Who Benefited from the 20 years War in Afghanistan ?

 

The image on BBC television of desperate Afghans clinging to the side of a US military plane leaving Kabul airport - with at least two apparently falling to their deaths from the undercarriage - was gut-wrenching. It tells a story of the betrayal of American Foreign policy. Subsequently, on August 30^th 2021, all US troops left Afghanistan after twenty years of military involvement.

This article argues that fat cat capitalist defense contractors are the main beneficiaries of the US 2.6 trillion dollars spent to fight a war that has been costly and should have been mediated by diplomatic maneuvers.

The United States launched the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, Taliban-led terrorist attacks. In an address on September 20, 2001, US President George Bush demanded the Taliban deliver Bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to the United States or " . . .share in their fate." They refused to concur with these demands. Of course, Bush had to react to this horrific attack on U.S. soil and expressed the requirement for punishment. The majority of U.S. citizens supported his decision to spend heavily on defense in Afghanistan.

The Taliban emerged in Afghanistan in 1996 when they seized Kabul and implemented a severe interpretation of Islamic Law during their rule. They forbade female education and prescribed the severing of hands, or even death, as punishment for petty crimes. They committed systematic massacres against civilians, utilizing both male and female suicide bombers. They destroyed hundreds of thousands of historic cultural texts and artifacts and banned all music.

Removing the Taliban was going to be a difficult task due to the fear that they inflicted on the psyche together with their deep cultural and religious ties.

The campaign to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan started covertly on September 26, 2001, with a (CIA) team known as Jawbreaker arriving in the country working closely with anti-Taliban allies such as the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan. They initiated a strategy to overthrow the regime. The CIA team was soon joined by U.S. and British special forces, and together they provided arms, equipment, and advice to the contingents Afghans. The allied forces overtook a series of towns formerly held by the Taliban.

By October 7 2001, both U.S. and British forces launched an intensive airstrike campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban targets lasting five days. This included Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad. Ground forces followed, and with the help of Northern Alliance forces, the United States quickly overtook Taliban strongholds, including the capital city of Kabul by mid-November. On December 6^th , Kandahar fell, signaling the official end of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and causing al Qaeda, and Bin Laden to flee.

In April 2002, George Bush announced a “Marshall Plan” for Afghanistan in a speech at Virginia Military Institute, promising substantial financial assistance. But from the start, development efforts in Afghanistan were inadequately funded as attention of the U.S. officials was focused on the looming confrontation in Iraq. Between 2001 and 2009, just over $38 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan was appropriated by the U.S. Congress.

The first democratic Afghan elections since the fall of the Taliban were held on October 9, 2004, with approximately 80 percent of registered voters turning out to give Hamid Karzai a full five-year term as president. Karzai, although moderate, was widely regarded as a weak leader who grew increasingly isolated as the war progressed. He survived several assassination attempts. Army and a police force was troubled from the start by a lack of international support and ethnic differences between Afghan tribes. Furthermore, more than half the money spent by the US during the 20-year war was used for training and equipping Afghan security forces. The remainder represented a fraction of the amount that experts said would be required to develop a country that had consistently ranked near the bottom of global human development indices. This left the people of Afghanistan vulnerable to planting poppy controlled by corrupt drug lords.

The Taliban continued its counter-insurgency by launching attacks with the use of suicidal bombers aimed at soft targets such as schools, hospitals and even army bases. Meanwhile, they strategically used their advantage of geographic knowledge to capture outlaying provinces. It was only a matter of time before the country would fall again to the Taliban.The announcement of an August 30^th pull out of troops from Afghanistan was an inconsequential gift to the Taliban and certainly one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of the Biden administration.

By August 2021, the war began to close, with the Taliban regaining power two weeks before the United States was set to withdraw all troops from the region. A major fear now is that the country will once again become a training ground for terrorism. It is believed that hardliners within the Taliban may be reluctant to break links with al Qaeda. There are also fears over women's freedom to work, to dress as they choose, or even leave home alone under Taliban rule.

This 20 years war has been the longest and the most costly, both in terms of human lives and money spent by the US. According to Brown University and the Allied Press, American Service members killed in Afghanistan throughout April 2021: 2,448. The U.S. Contractors: 3,846. Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states 1,144. Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191.Afghan national ,Afghan civilians: 47,245. Military and police: 66,000, Aid workers: 444 and 72 Journalists. These numbers exclude those killed or injured by land mines, and others killed by tribal conflict, starvation and disease. Additionally, 3.2 million civilians were internally displaced and another 2.7 million fled to neighboring countries. It is more than the combined wealth of America's 30 richest billionaires. The overall cost of the war is 2.26 trillion US dollars.

At Kingstonmouth.com we are pacifists, but most importantly we abhor the misuse of taxpayers money by greedy capitalist fat cats benefiting from a war that should have been settled utilizing diplomatic means

With greedy defense contractors collecting most of it, the remainder was paid to private contractors and for training the now defunct Afghan army. We cannot forget that the Taliban will benefit from the expensive military equipment that the US army left behind, which is galling for the long-suffering American taxpayer and the underpaid or dead American Soldiers on the ground.

According to a report in The Intercept the top five US deference contractors: Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman benefited handsomely from the 20-year Afghanistan war was. An investor placing $10,000 in Boeing stock back in 2001, would achieve a profit axiomatic $107,588.47 today. Boeing makes most of its money from commercial airliners but its big earning defense contracts relate to the B-1 bomber, B-52s, C-17 cargo jet, V-22 Osprey vertical takeoff aircraft, and F-15 and F-18 fighters sold to the US army at an inflated price. It is ironic that while the US prides itself on berating socialism, its defense budget is the largest centrally planned economy in the world. There is little reason to believe that central planning works better in the United States than anywhere else in the world.

To conclude, we at Kingston-mouth is asserting that the U.S. continuation of the Twenty Year war in Afghanistan was mainly advantageous for fat cat capitalist contractors. We also concur with political commentators, Russel Brand, that  wars should only be fought if no individual or financial corporation benefits financially from it. It is self-evident that the U.S. decision to evacuate their troops from Afghanistan after twenty years will leave women and children especially vulnerable to the miscreant Taliban. 

Donovan Reynolds is CEO forKingstonmouth.com He is a trained Diplomat, Human Rights Activist, and a Communication Consultant. This article is edited by Ann Smith, a British Educator and Social Activist. Kingstommouth.com is a charitable organization that has been in existence for over nine years. We have an interest in Politics, Human Rights, and International Development Issues. Viewers wishing to comment on this article may do so at the space provided on this blog. Alternatively, they can contact us at kingstonmouth 63@ gmail.com or on our Twitter or Facebook Page.