The Graveyard of Occupying Forces

"America will work with the Afghan government as long as we see determination and progress. However, our commitment is not unlimited, and our support is not a blank cheque."
"We will ask our NATO allies and global partners to support our new strategy, with additional troop and funding increases in line with our own. We are confident they will."
"Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan."
"I share the American people's frustration. In the end, we will win."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

U.S. troops assess the damage to an armoured vehicle with the NATO-led military coalition after a suicide attack in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, this month. (Ahmad Nadeem/Reuters)

For untold centuries Afghanistan has been a country that has been invaded, occupied by countries like Britain and Russia, in a revolving-door repeat of history that has seen such foreign nations arrive and finally depart, defeated by a country whose tribal passions refuse to be dampened. Tribal, clan and sectarian animosities are set aside with the presence of foreign armies, only to be ferociously reinstated in bloody civil wars when the foreign enemy slinks off to lick the wounds of its sacrifice of treasury, lives and time.

In more recent times the Soviet Union sought to install a Communist puppet government, bringing on the fury of the world of Arab Muslims at the presence yet again of unbelievers manipulating an Islamic environment. The U.S., in a bid to outmanoeuvre the Soviet Union, conspired with Pakistan to train and arm foreign Muslim guerrillas arriving zealously to take their place in a new jihad. That pact with the devil saw the CIA in league with an untrustworthy Pakistan, both engaged in giving birth to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Islam had its vengeful reward in 9-11, the serpent venomously attacking the devious Americans who had no idea with whom they were dealing, an event that saw a U.S.-led NATO invasion to dislodge al-Qaeda and the Taliban, oblivious to the fact that Pakistan's military and its Inter-Services Intelligence Agency supported and gave haven and funding to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And lurking in the background, awaiting its opportunity from centuries back to the present, was Iran.

While the Taliban under the collective assault was forced to vacate its mountain strongholds on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden succeeded in evading the attacks meant to destroy them, their ideological Islamofascism could not be defeated and they returned season after season. "NATO has all the watches, but we have all the time", was the refrain as they simply waited out the years until the weary and defeated West was prepared to withdraw.

Nothing worked in Afghanistan, not the billions spent on relief and reconstruction, for security and "governance and development" and the time, energy and funding for counter-narcotic activities. Afghans are still largely illiterate, poverty reigns supreme, Afghan farmers still prefer growing poppies and the Taliban still gain profit from the opium drug trade. There was the massive undertaking to train the Afghan national police and the Afghan armed forces, the result of which remains largely negative.

Not only have the Taliban returned with a vengeance in the final withdrawal of Western forces, leaving it to the Afghan military to look after their own security, where the rate of abandonment of their ranks is unprecedented, and the deaths attributed to Taliban attacks mind-boggling, but al-Qaeda too has been resurrected, and the region has been infiltrated by Islamic State as well. On Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index Afghanistan ranks ahead of Somalia, South Sudan, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Libya.

The hundreds of drone strikes by the United States has repeatedly killed the core leadership of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but nothing restrains new leaders from eagerly taking the helm. And nor have those entering the leagues of al-Qaeda and the Taliban diminished over the years of counter-attack; their numbers have increased exponentially; nothing seems to attract Muslims to the war of jihad more than the perceived opposition of the infidel Crusaders..

The religious pathological fanaticism that Islam breeds into its adherents has its roots in the conquest agenda of a tribal, tailor-made religion that responds to the traditional hatreds between clans and sects. So, bring on the renewal of troops, of nations loyal to the concept of civilization and the defence of democracy in a region and a religion where nothing could be more foreign, and no, there is no force, singly or collectively, that will succeed in obliterating violence from any Muslim nation dedicated to its pathways.

Getty - Contributor     British SAS troops are returning to Afghanistan in a big way, sources say