Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] Afghanistan is open for business
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http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/07/afghanistan-open-for-business
Analysis: Michael Skinner
======== AFGHANISTAN IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS ====================================
Canadian activist Michael Skinner looks at how the Western corporate
interests are profiting off the occupation of Afghanistan.
January 7, 2011
MANY OF the Canadian military, police and civilian personnel who risk their
lives in Afghanistan truly believe they are fighting a just war of good
against evil. But America's and Britain's claims that the unsanctioned
unilateral invasion of Afghanistan, which began the global war on terror, was
justified by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are as credible as claims the
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist justified
Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia to begin the First World
War.
It is time to look beyond faith in baseless beliefs to investigate facts.
What interests are at stake in Afghanistan?
When I visited Afghanistan in 2007 [1], many Afghans told me they distrust
our motivations for invading and occupying their land. Many initially held
some hope for positive change, but they had good reasons to be wary of
Western interests. There is even more evidence today to back their fears.
Afghans know why invaders throughout history sought control of Afghan real
estate. Not only does Afghanistan contain some of the richest mineral
deposits in the world, but it also sits astride the shortest trade routes
between China and Europe as well as between Russia and India. In this age of
globalizing free trade and an accelerating scramble for natural resources,
Afghanistan sits at the epicenter of Eurasia.
And as Zbigniew Brzezinski noted in 1997 [2]: "What happens with the
distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance
to America's global primacy and historical legacy."
*Regional Ambitions*
American military and economic strategists recognize Afghanistan is a
necessary bridgehead to engage America's competitors China, Russia and India
on their home field as well as to contain and pacify potential spoilers to
the expansion of free trade in Iran, Pakistan and the volatile Central Asian
states. Plans to develop Afghanistan's abundant natural resources and reopen
the ancient Silk Road as a modern transportation, communications and energy
transmission network are well underway.
The first two industrial-scale development projects have proceeded beyond
planning to implementation. In 2008, the Afghan government sold the
concession to mine Aynak [3], one of the largest copper deposits in the
world. On December 11, 2010, the presidents of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and India signed a deal to proceed with the 1,700 kilometer TAPI
pipeline [4], which will transport natural gas from Turkmenistan across
Afghanistan and Pakistan to energy-hungry India. Many more mega-projects
currently in the planning stages will soon be implemented.
*The Great Game: Liberating Afghans or Liberating Capital?*
The industrial-scale developments now underway and other planned
mega-projects hold the promise of liberating Afghans from their miserable
poverty. However, Afghans recognize the Western intervention that began in
the 17th century with the British East India Company's relentless push into
Asia was primarily about liberating capital to return profits for investors.
There is no evidence anything is different today.
Liberating Afghans, even if it is a genuine concern of many people in the
West, is secondary to corporate profit-seeking and the geopolitical interests
of powerful states.
In the early 19th century, Arthur Conolly, an officer of the East India
Company, called the geopolitical competition for state-backed corporate
control of Eurasia the "Great Game." Today, we are at the bottom of the
fourth inning of this centuries-long Great Game, with no end in sight. The
current score: Afghanistan has been forcibly pried open for business. What
might happen in the next inning is anyone's guess, but some powerful
investors are betting they will profit.
The U.S./NATO occupation of Afghanistan, now in its tenth year, has failed to
institute a democratic Afghan state capable of adequately providing the basic
necessities of life--food distribution, water supplies, basic sanitation,
housing, energy supplies, education, health care and a legitimate system of
law and order.
The bottom line is human development projects are not where either private
investors or states are investing their resources. The bulk of public money,
thus far, has gone into military and security spending. Of the little capital
that has gone toward human development, only a fraction reached Afghans. Most
of the money returns to the originating states to pay salaries and supply
costs, while corrupt Western and Afghan agents siphon off much of the rest.
