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      What About Those Who Were Right on Afghanistan?

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      America’s corporate media are ringing with recriminations over the humiliating US military defeat in Afghanistan. But very little of the criticism goes to the root of the problem, which was the original decision to militarily invade and occupy Afghanistan in the first place. That decision set in motion a cycle of violence and chaos that no subsequent US policy or military strategy could resolve over the next 20 years — in Afghanistan, Iraq or any of the other countries swept up in America’s post-9/11 wars.

      While Americans were reeling in shock at the images of airliners crashing into buildings on September 11, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held a meeting in an intact part of the Pentagon. Undersecretary Stephen Cambone’s notes from that meeting spell out how quickly and blindly US officials prepared to plunge our nation into the graveyards of empire in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond. Cambone wrote that Rumsfeld wanted “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden] … Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

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      So, within hours of these horrific crimes in the United States, the central question senior US officials were asking was not how to investigate them and hold the perpetrators accountable, but how to use this “Pearl Harbor” moment to justify wars, regime changes and militarism on a global scale.

      Three days later, Congress passed a bill authorizing the US president, George W. Bush, to use military force “against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” 

      In 2016, the Congressional Research Service reported that this Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) had been cited to justify 37 distinct military operations in 14 different countries and at sea. The vast majority of the people killed, maimed or displaced in these operations had nothing to do with the crimes of September 11. Successive US administrations have repeatedly ignored the actual wording of the authorization, which only authorized the use of force against those involved in some way in the 9/11 attacks. 

      Speaking Out

      The only member of Congress who had the wisdom and courage to vote against the 2001 AUMF was Barbara Lee of Oakland. She compared it to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution and warned her colleagues that it would inevitably be used in the same expansive and illegitimate way. The final words of her floor speech echo presciently through the 20-year-long spiral of violence, chaos and war crimes it unleashed: “As we act, let us not become the evil we deplore.” 

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      In a meeting at Camp David that weekend, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz argued forcefully for an attack on Iraq, even before Afghanistan. Bush insisted Afghanistan must come first, but he privately promised the Defense Policy Board chairman, Richard Perle, that Iraq would be their next target.

      In the days after September 11, the US corporate media followed the Bush administration’s lead, and the public heard only rare, isolated voices questioning whether war was the correct response to the crimes committed. But former Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor Ben Ferencz spoke to NPR a week after 9/11, and he explained that attacking Afghanistan was not only unwise and dangerous, but it was not a legitimate response to these crimes. NPR’s Katy Clark struggled to understand what he was saying:

      “Clark: …do you think that the talk of retaliation is not a legitimate response to the death of 5,000 [sic] people?

      Ferencz: It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done.

      Clark: No one is saying we’re going to punish those who are not responsible.

      Ferencz: We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others. If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t believe in what has happened, who don’t approve of what has happened.

      Clark: So you are saying that you see no appropriate role for the military in this.

      Ferencz: I wouldn’t say there is no appropriate role, but the role should be consistent with our ideals. We shouldn’t let them kill our principles at the same time they kill our people. And our principles are respect for the rule of law. Not charging in blindly and killing people because we are blinded by our tears and our rage.”

      The drumbeat of war pervaded the airwaves, twisting 9/11 into a powerful propaganda narrative to whip up the fear of terrorism and justify the march to war. But many Americans shared the reservations of Lee and Ferencz, understanding enough of their country’s history to recognize that the 9/11 tragedy was being hijacked by the same military-industrial complex that produced the debacle in Vietnam and keeps reinventing itself generation after generation to support and profit from American wars, coups and militarism. 

      Making a Statement

      On September 28, 2001, the Socialist Worker website published statements by 15 writers and activists under the heading, “Why We Say No to War and Hate.” They included Noam Chomsky, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and one of these authors (Medea Benjamin). The statements took aim at the Bush administration’s attacks on civil liberties at home and abroad, as well as its plans for war on Afghanistan. 

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      The late academic and author Chalmers Johnson wrote that 9/11 was not an attack on the United States, but “an attack on U.S. foreign policy.” Edward Herman predicted “massive civilian casualties.” Matt Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, wrote that “For every innocent person Bush kills in this war, five or ten terrorists will arise.” Benjamin wrote that “a military response will only create more of the hatred against the U.S. that created this terrorism in the first place.” The analysis was correct and the predictions were prescient. The media and US politicians should start listening to the voices of peace and sanity instead of lying, delusional warmongers.

      What leads to catastrophes like the US war in Afghanistan is not the absence of convincing anti-war voices, but that the political and media systems routinely marginalize and ignore voices like those of Lee, Ferencz and the 15 writers and activists. 

      That is not because we are wrong and the belligerent voices they listen to are right. They marginalize us precisely because we are right and they are wrong, and because serious, rational debates over war, peace and military spending would jeopardize some of the most powerful and corrupt vested interests that dominate and control US politics on a bipartisan basis.  

      In every foreign policy crisis, the very existence of our military’s enormous destructive capacity and the myths our leaders promote to justify it converge in an orgy of self-serving interests and political pressures to stoke our fears and pretend that there are military “solutions” for them. 

      Another War

      Losing the Vietnam War was a serious reality check on the limits of US military power. As the junior officers who fought in Vietnam rose through the ranks to become America’s military leaders, they acted more cautiously and realistically for the next 20 years. But the end of the Cold War opened the door to an ambitious new generation of warmongers who were determined to capitalize on the US post-Cold War “power dividend.” 

