Afghanistan, Still Gaming The West

"We spent too much money, too fast, on too small a country with too little oversight. And we totally, totally overwhelmed the Afghan economy."
"To a great extent it was wasted. Like spaghetti on a wall, some of it will stick. But a lot of it fell off and became money that was turned into bank accounts in Dubai and houses in Dubai, houses in Vancouver and houses in northern Virginia."
These [that Afghan security forces are inept and there is] endemic [corruption] and rampant [narcotics production] are problems we still have to face. Some of them we contributed to. On corruption, we threw gasoline on the fire."
"The problems that we [United States investigations] find are the problems that the Canadians should [also] find."
John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, U.S.

"This [Canadian monitoring and reportage] is enhanced by contracted third-party monitoring of projects at the ground level. On a case-by-case basis, Canada elects to commission project evaluations to better understand the results and to gain lessons learned."
Amy Mills, spokesperson, Global Affairs Canada

Canada’s new defence policy, with its extensive foreign policy undertones, paints a gloomy picture of rising global economic disparity, violent extremism and unstoppable mass migration.  Canada is, it continues, an island of stability in comparison and therefore “called to leadership” as “we have the capacity to help those who live under the threat of violence.” Kilford

From the Greek-Macedonian military incursion of Alexander the Great intent on civilizing Afghanistan, to the 18th Century Russian-British campaigns to outsmart one another in establishing a presence in that country whose own warlords have always exploited its people and its resources, a people of fierce tribal loyalties and fiercer determination to counter foreign invasions with their own brand of medieval-style atrocities, to the more recent invasion by the Soviet Union, leaving it to limp home in the failure of reduced investment in time, manpower and treasury, and on to the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, Afghanistan has been bloodied but resilient.

Human rights and civilizational social development and prosperity linked in that order is a Western concept, not one recognized by tribal societies, much less those ruled by Islamic precepts of order maintained through Sharia law. The original purpose of the 2001 invasion was to convince the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to justice over the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. When, thanks to its ally Pakistan, the U.S. failed to succeed in that mission, it chose to paint its presence there as one of mercy, intending to guide the stone-age nation to democracy and equality leading to prosperity and self-defence.

Reality has a way of invariably getting into the picture, distorting such intents, when the West involves itself in Islamic-majority countries. In Islam, the faithful (umma) are the bulwark of the pillars that hold up the canopy under which the religion thrives even while it feeds upon itself as it inexorably expands its influence through conquest. One achieved by persuasion if possible, force as required, in all conceivable manifestations of the power to coerce, terrorize and convert the willing and the unwilling alike. That powerful force of persuasion has been churning through the globe since the 7th Century.

Police forces clash with protesters during a demonstration in Kabul earlier this month. Hundreds of demonstrators demanded better security in the Afghan capital in the wake of a powerful truck bomb attack that killed scores of people. (Massoud Hossaini/Associated Press)

Persuasion is too time-consuming, violence has its costs but the spread of fear leaving few options but to comply grew Islam exponentially to capture Africa, India, Spain, Italy, Portugal in its throes. Islam has never forgiven the West for thwarting it from its rampant growth. Yet the West still believes it can pacify Islam by respecting it and being tolerant of its excesses and forgiving it for slaughtering non-believers and its own alike. After the invasion of Afghanistan, the moral obligation of 'helping' the country to learn how to deflect the attacks of the resurgent Taliban, of building schools and wells and health clinics seized the minds of the invaders whose intention was merely to extract the evil they saw without realizing that the evil was everywhere, so deeply engrained it could not be extirpated.

The sacrifice in personnel, both military and civilian, with NGOs nobly ensconcing themselves with the mission to save the country from itself has failed. The Taliban has simply kept growing itself. Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are well entrenched with activities in 70 percent of the country and entire districts completely controlled by the terrorists. The West terms them terrorists, Islam considers them honourable and heroic jihadis, responding as they should, as they must, to Islamic precepts of honouring the Koran's dictate to jihad.

So Canada, like the United States and other NATO members, swelling with pride that they have remained faithful to their collective pledge not to abandon Afghanistan, but to continue to pour funding into the country, insist on believing that their efforts and their sacrifices will make all the difference, restoring something that never existed; a coherent peace and security in a country that was never anything but a collection of tribes and brutal warlords continually at war with one another alternating with warring against intruders.

We are doomed, it seems to repeat history ad infinitum, too stupid to recognize the inevitability of failure when and where reason has never prevailed. Canada will continue to help train the Afghan military and its police, both of which agencies remain corrupt and ineffectually unreliable. And the funding will continue to flow, as it must, because of a misplaced sense of honour urging the West to give aid to those less fortunate, whose leaders bleed them dry in a sectarian, tribal society that will never surrender to Western values much less stop its slaughter.

Afghan policemen stand guard after explosions at a Shiite cultural center in Kabul on December 28, 2017 | Shah Marai/AFP 

via Getty Images