It is clear the promises of liberating Afghans, particularly Afghan women,
are not materializing and are unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable
future. The UN reports that 96 percent of Afghans have been negatively
affected by the war. The Red Cross observes that current conditions are the
worst in 30 years.
But it is equally clear that the liberation of capital is successfully
proceeding. Resource and infrastructure development projects on multi-billion
dollar scales are rapidly proceeding. It is evident that states and investors
are beginning to invest heavily in large-scale industrial development.
Whether these investments will return profits for investors is yet unsure.
It is more uncertain whether these investments will have any positive effect
for most Afghans. Judging by the centuries of Western intervention in
Afghanistan and the well-known effects of the "resource curse" experienced by
resource rich but poor people around the world, it seems unlikely many
Afghans have much to hope for.
In 2010, the U.S. State Department reported Afghanistan "has taken
significant steps toward fostering a business-friendly environment for both
foreign and domestic investment." Afghanistan's new investment law allows 100
percent foreign ownership and provides generous tax allowances to foreign
investors, without providing any protection for Afghan workers or the
environment.
*If Nothing Else, the Global War on Terror Opened Afghanistan for Business*
Developing the Aynak copper deposit--one of the largest in the world--is the
first mega-project to begin in Afghanistan since the 1970s. Coincidently,
buildings that Soviet miners built at Aynak in the 1970s, which those miners
were forced to vacate during the war in the 1980s, later housed al-Qaeda's
base in Afghanistan.
Vancouver-based Hunter-Dickinson's bid to buy the concession to mine Aynak
was initially touted as the most likely to win. But in 2008, a subsidiary of
the China Metallurgical Group (CMCC) won the contract for the mining
concession with a bid media reports estimated at $3 to 3.5-billion. Records
of the sale peg the actual investment at $4.39 billion.
Chinese state enterprises are also building the massive infrastructure needed
to develop the Aynak mine, including electric power generators and a railway
from China via Tajikistan, which will connect to the extensive Pakistani rail
system.
The recent announcement that the long-anticipated TAPI gas pipeline will
proceed indicates not the end game sought by American strategists, but the
beginning of a long-term strategic process to construct a contemporary
equivalent of the ancient Silk Road to reconnect the disparate regions of
Eurasia.
*Why Would the U.S., the UK and Canada Sacrifice Lives and Resources to
Protect Foreign Investors in Afghanistan?*
Prominent media pundit Robert Caplan questions why the two parallel military
operations in Afghanistan--the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)
and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)--should
protect the investment of a Chinese state enterprise at the Aynak mine. He
will likely ask the same question about the TAPI gas pipeline and other
mega-projects soon to come online such as the mining concession for the
massive Hajigak iron deposit.
In the specific case of the Aynak copper mine, no private company was
prepared to invest the massive amount of capital needed not only to develop
the mine itself, but also to develop the necessary transportation,
communications and energy infrastructure. Developing Aynak requires a huge
long-term investment, which will likely far exceed $10 billion with no return
for at least a decade--all this to produce a commodity prone to price
volatility in the global markets as well as high risk from the ongoing
insurgency and political uncertainty in Afghanistan.
The Canadian, American and British mining corporations that bid on Aynak can
rely on state-financed insurance schemes to insure their foreign investments,
but not to insure anywhere near the capital needed for this risky project.
The Chinese state enterprise, on the other hand, could rely both on the deep
reserves of the Chinese state and China's need to satisfy its own insatiable
demand for copper. While it might seem ludicrous that the U.S./NATO forces
are protecting a Chinese investment, it makes strategic sense for a
state--the United States--whose primary explicit interest is globalizing free
trade.
China is financing all the risk in the Aynak project. However, private
investors from any state will potentially share the benefits of the
Chinese-financed transportation, communications and energy infrastructure
when developing future projects.
For example, the Hajigak iron mine will require only a relatively short
railway to connect to the Chinese-built mainline with its connections to
global markets. Most importantly, the Chinese are dependent on the continued
presence of the U.S./NATO forces in Afghanistan, as well as the training and
equipping of Afghan army, air force and police force to insure the security
of their investment.