      Madeleine Albright spoke for this emerging new breed of war-hawks when she confronted General Colin Powell in 1992 with her question, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” As secretary of state during Bill Clinton’s second term, Albright engineered the first of a series of illegal US invasions to carve out an independent Kosovo from the splintered remains of Yugoslavia. When UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told her his government was “having trouble with our lawyers” over the illegality of the NATO war plan, Albright said they should just “get new lawyers.”

      In the 1990s, the neocons and liberal interventionists dismissed and marginalized the idea that non-military, non-coercive approaches can more effectively resolve foreign policy problems without the horrors of war or deadly sanctions. This bipartisan war lobby then exploited the 9/11 attacks to consolidate and expand their control of US foreign policy.

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      But after spending trillions of dollars and killing countless numbers of people, the abysmal record of US war-making since World War II remains a tragic litany of failure and defeat, even on its own terms. The only wars the United States has won since 1945 have been limited conflicts to recover small neo-colonial outposts in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait. Every time the United States has expanded its military ambitions to attack or invade larger or more independent countries, the results have been universally catastrophic.

      So, our country’s absurd investment of 66% of discretionary federal spending in destructive weapons, and recruiting and training young Americans to use them, does not make us safer but only encourages our leaders to unleash pointless violence and chaos on our neighbors around the world.

      Most of our neighbors have grasped by now that these forces and the dysfunctional US political system that keeps them at its disposal pose a serious threat to peace and to their own aspirations for democracy. Few people in other countries want any part of America’s wars, or its revived Cold War against China and Russia, and these trends are most pronounced among long-time US allies in Europe and its traditional “backyard” in Canada and Latin America.

      Change the Way We Live

      On October 19, 2001, Rumsfeld addressed B-2 bomber crews at Whiteman AFB in Missouri as they prepared to take off across the world to inflict misdirected vengeance on the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. He told them, “We have two choices. Either we change the way we live, or we must change the way they live. We choose the latter. And you are the ones who will help achieve that goal.”

      Now that dropping tens of thousands of bombs and missiles on the people of Afghanistan for 20 years has failed to change the way they live, apart from killing hundreds of thousands of them and destroying their homes, we must instead, as Rumsfeld said, change the way we live. 

      We should start by finally listening to Barbara Lee. First, we should pass her bill to repeal the two post-9/11 AUMFs that launched our 20-year fiasco in Afghanistan and other wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Then, we should pass her bill to redirect $350 billion per year from the US military budget (roughly a 50% cut) to “increase our diplomatic capacity and for domestic programs that will keep our Nation and our people safer.” 

      Finally reining in America’s out-of-control militarism would be a wise and appropriate response to its epic defeat in Afghanistan, before the same corrupt interests drag us into even more dangerous wars against more formidable enemies than the Taliban.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Should California Governor Gavin Newsom Be Recalled?

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      It is turning out to be strange summer in California. The entire West Coast has been experiencing unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires, a sure sign that climate change is taking its toll on our planet. California is also in the midst of political turmoil, fueled by partisan hatred against its Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. The effort to recall him from a job he was elected to in 2018 started as a tepid attempt in June of last year, spread like a wildfire in November and is suffocating the entire state like a summer heatwave today.

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      In the gubernatorial election, Newsom polled 61.9% of the votes and thrashed his Republican opponent, John Cox, handsomely. Newsom secured more than 7.7 million votes, as opposed to the 4.7 million that Cox received.

      Sadly, California is a state in which forcing a recall election is not difficult. A signed petition that adds up to 12% of the votes most recently cast for the targeted office is sufficient to get a recall election to happen. To reach that number, fewer than 1.5 million voters would need to put their names on the petition. Or, looked at another way, if 32% of the Republicans who voted for Cox were to complete a petition, Newsom’s job would be in jeopardy.

      On April 26, the California secretary of state confirmed that the threshold was met. The proceedings have been set in motion, sending Californians back for a special election on September 14 to decide if Newsom is to be recalled or not.

      Partisan Arguments, Specious at Best

      The recall effort was launched last year with unsubstantiated partisan claims blaming the sitting governor for anything conceivable: “Unaffordable housing. Record homelessness. Rising crime. Failing schools. Independent contractors thrown out of work. Exploding pension debt. And now, a locked down population while the prisons are emptied. Hold Gavin Newsom accountable. Gavin Newsom must go.”

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      Common sense would tell anyone that none of this could have come to pass in the two years since Newsom assumed his job as the governor of the state. Truth be told, it is impossible to eradicate homelessness and crime and make housing affordable in this country. The root cause for many of the problems that apparently rankle the Republicans behind the recall effort is capitalism and the economic inequity that is fast becoming an insurmountable chasm. Yet, in their infinite wisdom, they chose to pinpoint Newsom as the single reason for the failings of an entire nation that has embraced capitalism as the way of life.

      The assertion that recall Republicans make regarding Newsom emptying the prisons is specious. While it is true that some 76,000 inmates would become eligible for an earlier release with good behavior, it is a far cry from replacement candidate Cox’s claim that Newsom has already released them into an unsuspecting population that would unleash a crime wave in California.

