Afghanistan

What follows is a brief look at Afghanistan’s recent history as one of many battlefields for America's proxy-wars, and how it devolved into a breeding ground for religious extremism, religious oppression, war profiteering, and narcotic production. These “proxy-wars” were ultimately fought in the place of an escalated Cold War, or in effect; WWIII. As it stands now, Afghanistan still suffers from a constant state of war, and is intoxicated with decades-old ideological hatred.

In the post-modern era, industrialization reigns supreme, and conflict zones, such as Afghanistan, are poor areas for investment. The level of involvement by the international community in curbing such violence remains directly proportional to that nation's potential to develop industrially. Lack of modern highways, railways, and airports are not the only factors that keep foreign investors out of undeveloped countries. Warring factions, who are supplied through complicated networks of drug money and clandestine operations, often use extreme ideologies to control the public. Foreign policy in regards to these nations can have lasting effects; plunging them into never-ending wars. Often these groups are responsible for the worst possible war crimes. The sad fact is that these types of organizations have been used as proxy-soldiers in many wars, and at the same time, denounced as terrorist organizations.

Our “victory” over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and the subsequent retooling of our military, was followed by a chain of events which led to many armed conflicts around the world--mostly involving nations that had played the role of pawns in our “harmless” game between superpowers. Global arms dealers, carefully placated by these two great harbingers of war, took advantage of military surpluses,and fueled racial, ethnic and tribal conflicts. In our failure to use diplomacy to stamp out these fires, we neglected the billions of people affected by this arms race.

In WWII, we learned that as rebuilding must follow “hot” wars, there was naturally political aftermath in this Cold War to be addressed. However, the global arms trade is still huge; the US defense budget is larger now than it has ever been, and nuclear proliferation has continued at a steady pace for decades. Did the Cold War not end? Or is the military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower spoke of in his farewell address to the American people just as alive today as it was in 1961? The war machine has not slowed, and the world is still polluted with its foul waste.

In actuality, the collapse of the USSR was not due to Democratic superiority, the CIA, or even the proxy-war in Afghanistan. It was due to economic factors, primarily, and the people of Russia had decided that their political system must first change in order to have an effective economy in the post-modern, corporate, capitalist world.

Take, for example, China; changes in how they participate in world trade over the last two decades have placed them in a position where political reform is following economic policies. No tremendous upheaval here! China has now become the next superpower, filling the vacuum left by the Soviet Union.

During the “Cold War”, inaccurately named for its lack of “hot” conflicts; there was a war in Afghanistan that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. There was also another war raging; the “War on Drugs”.

As the Regan Administration was helping to funnel arms to Iran and Nicaragua during the Iran Contra scandal, we openly supported the “freedom fighters” of Afghanistan in their fight against the Soviet invasion. As Manuel Noriega trafficked cocaine from Panama, the US surely looked away. The Taliban trafficked heroin from Afghanistan, and again the United States surely looked away. Many delegates from the Taliban were welcomed by the US, and diplomatic ties remained strong all the way up to the 1990's. The ill-fated Columbia Shuttle launch was even dedicated to these freedom fighters by our late movie-star president.

The export of heroin had become a major source of funding for the Taliban, as Afghanistan has the perfect environment to grow Opium poppies; high altitude, and little to no law enforcement. The warlords who were now in control used trade routes to funnel drugs, arms, and goods throughout the region. These trade routes are called the Silk Road. Thousands of years ago, they were the same routes used by Buddhist monks who carved those giant Bamiyan Buddhas, which were used by the Taliban for target practice. As the Taliban rose to power and flooded the world with cheap heroin, one could argue that we lost the “War on Drugs” just as Russia had lost the “Cold War”.

The failed state of Afghanistan was not only a failure on the part of the US, but Iran, Pakistan, Russia, the UN, and the world as a whole. Afghanistan has always been a sick nation, for which the world has no cure; we can only try to quarantine the threat, and foster social reform with compassionate diplomacy. Violence in Afghanistan resembles that of the Cold War era, only now, we call it terrorism. Religious Extremists were allowed to run rampant for many years, but we failed to take notice until we became their victims. The Bush Administration had sought to enact a policy of containment, and yet, like Iraq, the international force in place there has yet to rebuild after the US led invasion.

The attacks of 9-11 subverted the US's technological superiority in a much different way--reinvented the wheel, as it were. No longer was warfare confined to conventional, or nuclear weapons. People became the new Atomic Bomb. Technological Relativism failed to respond effectively to this new weapon: Forced Mutually Assured Destruction. Terrorism was now employing its own Ideological Weapon; using Martyrdom as its Uranium, and Jihad as its Plutonium. Death was forced upon the victims, and assured for the attackers. Our nuclear weapons were useless; a Secular Nation cannot respond to Religious Extremism with collective brute force, as we responded to Japan's Aggression in WWII. Nor could we respond with state-sanctioned suicide attacks of our own.

Do we still not realize that the rhetoric aimed at us all this time was coming from nations who feared a nuclear state, and resented us for our foreign policy that revolves around our status as one? Are we still holding onto our atomic weapons for any good reason, except to symbolize our alleged Moral Superiority? What were the 9-11 hijackers trying to accomplish? Did they succeed? And most importantly; what if they had procured a nuclear weapon?

Perhaps the hijackers viewed the victims of 9-11 in the same manner that President Truman viewed the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, these young Muslim men were convinced that their actions would somehow save lives among their people. In most societies, it seems morbid to want to read someone's suicide note--even more so when that person committed a homicide on their way out. Why should we care? Well for one, it might give us a chance to prevent it from happening again. It might, however, do nothing but anger us. Or perhaps we do not have to look that far for the answer because it has been lying underneath our feet for decades.

Neologisms, catch phrases, and lofty terms coined for these most devastating conflicts make me sick. The lives of innocent people and soldiers deserve more intelligent discussions in our media than what certain pundits spout from their dirty little mouths. Concept-wars are not a new thing for the American public, and we should instead learn some history about what we read, focusing on the roots of these problems. Perhaps the reader might be interested enough to find out what our next concept-war will entail.