In the case of the TAPI gas pipeline, the U.S. supported this project to
forestall a competing Iranian plan to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan
through Iran. Both the Aynak mine and the TAPI gas pipeline are consistent
with America's explicitly stated strategy of engaging China in the
globalizing system of liberalization, while containing Iran in an attempt to
modify its behaviour.
*America's Globalizing Liberalization Strategy*
The American strategy is explicitly (although not necessarily clearly) stated
in two Bush-era documents--the U.S. National Security Strategy 2002/2006
(also known as "the Bush doctrine" [5]) and the U.S. National Defense
Strategy 2008--both of which continue to guide the Obama administration and
the foreign policies of America's closest allies, including Canada.
In a chapter titled, "Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free
Markets and Free Trade," the Bush Doctrine explains that "real freedom" is
free trade. Globalizing this so-called "real freedom," whether through
diplomacy, economic coercion, or warfare, is the explicit strategy of the
U.S.
America's strategy to globally liberate capital investors is not new, nor is
the more publicized feature of the Bush Doctrine--pre-emptive military
action. The U.S. was globalizing free trade and regularly using pre-emptive
military force as a tactic to implement its strategy throughout the 19th and
20th centuries. What is new in the Bush Doctrine is that this strategy is
explicitly stated.
U.S.-led military operations are currently--in the best-case
scenario--establishing a bridgehead in Central Asia to further engage China,
Russia, India and Pakistan in the globalization of free trade, while
containing Iran until it might modify its behavior. In a worst-case scenario,
U.S. forces will contain any state, including China, which might deviate from
globalizing free trade. American strategists outline this two-track
engagement-containment policy in the 2008 U.S. National Defense Strategy.
American-led military forces in Afghanistan and throughout Asia provide the
muscle to implement any range of possible tactics, which might be necessary
to support this engagement-containment strategy. Even after the planned
"departure" of American combat forces, large numbers of U.S. and allied
forces will remain based in Afghanistan as they have after almost every
American military occupation in history from the Philippines to Cuba.
Regardless of the possible range of outcomes of the liberalization via
engagement-containment strategy--at one extreme, pacification of all spoilers
and total trade liberalization across Eurasia, or, at the other horrific
extreme, total inter-state war--the global war on terror generates huge
profits for some businesses. Public wealth is transferred not only to
businesses in the military industrial complex, but also to those in many
peripheral industries such as transportation, construction, and
communications.
Contrary to Canada's pacifist myth, Canadian industries are at the core of
the globalizing military-industrial complex. War has been good for these
Canadian industries. Since 2001, Canada has risen from the seventh-largest
global exporter of military products to sixth, with exports barely trailing
those of China. In the same time, the Canadian Association of Defense and
Security Industries (CADSI) increased its membership from a few hundred
companies to more than 800, which can boast of adding more than $10 billion
to the economy in 2010.
Spending on the Canadian Forces, the RCMP and other Canadian police and
security forces engaged in the global war on terror, while an expense to most
taxpayers, transfers public resources to private profits.
*The American-led global protection racket*
Today, as in previous eras, the state, coalition of states or empire that can
seize the position of arbiter and protector of trade can rule as a hegemonic
sovereign in the global system.
Reminiscent of Buck Henry's brilliant 1960s spoof of the Cold War, /Get
Smart/, Western state leaders and opinion-shapers tell us our only choice is
control versus chaos. Without an omnipotent American empire, so the story
goes, our world, as we know it, will devolve into chaos.
The challenge for the U.S., as Zbigniew Brzezinski has argued since the
1990s, is that whoever controls Central Asia including Afghanistan will
control Eurasia and consequently the world. The problem for the U.S. is that,
other than its military power, it has no comparative advantage economically,
politically or socially over other powerful states in the competition for
influence in Central Asia. A constant state of insecurity in the region is,
thus, to America's advantage.