      In California, about 1,000 prison inmates serve as firefighters, albeit for a paltry wage, as part of the fire-camp program that began in 1946. In yet another false claim, the recall proponents say that Newsom is weakening California’s firefighting capability by releasing prison inmates. On the contrary, the governor signed AB 2147, a bill that will ease the path for such inmates to become firefighters following their release.

      As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to grip the world, unleashing wave after wave in different countries at different times, Newsom committed a political blunder in November 2020. He and at least 12 others dined at an exclusive restaurant in Napa County, celebrating the birthday of a friend. The backlash was swift and the recall momentum gathered strength, with the additional ammunition Newsom had gifted the recall proponents on a platter.

      Accountability, a Game of Double Standards

      It is not unreasonable to expect elected officials to be held accountable. However, accountability is nebulous in American politics, employing different standards for Republicans and Democrats.

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      Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has not only lifted the mask mandate in schools, but he has threatened to pull public funding should school districts choose to make mask-wearing compulsory. DeSantis faces neither recall nor accountability for his actions that is pushing his state into dire straits.

      Texas Governor Greg Abbott, also a Republican, has issued executive orders that prohibit mandating vaccination or masks by local government and state agencies. Abbott opines that wearing a mask and choosing to be vaccinated are matters of personal responsibility and freedom.

      Texas is on the brink of a COVID-19 surge that it may not have seen before, something Abbott could prevent if he chooses to act as a responsible leader. After testing positive for COVID-19, Abbott, who has been vaccinated, quickly recovered from the disease, having the luxury of receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment. “I am told that my infection was brief and mild because of the vaccination I received,” Abbott said. “So, I encourage others who have not yet received the vaccination to consider getting one.” Despite the efficacy of the vaccination, Abbott’s statement is a lukewarm endorsement of the importance of getting vaccinated, distancing himself as much as possible from the science of the cure.

      Openly shirking his responsibility, Mississippi’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, refuses to take a stand and mandate either vaccination or masks, despite a 13-year-old girl dying from COVID-19 in a mask-optional school district.

      The recall effort in California was launched in the spring of 2020, during the early stages of the pandemic, well before Newsom committed the political gaffe of dining in Napa. The governor took a cautious approach to the pandemic, putting California in a lockdown before other parts of the country, protecting the people better than any red state. His actions, placing people above politics and business interests, irked the GOP minority in California that has an abundance of COVID deniers, mask refusers and anti-vaxxers.

      Yet it is Newsom, the Democratic governor who has done right by his people, who is facing a political recall, not DeSantis, Abbott or Reeves, the southern state Republican governors who continue to put their populations at risk with their irresponsible actions.

      Is Newsom at Risk?

      Any politician facing an election is at risk, Newsom included. More than Newsom, California is at risk of becoming the laughing stock of the world if this recall election results in the removal of Newsom.

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      Forty-six candidates are vying to replace Governor Newsom. No, that number is not a mistake. There are 46 candidates, many of them Republican, some without a party preference, and a smattering of Democrats and other party candidates who have thrown their hats in the ring. Reading the statements of many of these candidates in the Official Voter Information Guide makes me cringe at the foolish zaniness of the entire recall effort and its ramifications.

      Angelyne, with no stated party preference, makes this argument for her candidature: “Angelyne Billboard Queen. Icon. Experienced politician.” Adam Papagan, also without a stated party preference, is even more cryptic: “Love U.” Jeremiah Marciniak recommends prospective voters to “Search YouTube” and Dan Kapelovitz keeps his statement simple, “Can you dig it?” Nikolas Wildstar says, “Our nation was founded on liberty, but now it’s considered a wild idea. That’s why I’m asking you to Go Wild and elect Wildstar for Governor Now!”

      Newsom is at risk of being recalled for one single reason. The situation requires every voter, whether they are a Democrat or an independent, to show up and vote against the recall. Should they fail to do so, whether it is because they are sick of the political drama that is unfolding, or because they are enjoying a false sense of security that this foolhardy effort is bound to fail without them casting their ballot, Newsom’s position will be on the line.

      Those who are against the recall must understand that more than 1.5 million voters have proved they are motivated to removing Newsom from his position as governor, something that he won convincingly. The people of California mandated Newsom do a job for the next four years, and he has done nothing that merits a recall.

      If the majority of the 7.7 million who voted for him choose to be complacent, choose to not take the threat of this recall seriously, the very fundamentals of the democratic process that entrusted the job of the governorship of California with Newsom will be upended by partisan political hatred. No Californian should stand for it.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      What the World Can Learn From the Events in Afghanistan

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      The collapse of the Western-backed government in Afghanistan has come as a shock. It has shaken confidence in democratic countries and changed the balance of power somewhat between the United States and China.

      It shows that efforts from the outside to topple regimes and replace them with friendlier ones are more difficult than anyone thought 20 years ago, when NATO forces first overthrew the Taliban regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The aim of capturing Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, which was being harbored by the Taliban, was not achieved until much later in 2011. Even his attempted arrest and subsequent death took place in Pakistan — an ostensible ally of the United States — not Afghanistan. 

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      The end of the US-led intervention in Afghanistan has lessons for those who might wish to undertake similar exercises in Somalia, Libya, Syria, Cuba, Mali or Venezuela. The objectives need to be clear and limited. Local support must be genuine. If one is seeking out terrorist organizations or individuals, an invasion is not the best way of achieving extradition. Nation-building is best done by locals.

