Afghanistan

Afghan power always stems from the poppy fields

In his 2015 documentary Bitter Lake, the filmmaker Adam Curtis observes that Afghanistan’s opium poppies grow in a “wonderland of vegetation and power”. Amid the conspiratorial hyperbole that characterises much of his work, it is a striking phrase — but also a perceptive one. The poppy is integral to modern Afghanistan because of its relationship to both vegetation (and the communities it sustains) and the exercise of raw power: two of the main forces which drive Afghan politics.

Understand this imperishable fact and it becomes clear how the country fell so quickly to the Taliban over recent weeks.

The Taliban raised their flag over the Afghan presidential palace on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as news emerged that the regime’s fighters had killed the brother of the country’s former vice-president at a checkpoint in Panjshir province.

Rohullah Azizi, the brother of former vice-president and anti-Taliban resistance leader Amrullah Saleh, was travelling in his car on Thursday when he and his driver were shot dead at a Taliban checkpoint, his nephew said on Saturday.

Shuresh Saleh said on Saturday that it was unclear where his uncle, an anti-Taliban fighter, was headed when the Taliban caught him. He said phones were not working in the area.

Private military contractors outnumbered US troops on the ground during most of both conflicts. And defense industry stocks soared

While Washington bickers about what, if anything, has been achieved after 20 years and nearly $5tn spent on “forever wars”, there is one clear winner: the US defense industry.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military relied to an unprecedented degree on private contractors for support in virtually all areas of war operations. Contractors supplied trucks, planes, fuel, helicopters, ships, drones, weapons and munitions as well as support services from catering and construction to IT and logistics. The number of contractors on the ground outnumbered US troops most years of the conflicts. By the summer of 2020, the US had 22,562 contractor personnel in Afghanistan – roughly twice the number of American troops.

Gul Ahmad Rasooli’s phone rang the day the Afghan government collapsed.

The now-former governor of the province of Zabul — a remote, mountainous southern Afghan province bordering Kandahar — had taken refuge in the capital, Kabul, as the security climate in Afghanistan unravelled over the summer.

The Taliban had overrun Qalat, the provincial capital, and Rasooli had escaped with his life.

The call was from his son, an Afghan special forces soldier assigned to the elite protection detail around Ashraf Ghani, the president of the western-backed regime.

It was not a nation, it can never be saved. Islam and tribalism are a toxic mix and we were fed a 20 year lie.