Liberalization, whether in economic, political, or social terms, is in a
state of disrepute globally. Liberalization has lost its attraction.
Seemingly, the only viable alternative to globalizing liberalization is
coercion--force the foreigners to liberalize. However, this tactic is not
working in Afghanistan.
*Roots of Afghan Resistance--Four Innings of the Great Game*
Neoliberal theorists promise that liberating capital liberates people.
However, reality demonstrates that, even in the best of liberal states,
unless mitigating factors such as strong labor unions and social movements
exist, liberating capital enriches and empowers stockholders with little
excess left to trickle down to anyone else. Likewise, profit-seeking behavior
is proven to be environmentally destructive, unless corporations and states
are constantly held to account by other social forces.
It should not be surprising then that Afghans are skeptical that imposing the
neoliberal system of economic liberalization on Afghanistan will work in
their favor.
Afghans of all Afghanistan's multicultural nations, even those who Westerners
might judge as illiterate, have rich traditions of oral history through which
they learn their own histories. Considering Afghan history, it should not be
surprising, as Afghans constantly reminded me during my visit, that they are
skeptical of promises they will be liberated as a result of Western
intervention.
*The First Inning--19th Century to the First World War*
Throughout the 19th century, the leaders of the British, Russian and Persian
(Iranian) empires redrew the borders of Afghanistan, so this fledgling
multi-cultural nation-state would serve as a buffer zone between their
empires. This purpose for Afghanistan as a buffer state, which was thrust
upon it by competing empires, would prevail throughout the first three
innings of the Great Game until the collapse of the USSR left the U.S. as the
sole superpower.
After losing three wars in Afghanistan, the British finally withdrew from
Afghanistan after the First World War to end the first inning of the Great
Game. The Russian Tsar, facing a popular revolution, had his own domestic
problems to deal with, so the Russians briefly lost interest in Afghanistan
as well.
*The Second Inning--Development During the Early Cold War*
After a brief respite from Western intervention during the interwar period
and the Second World War, Afghanistan was again forced into the role of a
buffer state--this time separating the empires of the American "First World"
and Soviet "Second World" during the Cold War.
The second inning of the Great Game was played in Afghanistan, as it was in
many parts of the so-called Third World, via competing development projects
rather than warfare. But the development competition between the First and
Second Worlds was only marginally less destructive than warfare for many
Afghans. The Helmand-Arghandab Valley Authority (HAVA) project directed by
the U.S. from the 1940s to the 1970s is one example of the direct destruction
caused by so-called development.
Whether well-intentioned or not, the net result of the HAVA, according to
historian Nick Cullather in his 2002 article "Damming Afghanistan" [6] was
disastrous. Afghans were left with a devastated environment and on the hook
to pay millions of dollars to the American construction contractor Morrison
Knudesen.
Cullather reports that beginning in 1946, the salaries of Morrison Knudsen's
staff cost the equivalent of Afghanistan's total exports. The Afghan
government passed these costs on to agricultural producers, which offset any
gains irrigation produced. "Although it pulled in millions in international
funding," Cullather notes, "the HAVA soaked up the small reserves of
individual farmers and may well have reduced the total national investment in
agriculture."
Prior to the HAVA project, pastoralist wool producers had produced the
primary export and greatest foreign exchange, but they were entirely
displaced by the project. Moreover, rather than providing irrigation for
existing farmers, many farmers were displaced from their traditional land
holdings. Consequently, "the bulk of the reclaimed land was farmed by tenants
of Morrison Knudsen, the government, or contractors hired by the government,"
according to Cullather.
Perhaps the greatest long-term effect of the mega-dam project is the
waterlogging and salinization, which led to desertification of much of the
formerly productive farmland of Kandahar and Helmand. In 1949, before even
the first dam was completed, salinization was evident. But demolishing
half-completed dams would have been a loss of face for the Afghan government
and a loss of income for Morrison Knudeson. A 1965 study Cullather cites
concluded: "crop yields per acre had actually dropped since the dams were
built, sharply in areas already cultivated but evident even in areas
reclaimed from the desert."
