{"id":117308,"date":"2021-08-20T15:30:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T22:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=117308"},"modified":"2021-08-20T15:30:44","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T22:30:44","slug":"afganistan-20years-of-misguided-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/08\/20\/afganistan-20years-of-misguided-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"AFGANISTAN-20YEARS OF MISGUIDED ADVENTURE"},"content":{"rendered":"

RANJITH SOYSA <\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

 No sooner the US and Allied Forces left\nAfghanistan, the Taliban forces walked into the capital city and captured\npower. What was the mission of the US and allied forces in Afghanistan for 20\nlong years? The unfolding events paint a very bleak picture of the expectations\nof the war in Afghanistan, the human and material cost incurred, and the\nstrategies followed by the USA, the elected Afghan governments and the UN which\nhad bags under it eyes during this long war.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between\n2010 to 2021 at times the US had more than 200,000 soldiers and the cost of war\nreached $100 billion a year. Total military expenditure for 19 years was $778\nmillion. The UK and Germany \u2018s Afghan war expenditure was $30 billion and $19\nbillion over the years, according to some studies $19 billion had been lost due\nto waste, fraud and abuse. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allied forces have lost more than\n3500 soldiers while more than 2300 have been US soldiers. It is estimated that\n64 100 Afghan Army and Police carders lost their lives during the 20 year\nperiod of war. From 2001 to 2019 the number of civilians killed owing to air\nstrikes increased by 330% and the total killed in the war is estimated as\n241,000. The total number of civilians uprooted or displaced during the war had\nbeen around 400,000 with about 70,000 being driven away from their homes in\n2020.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe\nBiden assured three weeks ago that US troops withdrawal will never be like when\nthe US left Vietnam in disgrace and it was unlikely that Taliban will capture\npower<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the long war hardly within a very short period of withdrawing of the allied forces, the adversary had been able to capture the total area from the control of elected Afghan government with almost all the material, machines and the arms left behind by the allied forces. Patricia Gossman. Associate Asia Director of HRW summarizes the outcome of the counter -productive partnerships engaged by the USA in following para.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

..”I have spent much of\nthese past 20 years talking to Afghans about the consequences of\ncounterterrorism gone wrong \u2013 the civilian deaths and injuries that never made\nit into the <\/strong>Pentagon\u2019s airstrike death count<\/strong><\/a>; the night raids that turned into <\/strong>summary executions<\/strong><\/a> targeting people who had the bad luck to live in\na contested district; the <\/strong>torture<\/strong><\/a> of people in custody that destroyed lives and\nmotivated revenge. I have also talked to many Afghans about the unforeseen\nconsequences of these actions \u2013 the Taliban resurgence abetted by Afghan\ngovernment abuses and corruption; the grievances and disillusionment that drove\npeople to lose faith that post-2001 Afghanistan would be better; and the <\/strong>rise of the Islamic State (ISIS<\/strong><\/a>) in Afghanistan, an offspring of Pakistan pandering\nto Islamist extremism and Afghan warlords\u2019 mis-governance in Afghanistan\u2019s\neast. The grounds for what went wrong was laid early, long before the Taliban\nre-emerged, through squandered opportunities and the obliviousness or apathy of\nU.S. generals about atrocities being committed by Afghan forces, the U.S.\nmilitary, and CIA units. Safe havens provided by Pakistan certainly helped pave\nthe way for the Taliban\u2019s return. But far too little attention has been given\nto what the United States did \u2013 and failed to do \u2013 in the years since 2001, and\nhow U.S. decisions and policies essentially set the stage for failure”. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the sudden withdrawal of forces and Afghanistan spinning away\nuncontrolled as stated by the UN chief was anticipated by the experts on geo\n-politics and many other commentators. The original objective of going in\nsearch of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda terrorists were achieved by the USA but they\ncould not overcome the Taliban which was also considered as a Muslim\nfundamentalist ‘terrorist ‘ group. Some reports have highlighted that the\nTalibans have links to ISIS and Al Qaeda  which complicates the overall\nsecurity situation as it could lead to cross border terrorist attacks in many\nfronts with the help of the victorious Talibans in an unstable Afghanistan.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Finally. one should also consider the ramifications in the region\nconsequent to the regime change in Afghanistan. One of the burning issues will\nbe the management of refugee outflow from Afghanistan. Some estimate that the\nAfghans awaiting to seek greener pastures will be in the region of 500,000.\nTheir movement immediately to the neighbouring countries in the region will\nhave to be managed so that there will not be internal repercussions in the\nreceiving countries. Central Asian countries, Pakistan, India<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

and China will have to adopt policies of engagement with the\nnationalistic Afghanistan, Then , the relationship with the major powers such\nas the USA, Russia, China and India will either provide the required balanced\nenvironment for the economic and social development  of Afghanistan or if one or more major powers\nstrive to impose their will to control Afghanistan it will lead to a new phase\nof political instability in the country as well as the region.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, the researchers have another\nopportunity to probe into how the arms industry helped to prolong this\nmisguided adventure and if possible to stop such wasteful efforts in the\nfuture. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RANJITH SOYSA <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RANJITH SOYSA  No sooner the US and Allied Forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban forces walked into the capital city and captured power. What was the mission of the US and allied forces in Afghanistan for 20 long years? The unfolding events paint a very bleak picture of the expectations of the war in Afghanistan, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ranjith-soysa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}