      Existing regimes may be oppressive or corrupt, but if they are homegrown and have been developed organically from local roots, they survive better than anything — however enlightened — introduced from outside. Foreign boots on the ground and targeted bombings have limited effectiveness against networks of fanatics or mobile guerrillas. Western countries will now need to reassess their military spending priorities in light of the lessons from military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.

      With Afghanistan, it is the US and NATO that have the hardest lessons to learn. But if China were to attempt a similar exercise in nation-building from the outside — say, in Taiwan — it would have the same experience. The fact that Beijing has had to adopt such extreme measures in Xinjiang to integrate that province into the Chinese social system is a sign of weakness rather than strength. 

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      Afghanistan is an ethnically diverse country that, despite its diversity and disunity, has been able to resist rule from Britain, the Soviet Union and now the US and NATO. Religion was a unifying factor in an otherwise divided country. It seems the Taliban have been more effective in building an ethnically diverse coalition than the previous Afghan government. But it is not yet clear whether the Taliban will be able to hold that coalition together.

      It does seem that the Taliban have, in the past, been able to impose a degree of order in Afghan society and been able to punish corruption. Between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban created a form of order in a brutal and misogynistic way. Order is something the outgoing government in Kabul could not provide, even with generous outside help. After all, order is a prerequisite for any form of stable existence. Without order, there can be no rule of law and no democracy. Coupled with that, civil society breaks down. This applies in the West as much as it does in Central Asia and South Asia.

      Order is created by a combination of three essentials: loyalty, acquiescence and fear. All three elements are needed to some extent. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president between 2001 and 2014, could not command these three elements. It remains to be seen whether the Taliban will do any better.

      Will There Be a Change in US Strategy? 

      It is hard to assess the effect the Afghan debacle will have on the United States, which has by far the most elaborate and expensive military forces in the world. There is a strong temptation to turn inward and reduce commitments to the defense of other countries, including European ones. From 1783 until 1941, the US tended to remain neutral and rely on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for protection against its enemies.  

      The countries of the European Union will also need to work out what their practical defense priorities are in light of the events in Afghanistan and other recent experiences. This is a political task of great difficulty because the 27 member states have very different views and geographic imperatives.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      India’s Highway Construction Is in the Fast Lane

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      When experts look back at the early 2000s, they will observe that India embarked on a construction spree to develop its transport infrastructure. The country is emulating what the United States and Europe did in the previous century and what China and East Asia have done more recently. Traditionally, India focused on railways. For the last 20 years, roads have been the priority. Now, the country is also focusing on its 116 rivers and long coastline to develop commercial waterways. 

      As is well known, various factors contribute to a nation’s development. The most fundamental is the availability of food and water for the population. Here, India has had some success since its independence in 1947. In health care and education, India can and must do better. India also needs to improve safety and security for its citizens and improve the rule of law. The factor most important for India’s development is perhaps transportation because it has the greatest multiplier effect on the economy. As a result, transportation has the greatest potential to improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

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      Transportation infrastructure, such as railways, roads, air traffic and waterways, are the arteries of a country’s economy. The German economy was built on the backbone of an outstanding railway system and the legendary autobahn. The US is knit together by a crisscrossing network of freight trains, interstate highways and airports. Advanced economies like Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and the Netherlands are known for their evolved infrastructure.

      In recent years, China has set the standard for implementing infrastructure at a scale and speed unprecedented in history. Most economists credit spectacular rates of economic growth to Chinese investment in infrastructure. India is betting that building good infrastructure will boost growth, create jobs and raise the standard of living for hundreds of millions.

      Railway and Highway Infrastructure

      According to a 2018 report by NITI Aayog, the premier policy think tank of the Indian government, 59% of all freight in India is transported by road, 35% by railways, 6% by waterways and less than 1% by air.

      On March 31, 2020, India’s railway track length stood at 126,366 kilometers and, on March 31, 2019, the length of national highways was 132,500 kilometers. Per 100 square kilometers, India has more railway tracks and highways than countries like the US and France. This does not necessarily mean India is doing well. South Korea and Japan have over four times the highway length per 100 square kilometers.

      Instead of the density of infrastructure per unit area, density per population size seems to be the more accurate metric. When it comes to infrastructure per million people, India fares very poorly. For instance, Indonesia’s population is merely 20% of India’s, but its highways are twice as long as India’s. South Korea’s population is a tiny 4% of India’s, but its highways are thrice as long as India’s. The top two stars on the infrastructure front are the US and Australia, followed by Japan and France.

      India’s highway network is inadequate for the country’s needs. Highways comprise 1.94% of India’s total road networks but carry a staggering 40% of total road traffic. This means that not only do they suffer high wear and tear, but transportation continues to be a big bottleneck for the economy. It is little surprise that India is finally investing in transport infrastructure.

      After independence in 1947, India underinvested in infrastructure. Two centuries of colonial extraction had left the country with limited resources and almost unlimited public needs. In its early years of independence, India struggled to feed its masses. There was little money to build railways, roads, ports, airports and transport infrastructure.