Consequently, opium poppy is one of the few viable crops that can grow in
what was previously a fertile food-producing area suitable for vineyards and
orchards, which fed not only Afghans, but provided substantial income from
agricultural exports.
In an article published by the /New York Times Magazine/ in 1956 titled,
"Lessons in Foreign Aid Policy," the authors observe the burden of U.S. loans
and lack of tangible results created "a dangerous strain on both the Afghan
economy and the nation's morale" which "may have unwittingly and indirectly
contributed to driving Afghans into Russian arms."
By 1970, according to Cullather, agricultural yields in the HAVA area "were
among the lowest in the world" and "farm incomes in the valley were below
average for Afghanistan and declining." In 1972, Afghans suffered an acute
food shortage followed by a drought in 1973, which compounded the crisis.
As its signature development project to justify its participation in the
global war on terror, the Canadian government chose to reconstruct the Dahla
dam--one of the many HAVA dams originally built by Morrison Knudsen. The
Canadian contractor, SNC Lavalin, is likely to be the only beneficiary of
this $50.2 million boondoggle. At present, it is unclear whether SNC Lavalin
will complete the reconstruction after Canadian Forces withdraw from
Kandahar.
While American and Soviet development projects could at times be directly
destructive, there was an even more destructive political problem. Various
Afghan political leaders developed allegiances to serve their respective
American or Soviet patrons as opposed to being accountable to Afghans.
Consequently, and sparked by the intensifying food crisis, in 1973, Afghans
violently overthrew the constitutional monarchy to create a republic, which
was itself soon overthrown, in 1978, to create a state that was
democratic-socialist in name only.
*The Third Inning--the Anti-Socialist Jihad During the Late Cold War*
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) that seized power, in
1978, was as paranoiac and brutal as Stalin at his worst. The party
leadership not only purged its opposition, it purged its potential Maoist
allies as well as the members of a critical faction within the PDPA.
Nevertheless, the PDPA government did institute (albeit, by ham-fisted and
ultimately counter-productive means) some progressive socialist policies such
as land redistribution, the banning of dowries for brides, and legislation
protecting freedom of choice within marriages.
In March 1979, legislation instituting the universal education of Afghan
girls and boys sparked a violent revolt in Herat by Islamic radicals led by a
former Afghan army major Ismail Khan. During the uprising, a number of
visiting Soviet political advisers and their families were killed. Steve
Coll, in his research of both American and Soviet government documents for
his book /Ghost Warriors/, notes that leaders of both superpowers were at a
loss as to how to react.
Soviet leaders retaliated immediately by bombing Herat. However, the
gradually democratizing Soviet leadership, according to Coll, was loath to
further support the heavy-handed Stalinistic PDPA government in Kabul.
Then, on July 3, 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, acting on the advice of
his security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, secretly provided military aid, via
the Pakistani ISI military intelligence service, to the mujahideen insurgents
(Mujahideen translates as warriors for Islam, but was sanitized in Western
accounts as meaning "freedom fighters").
The conventional Western narrative of the war begins when the Soviet military
later invaded Afghanistan, on December 25, 1979. The ensuing war between the
allied Soviet and Afghan militaries versus American-backed mujahideen
insurgents was devastating for most Afghans, except for the few warlords who
gained wealth and power.
The Soviet withdrawal in 1989 did not end the war. The mujahideen insurgents,
still backed by the U.S. among other states, continued to fight, but could
not topple the PDPA government until 1992. One of seven competing mujahideen
factions then instituted the first Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Afghans criticize the hypocrisy of Western leaders who profess to uphold
liberal social values, but, for the sake of power, supported the rise of an
Afghan political regime based on religious zealotry. The mujahideen began
their ascent to power specifically opposed to universal education among other
progressive reforms congruent with both socialist and liberal social values.
