In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, coverage in the West has been rife with the human rights abuses, some genuine and much fabricated, of the new Taliban government, or Islamic Emirate. One would think that the catastrophic failure of a Western installed government collapsing within eleven days would lead to a moment of pause and reflection, particularly amongst sections of the Western media that had spent much of the last two decades banging the drums of a war whose supposed gains took less than a fortnight to melt away. Apparently not.
Yet Western propaganda about the failure of the Taliban in adhering to human rights diverts attention from other human rights abuses, namely those of Western troops. This is coincidental at best, convenient at best. The narrative does not centre around how, or why the West can count itself resolutely ‘defeated’ in Afghanistan, but assumes the position of the West being the savours of Afghans, especially women, in a grotesque 21st century reincarnation of what was known as the white man’s burden. If the West were saviours, it follows that those who fought the West, the Taliban, were the enemy and those who menaced human rights.
By now, we have all seen the images of Western troops at Kabul airport carrying or cuddling Afghan children or altruistically giving Afghan women water. Conspicuously, the scenes that appeared to show four US troops manhandling a young Afghan woman, throwing her about ten feet off an embankment and into an open sewage ditch, were absent from the coverage. Whilst it made for painful footage to watch, it is also true that far worse atrocities were meted out to the Afghan people. The US conducted brutal military operations all over Afghanistan, but never managed to eliminate the insurgency and its supporters, who saw the struggle as an ideological battle between their Islamic way of life and an alien oppressive invader.
When Mountstuart Elphinstone arrived to Peshawar in 1809, then the Afghan winter capital, he was told bluntly by a Pashtun tribal chieftain that “We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master”. Elphinstone’s ‘Kingdom of Caubul’, originally printed as an intelligence gathering work by the East India Company, was first published after popular demand in 1815. As the canonical Western text in all affairs Afghan, it would have served US officials well to have read it and contemplated on the themes it explored, including those that the US would find out painfully remained relevant.
When it comes to the rights of school girls, sexual impropriety, wanton killings of civilians or the mutilation of corpses, a cursory look at twenty years of US presence would reveal much. Specifically, they would reveal how, for large sections of Afghan society, these actions were synonymous with the US. It is worth recapping some of these instances.
US troops and 12 year old girls
It wasn’t long after the American invasion of Afghanistan that a US marine named Toby Studebaker, who had participated in the invasion, came back from Afghanistan. What did this US Marine, an all American ‘hero’ do? He abducted a twelve year old British girl from the UK, fleeing with her to France. If US troops behaved this way in Europe, it would not be surprising that they committed far worse in Afghanistan, away from the scrutiny of their respective societies or the wrath of the law.
Honour your Nose
An Afghan woman suspected of infidelity was subjected to having her nose cut off. As it turned out, it was her husband, and not the Taliban, that had done this. It didn’t matter. The US lost no opportunity in exploiting the crime to its fullest extent. The disfigured woman was flown to the US and benefitted from the best plastic surgeons the US had to offer to remodel her nose. The woman was feted as a victim of the Taliban, eventually gaining fame by being illustrated on the front cover of Time magazine with her trademark missing nose. The USA may have fixed the woman’s nose but cannot escape from the nauseating US atrocities scarring innocent Afghan lives.
Drinking from an Afghan
When what is now Afghanistan was ravaged by the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth centuries, it was not uncommon for Mongol troops to sever the top portion of a person’s skull, clean it of its flesh and use the upper section of the skull as a bowl from which to eat and drink from, akin to a trophy. Whilst the Mongols thankfully did not return to Afghanistan, in some respects, US troops behaved little better than the Mongols. A disabled Afghan man with a prosthetic leg was murdered during a night raid by US Special forces. Special forces troops crudely took the deceased’s prosthetic leg, using the hollow prosthetic leg as an alcohol drinking vessel.
Mutilation
“US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their (female) victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.” Rather amazingly the US special forces had originally claimed that the womens’ bodies were discovered by them tied up and lifeless when they raided the house. The blame for the killings was placed upon the Taliban by ISAF. None of the trigger happy highly trained special forces soldiers in this massacre have had action taken against them. This is despite the fact that a commander of the Afghan national Police lived at the house in question and was one of two men also killed by US forces in that murderous incident. The US claimed to have come to Afghanistan not only to seize Bin Laden but also to improve womens’ rights. Given the treatment of women in night raids, the US claims in relation to promoting womens’ rights simply do not stand up to scrutiny. What would Rudyard Kipling himself have made of the behaviour of the US troops and how would he have re-worded his famous poem: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”
Afghan women did not remain in their own country as victims but stood tall and fought shoulder to shoulder in this war alongside their men against the NATO forces. One Afghan woman targeted a US convoy as a suicide bomber perhaps avenging lost loved ones.