      India also lacked the expertise to build such infrastructure at scale. Planners, engineers and skilled labor were all in short supply. The nation did not have enough knowledge of transport technology either. There was another challenge in a densely populated democratic country. Infrastructure projects result in the displacement of large numbers of people. Many resist, others negotiate hard and still, others approach their local politicians who start resisting these projects to win votes.

      India’s varied geography also imposed daunting challenges for developing infrastructure. Largely flat countries like Australia and France could focus on railways, which run twice as long as their roads. Mountainous countries like South Korea and Japan have built more roads than railway lines. While plains and plateaus in India are crisscrossed by railway lines, roads are the means of transportation in its extensive mountainous regions.

      A New Focus

      Over the last 20 years, India’s focus has shifted to roads. This began under the coalition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Although this government lost the 2004 election, NDA’s vision set in motion transport infrastructure development. In 2014, the BJP-led NDA returned to power and accelerated the building of highways across the country.

      NDA-initiated highway construction was kickstarted by the Golden Quadrilateral, a project connecting India’s four biggest cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. This boosted economic growth. Since NDA returned to power, India has embarked on Bharatmala Pariyojana, an ambitious project to connect the entire country through a network of highways like the fabled interstate highway system of the US. Even remote regions such as the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir will be covered.

      In the past, India did not measure highways as per international standards. This meant their growth could not be measured and compared easily. To quote management guru Peter F. Drucker, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Since 2018, the measure of highway length in India has been aligned with international standards. While impressive figures on the growth of national highways have been published, their interpretation now is clear and consistent.

      There has also been a steady increase in highway construction rates. In March 2021, it reached 37 kms/day. For the 2020-21 financial year — India’s financial year begins on April 1 and ends on March 31 — road construction averaged 29.81 kms/day. In 2014-15, the rate was 16.61 kms/day. Six years on, the road construction rate has almost doubled and is the fastest India has achieved since independence. The credit goes to Nitin Gadkari, the minister for road transport, one of the star performers of the NDA cabinet. In March, he claimed that India had secured the world record for fastest road construction.

      India’s Evolving Waterways Make a Big Splash

      The oldest civilizations have originated and flourished near major rivers for a simple reason. They provide fresh water, a fundamental human need. Rivers also provided an easy way to travel and transport goods before the advent of roads and railways. Even today, commercial transport of goods via rivers, lakes and oceans continues to cost less than via land. While container ships regularly carry goods across the high seas, most countries no longer use their rivers very well. The US, Australia, Japan, Russia and China are among the few countries that use their rivers and inland waterways well. 

      India has 116 rivers. Potentially, these could provide 35,000 kilometers of waterways and should be tapped. The government set up the Inland Waterways Authority of India in 1986 for “development and regulation of inland waterways for shipping and navigation.” In spite of tremendous cost advantages, waterways’ commercialization received little attention over the next 30 years. In 2016, the NDA declared 111 rivers across India as national waterways, a quantum leap up from five. By 2020, the government operationalized 12 of these waterways. The journey to suitably develop the remaining 99 will be a long and expensive one. However, this investment will cut logistics costs tremendously in the long run and boost India’s competitiveness.

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      Gadkari points out that the cost of logistics in India is 18% of the total cost of production. For China, this figure is 8-10%. Notably, waterways account for 47% of total transportation in China, compared to 3.5% in India. As waterways develop, so will commercial activity along their banks and lead to job creation.

      India has another major underutilized natural resource. It has a long coastline of 7,500 kilometers spread across 14 states. To develop ports and coastal transportation, the government has launched the Sagarmala project. This could achieve what the Golden Quadrilateral did for roads in the past. By 2025, the government aims to increase the share of waterways transportation from 3.5% to 6%, reducing logistics costs, boosting exports and generating 4 million new jobs.

      The Road Ahead

      About 53% of India’s population is under 25 years of age and many of them need jobs. Employed young people are more likely to send their children to school. They are likely to eat better and live longer. So far, India’s growth rate has not exceeded the job creation rate. For social and political stability, the government needs to create jobs. 

      While India’s economy continues to grow, the pace of growth does not match the employment needs of India’s young population. Building infrastructure is one of the best ways to generate employment because of its massive multiplier effect in an emerging economy like India. The country needs competent ministers and bureaucrats with domain expertise such as Gadkari. Key ministries overseeing power and finance in New Delhi and India’s state capitals should emulate this model.

      Along with building infrastructure, India must reform its arcane laws of colonial and socialist heritage to boost economic activity. The government must also reform education and vocational training in collaboration with industry to raise the skills of the workforce, improve employability and increase productivity. This is a tall order, but if India can get its house in order, then domestic and foreign investment would flow in. Then, the country would finally be able to join the Asian tigers as one of the world’s fast-growing economies.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Does the Future Belong to the Taliban?

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      It’s as if a sudden natural disaster has just struck Afghanistan. The scenes from the capital Kabul reflect the kind of panic that comes when a Category 5 hurricane makes landfall, when the waters rise and the levees are breached, when a forest fire jumps over a fuel break to spread out of control.

      The Taliban victory this past weekend was not a complete surprise. The news had been full of warnings of their territorial advance, and pundits had worked hard to out-Cassandra one another with their pronouncements of impending doom. And yet no one expected the sky to fall quite so quickly.

