The war in Afghanistan was a total disaster
2021-08-24 16:32:05Source: Guangming Daily
On August 22, a large number of people gathered outside the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan.Xinhua News Agency
On July 3, in the vicinity of Bagram Air Force Base in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, local residents recovered waste from the belongings left by the US military.Xinhua News Agency
Recently, the sudden “Kabul Moment” has forced people in the Nordic countries to start discussions and reflections. In NATO member states such as Norway and Denmark, more and more people have voiced the belief that the 20 years of “efforts” made by the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan have only gained “failure” and “sequelae.”
“The United States shouldn’t go to Afghanistan in the first place”
Politicians, scholars, and journalists in some Nordic countries have recently reflected on what it means for the 20-year-old Afghanistan war to end in such a hurried manner. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt recently stated strongly, “I saw US President Biden, NATO Secretary-General and former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg attribute all the blame to the Afghans. This is very unreasonable. Reasonable.”
As early as 5 years ago, the Godard report analyzing Norway’s participation in the war in Afghanistan pointed out that the operation in Afghanistan faced devastating results. Not only did the goal of establishing a stable democracy have not been achieved, but the Taliban were stronger than ever. Norway has invested a lot of money and manpower in Afghanistan, but the return is very small. On August 18, the foreign policy spokesperson of the Norwegian Labor Party, Anneken Whitfelt, stated that the Afghan issue must be critically reviewed from the perspective of all NATO participating countries. Who should be responsible for what is happening now?
Recently, “Nettavisen”, one of Norway’s most popular news websites, reposted the article “Norway’s Afghan Shame” by a senior Norwegian journalist, writer and politician Erin Borgen, and pointed out that the Godard report showed that as early as 2016 After that, Norway’s only achievement in Afghanistan was its solidarity with the American warlords. The article stated that the leading politicians in Norway tried to describe it as a long-term peace operation, but the facts are completely different. The war in Afghanistan led by the United States is a total disaster, and Norway is not really an innocent peaceful country. Since the end of 2001-the beginning of 2002, when the first batch of soldiers were sent to Afghanistan, Norway has been involved in the brutal war of aggression against Afghanistan for a long time. 9,000 Norwegian soldiers were sent to the country, and 10 of them were killed in the war. We chose to ignore it. A large number of landmines buried in the ground pollute and destroy the soil and destroy the health of children. Only 27% of Afghans can drink clean drinking water. The UN report on Afghanistan points out that there is full of grief, hunger and poverty. We still choose to ignore the “after-effects” of such a heavy war. The article sternly pointed out that some Norwegian politicians, military personnel and weapons manufacturers participated in the bloody war against Afghanistan, used illegal weapons under the leadership of the United States, set up secret prisons, and used tortured prisoners.
The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation’s American correspondent and writer Mika Hentunen recently published an article titled “Biden Leaving Afghanistan-In a Cold and Cynical Way”, stating that Biden has pushed responsibility for the Taliban victory and the chaos in Kabul. The Afghan leaders now only want to help their citizens get out of there. This seems to leave the Europeans to resolve the humanitarian crisis and the future of more than 30 million Afghans. The Finnish journalist Jarri Alenius wrote in an article that what happened in Afghanistan in the past few days has terrible consequences for the locals and the entire Eurasian continent, and its shock to the United States may exceed current imagination. Americans have a new view in the debate on Afghanistan, that the United States should not go to Afghanistan in the first place, or at least should leave 10 years ago.
Interventionist wars cause suffering, death and destruction
Analysts criticized the war in Afghanistan and the hastily withdrawal of the United States troops, believing that this was a major military, political, and moral defeat by the United States and NATO. The famous Norwegian writer Pal Steichen wrote a few days ago that according to the Wall Street Journal, an internal memo from the US State Department in July has warned senior members of the government that Kabul may collapse after the US withdraws from Afghanistan. It can be judged from this that the US leadership knows what will happen in Afghanistan. The article also pointed out that the situation in the United States today is ridiculous, with many factions, vying for power, and the country’s loss of unified coordination and management, which seems to be more and more like the Western Roman Empire that is about to collapse. The trend of moral and political disintegration is also becoming more and more obvious. The country has no competent leadership. Senators are thinking more about how to find new positions in the pharmaceutical or arms industry after leaving office in the future.
On August 17, Oberberg, a well-known international peace researcher in Denmark and founder of the Swedish Foundation for Transnational Peace and Future Research, issued a statement that according to a large number of facts, 20 years ago, if the United States did not have an overwhelming military power that accounted for 40% of global military expenditures, Or think about using diplomatic means to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan, then there is no need to fight this battle. The incredible amount of death and destruction caused by the war in Afghanistan can be avoided. The failure of the Afghanistan War and a series of wars in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria marked the final end of the crazy global “war on terrorism” and was a major military, political and moral defeat by the United States and NATO in Afghanistan. It paid a heartbreaking and painful price, wasted funds that might be used for other constructive solutions to global problems, and ended up creating more terrorism worldwide. The defeat of the Afghanistan War will also add more nails to the coffin of American militarism and imperialism and accelerate its decline. The article also concluded that since 1945, the United States has not won any interventionist wars politically, morally or militarily, but it has caused unspeakable suffering, death, and destruction, and has been hated by millions of people. Economic, political and moral forces have also been eroded.
Major failure of NATO’s biggest operation in 20 years
Carsten Fries, a NATO researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, bluntly told the Norwegian “Daily Magazine” that the “Afghanistan collapse” was the major failure of NATO’s biggest operation in the past 20 years, which has shaken the credibility of NATO and all parties involved. NATO’s prestige and reputation have also suffered major losses. No one expected the outcome to be like this, and it must be thoroughly evaluated, which means that people must question the sustainability of such actions in the future.
Professor Tomod Hale, the research project leader of the Norwegian National Defense Academy, also said that NATO’s withdrawal and the Taliban’s lightning victory are a major failure of NATO. NATO’s military operations in Afghanistan lasted until 2014, after which it mainly carried out training and training for the Afghan army. NATO spent 20 years in Afghanistan, and it failed to help the local military forces establish the necessary relationship of trust. NATO focuses on military training, but does not consider the potential religious and political conflicts that the troops belong to. This will sound the alarm for NATO. The National Defense Policy Spokesperson of the Norwegian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Christian Tebling-Gide also believes that NATO’s withdrawal and the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan have weakened NATO’s power and become NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg’s current situation. The most serious crisis.
Oberg believes that if the events of August 15, 2021 are any good, it would mark the collapse of imperialism, which also means the impending disintegration of NATO. Because NATO’s various roles and tasks in Afghanistan in the past 20 years have far exceeded the content of the North Atlantic Treaty.
Borgen also criticized that the United States and NATO have sent tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Afghanistan, and the military industry has made crazy profits. Most of these weapons now fall into the hands of the Taliban, further highlighting the complete failure of the United States and NATO. Such incompetence and humiliation make anyone in the world who might become an accomplice of the United States change their minds. Lessons learned, the defeat of the war in Afghanistan was a complete humiliation for NATO.
(Zhang Zhiyong, our reporter based in Helsinki, our newspaper, Helsinki, August 23)
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