US Afghan strategy up in flames

If you thought the storm over the Quran burning episode in Afghanistan has passed, think again. The issue is back in the spotlight. Even if Afghans wanted to move on, Americans have now ensured they don’t. The gunning down of 16 Afghan civilians in cold blood by a US marine on Sunday will only add fuel to the fire. 

What’s with America then? I mean after spending 11 years in the world’s most dangerous battlefield fighting the fiercely proud and hot-blooded Afghans, you have to be stark, raving mad to be doing what Americans were found doing last week.

Why is it so hard for the West to see that faith plays a pivotal role in Muslim societies and lives of the believers? The renunciation of faith may be the first step towards liberation for the West with its best and brightest minds, from Christopher Hitchens to Richard Dawkins, competing with each other to blaspheme. But what they find to be “delusional” is held in the highest esteem by Muslims.

This reverence extends to the Book that they believe to be the word of God, and to Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), who brought it. The faithful cannot imagine or tolerate slightest of slurs or affront against these beliefs.

Anyone who has seen Muslims handle the Quran would know it. They hold it with utmost reverence and do not even touch it unless they are in a state of purity. And when it comes to love and reverence for their religious icons, perhaps no one can outshine Afghans.

When those disgraceful caricatures surfaced in 2005 in the scenic Scandinavia, they provoked spontaneous protests all around the world. The strongest of them, though, were witnessed in Afghanistan. Many died in the angry demonstrations that went on for weeks. History repeated itself when two years ago an attention-hungry pastor in the distant Florida vowed to make a bonfire of the Islamic scripture.

The Afghans seldom allow a provocation or slight to go unchallenged. Killing and getting killed for honour and what is close to their heart is all in a day’s work — or Pakhtoonwali (the Pashtun way) for ordinary Afghans. Not for nothing does this land enjoy the reputation of being the ‘graveyard of empires’.

Stupid and callous

After spending more than a decade and $500 billion (Dh1.83 trillion) in Afghanistan, not to mention the thousands of lives lost on both sides, it is hard to believe the Americans didn’t know this already. So you have to be either totally stupid or utterly callous, or both, to incinerate copies of the Quran at the Bagram air base.

After days of protests and the unprecedented killing of six US military personnel, including two senior officials right inside the interior ministry by their Afghan allies, President Barack Obama coughed up a terse apology: “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies.”

He followed it with an explanation saying he had to ‘apologise’ to “save lives … and to make sure our troops are not placed in danger”. When is an apology not an apology? Obama’s commander in Afghanistan General John R. Allen, who has issued an equally sincere apology, has directed that all US forces undergo 10 days of “sensitivity training in the proper handling of religious materials”.

Familiar shenanigans

Eleven years into this war — isn’t it a bit late for that, General? Truth be told, those responsible for the “accidental incineration of the Islamic holy book” exactly knew what they were doing.

We have been here before, repeatedly, with similar American shenanigans being followed by equally perfunctory apologies. Humiliation of the Other and all that it holds sacred is clearly part of the occupation. There’s something very disturbing about burning scriptures and assaulting the most sacred of people’s beliefs. Which is seemingly why it’s resorted to again and again.

Afghanistan was rocked by violent protests in 2005 when there were reports of the Guantanamo Bay interrogators defiling the Quran as part of their methods of persuasion. Last year, the Afghans were outraged by the revelations about the US ‘kill teams’ that hunted civilians for fun, duly capturing their Kodak moment for posterity standing over their ‘trophies’.

Only recently when the American and Taliban representatives were sitting down for talks in Doha, there were these shocking images of four wisecracking US Marines urinating over dead Afghans. Other members of the ‘coalition of the willing’ haven’t been far behind. The cousins across the Atlantic, for instance, were found filming themselves abusing Afghan children.

This war for Afghan hearts and minds has gone alongside the bombing of Afghan homes and villages and even wedding and funeral processions. Thousands of innocent civilians, according to UN agencies and independent rights groups, have perished in these attacks. The recent killing of eight shepherd boys, aged between eight and six, in a Nato air strike in Kapisa province is but just one example.

Do we see a pattern here — a deliberate method in the madness? Does the upsurge in such ‘incidents’ have anything to do with the timing of the US-Taliban engagement? Anything is possible. There are many out there, including those in the US military establishment, who are desperate to derail these efforts to end this endless, perilous war.

Given the high stakes the great game and Washington’s keenness to maintain its presence in this strategic region, not to mention the rich mineral resources that Afghanistan has hidden in its belly, possibilities are endless.

Last week, conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan, livid over Obama’s Quran apology, pointed out that the US has squandered hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in Afghanistan, raising the sensible question: Why’s America still stuck in Afghanistan? Why, indeed? Well, here’s why.

Afghanistan provides Uncle Sam with a rare vantage point to keep a resurgent Russia and a clever China on the one hand and an irrepressible Iran and pesky Pakistan, on the other, in check. The US already has an overwhelming presence in the Gulf, the energy bowl of the world. The 9/11 was merely an excuse and a rather convenient opportunity.

But then Americans aren’t the first to enter Afghanistan with such ambitions. The British and more recently the Russians have been there before them, not to mention numerous others, from the Greeks to the Mongols. While the crafty British had to give up after several disastrous and humiliating attempts, the Afghan occupation cost the Russians their Soviet empire.

Do the Americans, after a disastrous decade in Afghanistan, really think they can succeed where all others failed? It had always been a doubtless enterprise. But with the sweetness and light that the coalition of the willing has been forever spreading around it is doomed. That Uncle Sam will have to leave sooner or later is not a matter of debate. It’s a certainty. What remains to be seen is how Americans go — the way the British left with egg in their face or in the manner Russians departed, bruised and battered with their empire crumbling around them.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Gulf based writer. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/aijazzakasyed