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      The Biden administration had been expecting at best some kind of power-sharing agreement and at worst a few months to prepare for the fall of Kabul. In the end, the Taliban needed only a few days to go from seizing the last provincial capitals to marching into the Afghan capital and occupying the presidential palace this weekend. Also unexpected was their method. They accomplished this blitzkrieg as much with political persuasion as through military force — by negotiating surrender agreements with Afghan army and government officials in the areas where they were advancing.

      Reality of Chaos

      The Biden administration has tried to reassure the American people that it is presiding over an orderly response. The media, however, has depicted a street-level reality of chaos. The international airport in Kabul, where the United States is making its last stand, has been the last hope for many Afghans who fear that their collaboration with the Americans, their support for human rights or even just their style of dress will earn them a jail sentence or worse. They are desperate to get on the last flights out, even to the point of clinging to the fuselage of a departing US plane.

      Until we get full eyewitness reports, the best description of the catastrophe in Kabul comes from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel “The Sympathizer,” which has a harrowing section on the last-minute scramble of South Vietnamese to get on American transport planes as Saigon was falling in 1975.

      “The plane was a garbage truck with wings attached, and like a garbage truck deposits were made from the rear, where its big flat cargo ramp dropped down to receive us,” Nguyen writes of the C-130 Hercules and its open compartment. “Adults squatted on the floor or sat on bags, children perched on their knees. Lucky passengers had a bulkhead berth where they could cling to a cargo strap. The contours of skin and flesh separating one individual from another merged, everyone forced into the mandatory intimacy required of those less human than the ones leaving the country in reserved seating.”

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      From the Western perspective, this exodus is the result of an unnatural disaster, of armed bands of religious fundamentalists who have seized Afghanistan and are determined to drag it back to the Middle Ages. They have little professed interest in democracy, human rights or pluralism. The last time they were in charge in Kabul, they presided over a theater of cruelty: stoning, floggings, amputations, executions. This last week, in the territories they grabbed on their way to taking power, the Taliban enlisted child soldiers, rolled back the rights of women and restricted free expression, showing little sign that they’d updated their style of governance.

      The velocity with which the relatively modest number of Taliban (75,000) swept aside the Afghan national army (300,000) is reminiscent of the sudden expansion of the Islamic State throughout Syria and Iraq in 2014. Then, too, US allies in the region proved no match for a highly mobile and fiercely dedicated group of insurgents. The United States and its allies, deeming this so-called caliphate a risk to the region and the global order, conducted an all-out war that culminated in the Islamic State’s defeat.

      As the presumed linchpin in the war on terror, Afghanistan once commanded similar attention from Washington. But that was 20 years ago, and the United States is now leading the charge for the exit. In recent months, the Biden administration downplayed the risk of the Taliban taking over the country; on July 8, the president said that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

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      The Pentagon, meanwhile, was arguing back in June that the risk of the country again playing host to terrorist organizations was only “medium,” with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin maintaining that “it would take possibly two years for them to develop that capability.” The Pentagon is now in the process of “reassessment.”

      The Taliban are now more firmly in control of the entire country than they were back in the late 1990s. It’s not just the Afghan national army that has given up. It seems like the country’s entire civil society is trying to get out as soon as possible. But that also demonstrates how different the country has become. When the Taliban were last in charge, there was barely any civil society. The images from Kabul might seem horrifying, but you reassure yourself by saying that all of this is very far away. Also, the Taliban don’t have global ambitions. What happens in Afghanistan, stays in Afghanistan. Don’t kid yourself.

      Capacity for Ruthlessness

      Stalin once complained that imposing the Soviet model on the Poles was like “saddling a cow.” The Catholic Church remained a powerful force in communist Poland, and Polish farmers put up so much resistance to collectivization that the land remained largely in private hands. It took more than 40 years, but the cow eventually threw off its saddle.

      Surely Western efforts to liberalize Afghan society can’t be compared to the attempted Stalinization of Poland: different times, different ideologies. But the Soviets, too, thought that they were bringing modern civilization to the benighted Poles. Similarly, the United States believed that it could drag Afghanistan kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It found willing partners: a government, an army, a lot of NGOs. The Taliban represented everyone else. Much of the country resented the intrusions of outsiders. Afghanistan had been combating such pushy foreigners for centuries. Much of the country remained effectively pre-modern, a constituency that the Taliban have actively courted.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Consider just one indicator of modernity: the rate of literacy. In Afghanistan, less than 20% of the population could read in 1979. By 2018, that rate had grown to 43%. On the one hand, that’s a big jump. On the other hand, Afghanistan continues to have one of the worst literacy rates in the world, well below Sudan and Yemen. Compare Afghanistan’s current literacy rate to that of Iraq (86%), Iran (86%) and Syria (81%), and you can understand the utter presumptuousness of US efforts to modernize the country.

      A thin layer of human rights activists did manage to do some extraordinary work in Afghanistan. But if you listen to this interview on the new podcast Strength & Solidarity with Shaharzad Akbar, the chairperson of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, you can hear the frustration in her voice as she talks about dealing with the entrenched interests and the outright corruption in her country. She has continued to do her work up to the last minute, reporting on the Taliban’s human rights abuses in the territories it was capturing. She tweets on the latest developments here.