Massacre
Throughout the war in Afghanistan innocent men, women and children continue to be killed by US forces, sometimes by bombing and other times at close range. In 2013 a US soldier, Sergeant Bales was convicted of murdering 16 Afghan civilians in the dead of night and he received a mere life sentence. “If someone loses one child, you can imagine how devastated their life would be,” said Haji Mohammad Wazir, who lost 11 family members, including his mother, wife and six of his seven children.” In 2012 Another witness stated that she saw “the man drag a woman out of her house and repeatedly hit her head against a wall.” Bales has the chance of parole so will live out his days in freedom. Whilst the US insisted only Bales had been involved in the shooting, the Afghan survivors were clear that more than one US soldier was involved. If an Afghan had killed 16 Americans then the sentence would with no doubt at all be death. This is exemplified by the case of the Palestinian American Major named Nidal who killed 13 troopers as they were preparing to leave the US for missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unlike Bales, Nidal was sentenced to death in 2013. The discrepancy in sentencing of the two is a clear example of prejudice at work.
In the fog of war controversy surrounds what exactly happened in the villages where the killings of 16 Afghan civilians occurred. Hamidzai Lali who was an Afghan member of Parliamentarian for the area in question, has stated that villagers told him 15 to 20 US troops attacked the village and raped two women before commencing the massacre. The bodies of the victims were burnt to hide the evidence of the crime. As long as US troops are tried by their own military, the truth will be as elusive as justice for the victims of this massacre.
US forces have shown a consistent pattern of scant respect for the bodies of deceased Afghans, bodies of Taliban soldiers with their feet pointing towards Mecca were burnt in 2005 in the village of Gonbaz near Kandahar as a means to insult the religious beliefs of the people. The actions were completely contrary to the Geneva Convention.
The Rapists at Begram
The Mongol Chieftain Genghis Khan is said to have remarked there is no greater joy than binding a man to a tree and ravishing his wife and daughters as the husband watches on helplessly at the plight of those dearest to him. In Begram Airport’s torture centre Moazzem Begg a British captive abducted from Pakistan faced his US tormentors. He was led to believe that his wife was also in the camp. The shrieks of a woman reached Begg’s ears, an American voice could be heard shouting “open your legs bitch!” A US soldier in front of Begg mocked him as Begg heard what he thought was his wife being ruthlessly raped by US troops. The depth of horror that Begg suffered and the poor woman suffered cannot be imagined. The captives at Begram were brave men and women whose will would not be bowed by their torturers’ misdeeds. One Afghan captive at Begram retorted to the US torturers, what worse things can you do to me, when my very own father was buried alive by the Soviets in this airport. Even in such dire circumstances the human spirit can soar in defiance against oppression.
Americans love to party
As Afghanistan burned and the US lost hopes of a victory, the Americans continued to party away in Kabul, US embassy guards engaged in strange rituals such as urinating on people and drinking vodka shots out of (buttock) cracks and biting crisps held between their colleagues’ clenched buttocks. Photos have since circulated on the internet showing embassy guards in various states of undress, including some in which they grope each other naked. In one case, a supervisor wearing underwear and brandishing bottles of alcohol abused an Afghan national by grabbing his face and using strong language to humiliate him.
To the fallen
For all those who were martyred while they had yet to reach adulthood and enjoy a life of peace, for all those martyrs whose bodies were burned after they fell resisting the US troops, those whom the US marines urinated over, the many who were slaughtered without mercy in their homes and the people who were taken by NATO troops in the dead of night, never to be seen again – let us not tarnish their memory by forgetting who the savages really are.
Standing tall like Wazir Mohammed Akbar Khan
During the US war the Taliban in one of their propoganda efforts against the current regime asked, ‘Do you want to be remembered as a son of Shah Shuja or of Dost Mohammad?’ Zahir Shah’s choice for his first son’s name Mohammed Akbar Khan, illustrates the decision of the Afghan people who will choose to be the son of Dost Mohammed.
The Future
Negotiations between the parties to the conflict need to achieve the following:
- No further direct or indirect aggression by the USA in Afghanistan.
- A closure of Guantanamo and release of detainees to their countries of origin or for settlement in the USA or other appropriate third country.
- Release of all other prisoners detained by the US as part of the war on terror.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan have an opportunity to engage in closer trade relations to improve their economies. The future can be bright despite the horrors of the last 43 years of war that have befallen Afghanistan.
With the decline of Western power, never again will a fourth-rate military power like the UK or France ever darken Afghanistan again with their evil shadow. Nor for that matter will the US Empire dare to step foot in Afghanistan, since the Emperor has no clothes.