My fighting and sacrifice came to nothing!
One of the most heard phrases following the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan, it embodies a few misconceptions about that war — and about war in general — and about the role of a soldier.
First, the Taliban were always there, ever since they were created by the USA to be a real pest to the Soviets. Talk about short-sighted strategies. They never left, were never defeated, and showed themselves masters of the long game. Hypocritically flexible, the Taliban went from executing drug addicts to controlling poppy farming and boosting the export of opium from Afghanistan. American addicts basically paid for the weapons and ammunition to kill American soldiers. Which goes to show, once again, how naive and counterproductive is America’s “war on drugs,” but that is another sad story.
Why was it well nigh impossible to eradicate the radicals? Because they are truly representative of the tribal, backward, religiously conservative and hypocritical Afghan society. Whatever that may be. Tribal and clan chiefs who keep their women under burkas, but enslave pretty boys to dance and service them at parties, for example. Men who have grown to be top fly on the dungheap, and do not care for what is in the dung, as long as it prays five times a day, avoids alcohol, pretends to chastity, and reveres the Recitation as its only music.
The latest “surge” in Taliban activity started long before the NATO withdrawal, in fierce resistance to the pockets of modernisation starting to grow in the region. Whatever educates women and gives boys anything else to do apart from serving the clans is haram. To dig out the roots of the Taliban, NATO would have had first to cut off its heads — instead of negotiating with men who can only be described as a bunch of wily self-serving bastards.
The bastards are indeed wily, and the last time anyone made them do anything was when the Arabs imposed — with murderous fury — their all too convenient religion on the Afghan tribes. Islam was made to order by the Third Caliph, Uthman, to further unite Arab tribes under one banner, and its tenets and structure were a real godsend to the tribal Afghans. Then came the waves of Islamic Mongol conquests, which effectively drove the region back into agrarian and semi-nomadic tribalism. No one has beaten them since — not the British Empire, not the Soviet Empire, not the most recent and all too civilised and restrained attempt.
Second, a soldier’s work always comes to nothing. No exceptions, ever.
See, a soldier has one job: with brute force to impose the will of politicians onto somebody else. What is included in that will is not the soldier’s to ask. If and when the doctrines issued by the body politic change, so change the soldier’s mission and rules of engagement — again, with the soldier having no say whatsoever on the matter.
All talk of “winning hearts and minds” is pure propaganda. One cannot win the heart of anyone whilst totting a gun. Stockholm syndrome is a limited and controversial phenomenon. Minds can only be won through education, and that must at first be imposed, most often by force: teachers, doctors, and vaccinators have to be escorted by well armed soldiers.
Never mind that some misguided tacticians and bureaucrats often put teachers and doctors in uniform — history has shown that to be a grievous mistake, as uniforms are more easily associated with the gun than with the blackboard. Which makes the doctor, the nurse, and the teacher enemy combatants, invaders — legitimate prey.
Soldiers, armed soldiers, do not build anything. Their mission is to destroy. Whatever they may build, is to give them access to what they have been told to destroy.
So, brothers in arms, no regrets. You did what you were told to do, you fulfilled your mission while deployed. Building on the relative quiet resulting from your efforts was somebody else’s job, and they failed. Not your fault. “They” did not know what to do with it, right from the start.