      Anyone like Akbar who might form a domestic opposition to the Taliban has emigrated, is trying to leave or is lying very low. Protests have broken out, including one in Jalalabad that the Taliban shut down by firing into the crowd of demonstrators, killing three. Pushback will come in other forms as well. Relying primarily on support from the Pashtun community, the Taliban will face resistance from other ethnic groups. It may also have to deal with doctrinal disagreements with other Islamic forces in the country. But the Taliban can make up for any deficit in popularity with its capacity for total ruthlessness.

      25 Years On

      At the same time, this is not the same Taliban that ruled 25 years ago. A number of the current leaders have negotiated with US representatives in Doha, and they’ve met with numerous foreign leaders. In late July, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed a delegation of Taliban officials in Tianjin, which suggests that both sides are willing to compromise after some significant disagreements over what constitutes religious extremism.

      With the United States blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars in Afghan reserves held in US banks, Kabul will increasingly rely on China for capital and technical expertise. Beijing will be happy to provide that capital without the pesky political strings that the West attaches, though it will likely demand other quid pro quos, like access to the riches that lie beneath the Afghan soil.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Some form of rapprochement with the West is not impossible. The Taliban, after all, have learned how to craft messages that resonate in Western capitals. “We are committed to working with other parties in a consultative manner of genuine respect to agree on a new, inclusive political system in which the voice of every Afghan is reflected and where no Afghan feels excluded,” wrote Sirajuddin Haqqani, a deputy leader of the Taliban, in The New York Times last year. “I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights, where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity.”

      Taliban spokesmen have echoed these same phrases in some of their recent statements as well. There is no consensus on political and economic issues within the Taliban leadership. Ousting the foreign powers will soon seem easy in comparison to running a country where the citizens, even if mostly illiterate, have different expectations of the state than they did 25 years ago.

      Those within the leadership who favor rapprochement with the West will only prosper politically if they can point to some reciprocal interest. The Biden administration should not, in Afghanistan, repeat its mistake of letting reformists twist in the wind, as it has done in Iran.

      Will the Taliban Take Over the World?

      The Taliban represent a powerful strand in Afghan society: fiercely anti-colonial and distrustful of the West. They are not alone. These sentiments can be found throughout the region. The mullahs in Iran and the crown princes in Saudi Arabia, despite their many mutual disagreements, have their own versions of this ideology. Given their historical experiences, who can blame them.

      We also make a fatal category error when we assume that fundamentalism is somehow a Middle Eastern or Islamic character flaw. Outside the region, you can find the Taliban wherever people gather in the name of rejecting modern politics in favor of tribal affiliations, decrying the permissiveness of liberal culture and elevating religious dogma to the single principle governing society.

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      When anti-vaxxers gather, the Taliban is there. When homophobes decry gay marriage and “family values” activists complain about gender fluidity, the Taliban is there. When Christian fundamentalists launch their own jihad against abortion, the Taliban is there. When right-wing extremists devise conspiracy theories about “globalists,” the Taliban is there.

      So, let’s stop all the hand-wringing about the barbarians massing at the gates of the West. Whether it’s Steve Bannon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Jim Dobson, the barbarians have been inside the gates all along. The US war in Afghanistan is over. Let’s now focus on the fight against these homegrown extremists.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The west’s nation-building fantasy is to blame for the mess in Afghanistan | Simon Jenkins