The mujahideen were explicitly congratulated in the Bonn Agreement. Many of
the leaders of the Islamic insurgency, including its instigator Ismail Khan,
despite many credible allegations against them as war criminals, were
rewarded with powerful political positions in the post 9/11 Islamic Republic
of Afghanistan constructed by the U.S.-led military alliance.
*The 4th Inning--New World Order, American Primacy and the Empire of Capital*
With the collapse of the Soviet empire, the need to use Afghanistan as a
buffer state ceased, but its geopolitical and economic importance on the
Eurasian supercontinent remains. Unlike the three previous innings of the
Great Game during which Afghanistan was used to contain competitors,
Afghanistan is now a bridgehead to engage America's competitors China,
Russia, and India. Nonetheless, it is still used to contain and pacify
potential spoilers to the expansion of free trade in Iran, Pakistan and the
volatile Central Asian states. In a worst-case scenario, if the current
environment deteriorated, U.S./NATO forces based in Afghanistan could be used
to contain China, Russia or India.
George Bush Sr. re-proclaimed Woodrow Wilson's dream of a "New World Order"
as the Soviet empire collapsed. However, rather than a multilateral world
order of united nations, this is a hierarchical world order in which the U.S.
declares its exceptional right to unilaterally invade any state that
threatens American primacy. It is a liberal world order ruled by an
American-led although not exclusively American Empire of Capital engaging in
pre-emptive war as a tactic to further globalize economic liberalization.
The Aynak mine and the TAPI gas pipeline, along with dozens of other
mega-projects for trade, resource extraction, and commercial infrastructure
development, were envisaged decades ago. The Silk Road Strategy Act of 1997,
which was introduced to the U.S. Congress, but failed to pass into law, is
one of many documented indications that, in the 1990s, American strategists
were intent on opening Afghanistan and all of Central Asia to business by
re-establishing under-utilized trade routes not only for gas pipelines, but
for every conceivable medium for transportation, communication, and energy
transmission.
However, in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic the U.S. had helped create, in
1992, instantly began to collapse at its inception. This was not a good
environment for investors other than arms suppliers.
The seven factions of mujahideen insurgents the U.S. had variously supported
throughout the jihad against the PDPA government in Kabul turned against one
another in a competition to control Afghanistan. Each faction drew support
from myriad foreign sources. While one faction held power in Kabul, three
others shelled the city from the surrounding hills. Eighty percent of the
city was destroyed during the next four years of civil war.
As Afghanistan descended deeper into the chaos of this civil war, the Taliban
movement emerged in 1994, in Kandahar, promising to bring order guided by
Sharia law to Afghans. In 1996, the Taliban gained control of Kabul and most
of Afghanistan instituting the second Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Leaders of the first Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and two formerly warring
mujahideen factions retreated to the north allied as the United Islamic Front
for the Salvation of Afghanistan. Western media invented a more palatable
translation of the United Islamic Front (UIF)--the Northern Alliance.
From 1996 to 2001, the U.S. tacitly recognized the de facto governments of
both Islamic Republics, and frequently played one against the other in
negotiations to among other things, proceed with the original TAPI gas
pipeline proposal.
In the end, the significant difference between the two opposing regimes was
not that the Taliban was a regressive and brutal regime and the UIF were
benevolent. In fact, both regimes were regressive and brutal. Leaders of both
regimes are alleged to have committed egregious war crimes and crimes against
humanity. The significant difference was that the Taliban were less willing
to bend to American demands; whereas, the UIF leaders were prepared to profit
from a closer relationship with the U.S. and its closest allies.
The events of 9/11 provided the pretext to eliminate the Taliban along with
al-Qaeda to begin a global war on terror with overt and covert military
operations in every region of the world from the Philippines to Africa and
Latin America.
