Though many blame the Taliban's rise on U.S. withdrawal, American imperialism has long shaped this outcome
8/26/21 by Colin Mangan
On Aug. 15, 2021, in a scene eerily reminiscent of the 1975 Fall of Saigon, the Taliban marched on Kabul, toppling the American-backed government as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. As refugees flee the country, afraid of once again being subjected to Taliban rule, the military-industrial complex has taken to the cable news circuit, condemning the Taliban’s resurgence as the direct consequence of the American withdrawal from the country after 20 long years of occupation.
Though the Taliban’s inevitable return to power has been blamed on the United States’ decision to finally withdraw, such an analysis is completely ahistorical and ignores the role of American imperialism in shaping the present moment. Karl Marx, paraphrasing Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, once remarked that “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice … the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” I believe this is an especially astute observation with regard to the decades of bloodshed inflicted upon Afghanistan, whose conflict began with a failed revolution and now culminates in a failed occupation.
The return of the Taliban’s rule is certainly a political embarrassment for the United States, especially in light of the revelations provided by the Afghanistan Papers, which NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro claims illustrates “explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public” on the military progress of the war, and the devastating mismanagement and incompetence of U.S. military leaders in the war effort. As detailed in Craig Whitlock’s book, “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” multiple high-ranking military and diplomatic officials privately confessed, in the words of Bush-era diplomat Richard Boucher, “we did not know what we were doing.”
But for the military-industrial complex, creditors and international mining companies, the Afghanistan War was a boon, generating billions in profits. According to The Intercept, $10,000 worth of shares purchased from the top five largest defense contractors in 2001 would be worth around $97,295 today. That’s an 872.94 percent mean increase in stock prices since the beginning of the war. Moreover, Afghanistan was a key strategic location for American presence, standing between the rising powers of Russia, China and India, as well as Pakistan, an American-allied nation. Afghanistan also lays outside of the borders of the oil-rich Central Asian nations.
Likewise, decades of U.S. intervention have contributed to a boon in the Afghan drug trade. The United States has long enabled the Afghan heroin trade — first through turning a blind eye to the mujahideen’s sale of arms for opium during the 1980s, then through continuing American financial support for warlords involved in the drug trade in the 1990s. Coupled with the devastating economic impact of the U.S. occupation, the heroin trade has become a key component of the Afghan economy and the Taliban’s financing activities, with Afghanistan exporting 93 percent of the global supply in 2007. The war and corruption within the American-backed Afghan government have resulted in a drastic increase in opium production, becoming a primary source of income for some of the predominantly rural population. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that roughly 1 million Afghans suffer from drug addiction today.
But of the various geostrategic resources the country holds, Afghanistan’s hidden jewel is the roughly $1 trillion in mineral reserves so rich that a 2010 internal Pentagon memo noted that Afghanistan could become “one of the most important mining centers in the world.” However, decades of armed conflict and political instability have made it difficult to fully exploit these resources. Nonetheless, interest in Afghanistan’s resources remains high among transnational mining companies.
American involvement in Afghan affairs began in the 1950s, with U.S. support for first the Afghan monarchy and then the Republican government which succeeded it. Economically, the United States was also involved in projects like “the Helmand Valley project, which was an irrigation and agricultural project about building dams in southern Afghanistan,” according to historian Ali A. Olomi.
In the 1970s, Afghanistan was a semifeudal country with roughly two-thirds of crops paid as rent to landlords. Although the ruling monarchy was overthrown in 1973, the new government, led by the former Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan of the monarchy period, allowed for the landlord class to retain their economic power and instituted harsh political suppression against the burgeoning communist movement. But in 1978, as a drought-induced famine swept the country, the Afghan military, in conjunction with the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) staged a coup that deposed Daoud Khan and propelled the PDPA into power.
The new secular government introduced a vast series of reforms to Afghanistan including women’s rights, land reform, a minimum wage, a nationwide literacy campaign and the abolition of the poppy trade. In international affairs, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan allied itself with the Soviet Union.
However, the April Revolution, as it was called, encountered both domestic resistance and internal contradictions which were coupled with foreign intervention. Domestically, the conservative mullahs — traditionalists of both rural and middle class backgrounds — opposed the PDPA’s move toward secularism as well as the party’s embrace of Soviet politics. In response, the PDPA instituted political repression in the wake of mullah rebellions, which only further fueled said uprisings. The General Secretary of the PDPA Nur Muhammad Taraki requested Soviet intervention to maintain civil order, but was denied. Concurrently, Taraki was engaged in a power struggle with his former protege Hafizullah Amin who opposed Soviet influence in the region, and in September 1979, Amin had Taraki assassinated. Amin subsequently reversed several land reform policies and asked the United States to intervene on behalf of the Afghan government, only to be refused.
What Amin didn’t realize is that the United States was already in the process of organizing an intervention in the country, but on behalf of the increasingly radical rebels. There is little question that the secular and internationalist policies of the PDPA were at odds with the conservative population, and the United States was quick to exploit these sociopolitical tensions. This program, known as “Operation Cyclone,” marked the beginning of large-scale U.S. interventionism in Afghanistan. According to then-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, “We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would,” and the Soviets did indeed intervene.
In reaction to the Amin regime’s increasingly violent repression measures, the Soviet Union had Amin assassinated, installed moderate Babrak Karmal as leader of Afghanistan, and crossed the Afghan border to bolster the government. The Great April Revolution had failed as the mullah warnings of foreign control became a reality. By this time, Afghan Islamists organized themselves into the mujahideen, a guerilla army aiming to defeat the Soviets and install an Islamic government.
The key financier of the mujahideen was the CIA who, through Pakistani intelligence, funneled millions to mujahideen rebels. Beneficiaries of CIA financing included Mohammad Omar, the founder of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and several other key al-Qaida associates, some of whom received direct cash payments from the organization.
American support for Afghan Jihadists expanded well past the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When the communist government finally collapsed in 1992, civil war continued between a coalition government and the Taliban — an Islamist organization made possible by CIA-funded training and access to weaponry.
Throughout the 1990s, the United States and the Taliban-controlled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan enjoyed a lukewarm partnership. American energy executives even lobbied the Taliban for access to resources. After Afghanistan banned the heroin trade in 2000 under pressure, the United States provided the Taliban $245 million in aid after the subsequent economic recession.
In 2001, both before and after the terrible events of 9/11, the Taliban had repeatedly offered to negotiate Osama bin Laden’s extradition, as discussed in a New York Times report from October 3, 2001. But the Bush administration remained steadfast in its desire for occupation, given Afghanistan’s strategic location and resources.
And the rest is history. We remain uncertain of the true extent of the American military withdrawal, given President Biden’s decision to send an additional 1,000 troops to the nation under the pretenses of evacuating Americans. Since 2001, the Afghanistan War has resulted in the deaths of 2,448 American service members, and perhaps more devastatingly, 66,000 Afghan national police and 71,000 civilians. Furthermore, since most modern military operations are funded not by cash, but by credit, the costs of the war could reach about $6.5 trillion by 2050. What the American invasions of Afghanistan and Vietnam both have in common is that they both had devastating costs for both the American populace (forced to pay for these military ventures) and the native respective populations, only to end in political embarrassment for the United States.
It seems then that we return to Marx — the Saur Revolution ended as a tragedy, the American occupation ended as a farce and at the end of the day, the people who have been condemned to the true costs of empire remain the people of Afghanistan.
Colin Mangan is a junior double-majoring in philosophy and sociology.
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