.

"Erik Prince is back," said David Isenberg, a researcher and writer on US military and international security issues, in a 2017 article.

"He's not only pitching colonial capitalism in DC, but huckstering ex-SF led armies of sepoys to wrest Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and perhaps, if he is ever able to influence likeminded hawks in the Trump administration, even Iran back from the infidels," he said.

In Yemen, the war effort continues with logistical and intelligence support from the US. Yet, it hasn't been going so well and has created a major humanitarian disaster for all the civilians the militaries of the Saudis and UAE have killed.

For the PMCs, the effort similarly has been a disaster, since their forces have been dealt numerous serious defeats in Yemen.

It raises the question of what the PMCs can do in Afghanistan if they are getting their butts kicked now in Yemen?

Unstated is the fact that despite the US military presence in Afghanistan, there also are PMCs working with them. One intelligence official told me that the ratio of PMCs to US soldiers in Afghanistan is better than five to one.

If that is the case, and PMCs already are fighting at some five times the strength of the US forces already in Afghanistan, what convincing information can Prince convey to Trump to get him to substitute his PMCs for the US military?

Trump's frustration suggests that inevitably he will need to face the fact that any military solution to halt the war in Afghanistan isn't going to work and that it is long past time to get the countries of the region together, with the US present, to come up with a lasting political solution.

Adapted from  F. Michael Maloof, former Pentagon security analyst.

An unwinnable war

It is the 21 of August of the 2017,
The speech of Donald Trump where he was presenting the new strategy in the war - invasion - occupation of Afghanistan is over.
It turns out that the new strategy is the old strategy.
- Increasing the number of troops without saying how many and when (4,000?).

- Continuing the war without first announcing the actions. 
- Fighting the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Isis. 
- Forcing Pakistan not to give shelter to jihadists. 
- Involving India in Afghanistan, especially economically. 
No big changes. Only verbal changes.
The war will continue for a few more years.
Death and destruction will continue.
The 800 billion dollars spent so far (!!!) will rise to 1 trillion dollars (1 million million).
The industrial-military complex and the US financial oligarchy of congratulations!

Current situation
After almost 17 years of war in Afghanistan (the longest war ever waged by the US), several hundred thousand dead, millions displaced, spending $ 800 billion, and using the most powerful weapons, the United States (as it could not be otherwise) are losing the war.
After being displaced during the US invasion in 2001, the Taliban are reorganizing and gaining control of the territory. Added to this is the emergence of al Qaeda and ISIS groups and heroin marketers.
The war is lost. Donald Trump will manage to extend it a few more years. But defeat is inevitable.
However, for the US military-industrial complex, defeat or victory is relatively secondary, because what really matters is to be able to perpetuate wars to continue accumulating trillion-dollar profits and succulent dividends.