*The Next Inning of the Great Game--Corporate Expansion and Social
Repression?*
The first Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, with Canadian help has been
re-instituted as the Karzai led third Islamic Republic. Like its
predecessors, it began collapsing at its inception. For almost ten years
Canadians fought to protect it.
Soon, the Canadian role will change from combating the Afghan resistance to
training some of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of
thousands more police who will replace U.S./NATO forces in Afghanistan as
well as profitably supplying them with their weapons and equipment.
The war in Afghanistan is escalating, but we Canadians might content
ourselves with the knowledge that our military and police personnel,
relegated to a new training mission, will no longer be in harms way. However,
there are no firm assurances that Canadian Special Forces the JTF2, and the
newly created CSOR, and SOAS will not continue combat operations in
Afghanistan as well as in the numerous other overt and covert battlefronts of
the global war on terror.
Regardless, the issue of protecting Canadian Forces (CF) personnel from harm
is a red-herring. CF personnel recognize their personal risk and are prepared
to take that risk, if their mission is justified. The question is not whether
we should protect CF personnel from harm. The question is whether any
military intervention in Afghanistan is justified. Whether engaged in direct
combat or only in military and police training as well as military and
security equipment supply, Canada remains engaged in an illegitimate military
intervention.
If Afghans had a legitimate government to govern a legitimate system of law
and order, there might be some justification for providing training services
as well as for providing military and security equipment even though the
invasion of Afghanistan that created that government was itself illegal and
unjustified. However, no such system of legitimate governance exists or is
likely to exist soon in Afghanistan. We have been propping up an illegitimate
government with military force for almost a decade.
With Afghanistan opening for business there are promises Afghans will reap
the rewards. However, if the history of development of other states "blessed"
with natural resources in the past few centuries holds true, Afghans are most
likely to suffer the negative political, social, and environmental effects of
the so-called "resource curse."
Any profits that might be directed toward Afghans will likely be needed to
pay Western military and security equipment suppliers who are equipping the
hundreds of thousands of national security forces and rebuilding an Afghan
air force that is likely to cost many hundreds of billions of dollars.
*What Are We Training Afghans For?*
Are we training Afghan soldiers and police only to kill terrorists, or are we
training them to also suppress any Afghan activists who might resist their
loss of freedom or destruction of their environment during the inevitably
conflictual process of economic liberalization and industrial development?
The American record, in recent decades, of training military and police who
then become war criminals and human rights abusers is horrific. The former
School of Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., now called WHINSEC (Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation) is a prime example. Many of
the 60,000 alumni of this training school became prominent leaders of
right-wing military coups and perpetrators of torture and repression of
democratic movements throughout Latin America.
Do we think sustaining the global war on terror whether by direct combat, or
by providing training and arms supplies, will transform the people Michael
Ignatieff dismissively refers to as "barbarians" in his book /Empire Lite/?
If so, imagine if the War of 1812 had never ended in North America, or that
the Fenian raids (the American-based terrorist attacks on Canada between 1866
and 1871) had continued with little respite until today. I suspect Canadian
society would be far different--it would probably be like the war-torn
society in Afghanistan where the world powers continue to play the Great Game
of geopolitics. Consider that most people of means would flee gutting the
intelligentsia and middle class. Every founding and immigrant nation, backed
by various foreign powers with their own agendas, would fight one another.
The survivors would be those who can either fight well or remain subservient
to the warriors.
This is the legacy of several centuries of economic liberalization and
warfare in Afghanistan. As chaotic as it is, it presents a better environment
for returning large profits on capital investment than one in which social
movements, environmental movements, and labor unions might freely form to
resist and mitigate if not eliminate the prime interest of corporate profit
seeking.
/First published in/ The Bullet [7].
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[1] http://tradeunionistsagainstthewar.blogspot.com/2010/04/dispatches-introduction.html
[2] http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/53392/zbigniew-brzezinski/a-geostrategy-for-eurasia
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aynak
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bush_Doctrine
[6] http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/89.2/cullather.html
[7] http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/445.php
