The hearts, minds and body parts strategy in Afghanistan
In its desperation to rescus a failing war in Afghanistan, the US military is recycling its "hearts and minds" strategy from Vietnam. Solomon Hughes says while the warmongers are nostalgic for the war and violence of the 1960s, the anti-war movement should seek its inspiration from that decade's protest and dissent.
By Solomon Hughes
Morning Star
18 September 2010
Protest in Pakistan after US drone attack kills 12 civilians
The Afghan conflict develops more Vietnam overtones every day. The gruesome news that 12 US soldiers face charges they established a "kill team," shooting Afghans for sport and taking body parts for trophies has strong Vietnam echoes.
There are some variations however. The minority of soldiers who went over the edge in Vietnam favoured ears as trophies. The kill team seems to have taken fingers from its victims.
The body part collectors are a small ugly corner of the conflict, but the big picture looks like Vietnam too. General David Petraeus's "counter-insurgency" manual contains 86 references to Vietnam-era strategies for use in Afghanistan.
Many commentators, including some supposedly from the left, think Petraeus offers a forward-looking, intellectual approach to war. In fact, the Vietnam era approaches he suggests mean balancing militarised "social work" with secret assassination programmes.
Thankfully some commentators are picking this up. Former colonel and West Point graduate Andrew Bacevich, whose recent book Washington Rules criticises current US attempts at international military dominance, described the Petraeus doctrine as little more than "hearts and minds" principles recycled from the Vietnam war. But the US, with Britain's active assistance, is still building a scale model of the Vietnam conflict - and it is using neighbouring countries as well.
One of the worst features of the Vietnam war was the destabilisation of the wider region. The US was losing the Vietnam war. Its proxies were unpopular. The Viet Cong mobilised national sentiment. The US responded in many ways, including the Hearts-Minds-and-Body-Parts strategies described above.
It also lashed out at neighbouring countries. President Richard Nixon was convinced he was losing the war because of secret support for the Viet Cong and secret Viet Cong bases in next-door countries. He responded by backing coups and authoritarian rulers in Laos and Cambodia and launching "secret wars" in these countries.
The wars were certainly not secret from Laotians and Cambodians, who were heavily bombed. Laos managed to finally achieve some balance after many thousands of deaths, but the destabilisation of Cambodia ultimately opened the door to the murderous Khmer Rouge government.
The US is keen on historical accuracy in its Vietnam re-enactment and is repeating this formula around Afghanistan. This is particularly obvious in Pakistan. Nato regularly accuses Pakistan of destabilising Afghanistan, but stepping back and looking at the big picture it's obvious that Pakistan is the one that has been destabilised by the war.
Pakistan certainly did not face a massive Taliban-style insurgency inside its own borders until the Afghan invasion. It does now, following the war and US demands that Pakistan "get tough" or "crack down" in the border areas.
The US "secret war," bombing Pakistanis with Predator drones, hasn't helped. The allies are also propping up reactionary rulers to help keep the war going. Islam Karimov, the autocrat of neighbouring Uzbekistan, declared himself an ally in the "war on terror."
He offered supply lines into Afghanistan. In return the West supported him as he killed - sometimes even boiled alive - his own dissidents. All he had to do was declare that his enemies were "terrorists."
And when our own ambassador Craig Murray bravely questioned the policy, he was smeared and sacked.
British support for Karimov went beyond sacking Murray. Britain runs a "UK-Uzbekistan Military Co-operation Programme," training Uzbek officers at Sandhurst, the Royal College of Defence Studies in London and the Joint Services Command and Staff College near Swindon. Less senior Uzbek officers are taught at British training camps in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Much of the training centres on "interoperability," making Uzbek officers more able to work alongside other Nato, UN or EU soldiers.
The MoD said the courses cover "the full spectrum of operations," including "counter-insurgency, peace enforcement, peace support and humanitarian operations."
In 2005 the British-trained Uzbek officers demonstrated their humanitarian and counter-insurgency skills - they opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in the provincial city of Andijan. Hundreds and quite possibly thousands of demonstrators were killed.
In Kyrgyzstan the US intervention has contributed to two revolutions. The massive Manas air base is the key transit point for the Afghan war, with troops and material passing through the enormous facility. Some 55,000 US soldiers flew through Manas this May. Most Kyrgyz were very unsettled by a huge chunk of their land being leased to the US to fight a war.
Widespread belief that supply contracts for the Manas base were being used to bribe the families of the president were significant factors in two revolutions. President Askar Akayev was ousted by the relatively non-violent tulip revolution in 2005. A belief that his son-in-law was being paid off by Manas contractors was an important influence on the revolutionaries.
His successor president Kurmanbek Bakiyev fell in a bloodier revolution this April. Again, suspicion about where the money from the Manas contracts went was an important influence on the revolution.
The companies involved in supplying the fuel deny any wrongdoing, but they are very opaque. They are based in Gibraltar, with allied offices in London. One of the Manas fuel companies has registered offices it shares with Elegant Escorts & Dating Ltd above a row of shops on the Finchley Road, north London, which does not build confidence.
A US congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Manas oil contracts. Investigation head Congressman John F Tierney emphasised "the significance of the allegations of corruption at the base as a driver of the revolution" in Kyrgyzstan. Tierney explained that "both president Akayev and president Bakiyev were forcefully ousted from office amid widespread public perception that the US had supported the regimes' repression and fuelled - no pun intended - their corrosive corruption."
The case against the war is being made in the neighbouring countries as well as Afghanistan. The transatlantic establishment seems nostalgic for the war and violence of the '60s, not the era's "peace and love." If we must be nostalgic, let's look back at that decade's protest and dissent instead.