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      OpinionAfghanistanThe west’s nation-building fantasy is to blame for the mess in AfghanistanSimon JenkinsBritish MPs have turned on Boris Johnson – but what tidy end did they expect from this imperialist experiment? Fri 20 Aug 2021 03.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 20 Aug 2021 04.32 EDTBritain’s MPs this week uttered one long howl of anguish over Afghanistan. Their immediate targets were Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, politicians who just happened to be on the watch when Kabul’s pack of cards collapsed. But their real concern was that a collective 20-year experiment in “exporting western values” to Afghanistan had fallen into chaos. MPs wanted someone other than themselves to blame. A politician is never so angry as when proved wrong.Even the crisis in Afghanistan can’t break the spell of Britain’s delusional foreign policy | Owen JonesRead moreLike their fellow representatives in Congress, MPs somehow hoped the end would be nice and tidy, with speeches and flags, much like Britain’s exit from Hong Kong. Instead, tens of thousands of Afghans who had lived in an effective colony under years of Nato occupation had come to believe the west would either never leave or somehow protect them from Taliban retribution. They were swiftly disabused.In 2006 I stood at dusk on a castle wall overlooking Kabul with a young UN official. He had just heard the Kandahar road was no longer safe. “Why,” he sighed, “can’t Afghanistan be more like Sweden?” I tried to see if he was smiling, but he was grimacing. For another 15 years, armies of western soldiers and civilians hurled stupefying amounts of money at the country. They created a wildly corrupt western dependency, where some 50,000 Afghans have links with the west that are now lethal. As for the “western-trained” army, one of its trainers told me it was mostly for show. An occupying power could not possibly motivate local youths to kill their fellow countrymen who might soon be ruling them. He rightly predicted: “They will just walk home.”It is now 22 years since Tony Blair gave a speech in Chicago lecturing the US on his doctrine of international intervention. He wanted the west to invade countries across the world not in self-defence, but to save people everywhere from oppression. It was a reformulation of Alfred Milner’s Victorian concept of moral imperialism. British politicians on both the left and the right have long been uncomfortable about the abandonment of Milnerism as the acceptable face of empire. Global policing is somehow embedded in Britain’s political DNA. All Blair’s wars of aggression were cheered on in the House of Commons.Many people have spoken this week of the “decline of the west”, lamenting the collapse of US moral authority. Yet these theories are beside the point. The belief that our moral values are somehow meaningless unless they are enforced upon those who do not share them is imperialist bigotry. It also leads to absurd biases. Iraq is now thought of as “bad interventionism”, as opposed to Afghanistan’s “good” version. The virtue of the latter invasion led President Obama in 2009 to bless the war in Afghanistan with a “surge” of soldiers, taking the US total to 110,000, mere target practice for the Taliban.American gunboat diplomacy, initially supposed to salve the wounds of 9/11 in 2001, opened the door to fake morality and a trillion-dollar nation-building fantasy. The catastrophic return of Taliban autonomy became its inevitable conclusion. The US – with Britain as its lackey – committed liberal interventionism’s cardinal sin: half-heartedness. The craving to intervene is always followed by a craving to withdraw. Traditional empires at least pretended they would never leave. As it was, Afghanistan replicated departures from India, South Africa, Hong Kong and Iraq. If you invade and conquer an alien state, you own it, but must then disown it. Western rule has killed an estimated 240,000 in Afghanistan since 2001, more than the Taliban ever did. It has not left morality, just a mess. We must assume strategists in Washington and London are now planning interventions in Taiwan and Ukraine against possible Chinese and Russian expansion. If you ask taxpayers to spend billions on defence, you need something to show for it. So you pretend, as Johnson did in his bizarre conversation with Biden this week, that “gains” were made in Afghanistan. You accuse non-interventionists, as did the former Tory leader William Hague, of demonstrating “the enfeeblement of the western mind”. In a recent column, Hague called on Britain to continue invading foreign countries when “our common humanity demands it”. In doing so, he sounded like Pope Urban summoning the First Crusade.The concept of a global police force, so often cited, requires some framework of global consent. When the United Nations was founded, that consent was rooted in the first chapter of its charter. This stated that all members “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state”. On that basis it achieved general consent, if not always obedience. The end of the cold war and the assumed superiority of liberal western values emboldened the US and Britain to declare a “responsibility to protect” all those oppressed by their governments. The authority of the UN charter – rooted in national sovereignty – collapsed, and the UN gave way to the US as a self-declared policeman.The American cold war historian Francis Fukuyama wrote recently that the US “is not likely to regain its earlier hegemonic status, nor should it aspire to”. There is no such thing as a global policeman. Individual nations best serve humanity by example or charity, not by war. Military intervention is rarely, if ever, humane. Western regimes have enough woes to confront in their own countries. If they crave moral outreach, it should be through the imperialism of ideas, of receptive minds and open doors, not of guns and bombs.
      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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      Congress Adjourns While the Nation Burns

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      While the fate of many in Afghanistan hangs in the balance, at least Americans at home can breathe a sigh of relief. Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate are on vacation for weeks to come. Citizens of the nation’s capital can recapture their identity from the out-of-town blowhards who give Washington a bad name. The trick now will be to encourage as many Republicans as possible to stay away for good. Admittedly, this may take another election to accomplish, but it is important to get to work on it now.

      On the Senate side of the Capitol, both Democrats and Republicans are leaving town with their party balloons still in the air in celebration of a bill to fund repair and replacement of a portion of the nation’s hard infrastructure that has crumbled before their very eyes for decades. It has become so rare that both parties can agree on anything that the celebration far outweighs the accomplishment. After all that hard work, it seems that it is time for a “well-deserved” weeks-long vacation, the other topic that receives regular bipartisan support.

      Is America Ready to Raise the Minimum Wage?

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      On the House of Representatives side, things are a little more complicated. That group of dedicated public servants adjourned on July 30 for seven weeks, although a short recall is possible for a symbolic vote or two along the way. To be fair, they did pass some meaningful legislation in the last few months. However, only one such piece of legislation has passed the Senate as well and been signed into law — Joe Biden’s initial COVID-19 relief bill (American Rescue Plan). But at least they tried to find legislative solutions on some significant issues, the most important of which are voting rights and police reform.

      With all those senators and representatives now vacationing, it would be easy to conclude from this casual approach to governance that the nation is smoothly sailing to its appointed destiny of renewed greatness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      There is so much that is so obviously wrong at the moment in today’s America that even the appearance of a weeks-long hiatus should ethically disqualify those vacationing legislators from further service. A “grateful” nation should retire all of them. But that won’t happen, in part because each of them will have a spin machine at work full-time rolling out the tale of just how hard they are working on the issues of the day back in their districts.

      While You Were Vacationing

      Lest you think that I am being a little hard on these self-congratulatory public servants, let’s take a look at what is going on around the nation and around the world while the US Congress has freed itself of its legislative responsibilities.

      Embed from Getty Images

      First, and most obvious, COVID-19 is again ravaging the nation. So, instead of collectively working on urgent public health initiatives, like vaccination mandates, the vacationing legislators are individually on the stump creating more public health confusion. Much of the idiocy makes enough local news that it fortifies those in the caves, covens and churches in Republican districts and states as they go about their communities spreading the disease. The only upside is that many of the vacationing Republican congresspersons are spending their time hanging out with their unmasked and unvaccinated constituents.

      Meanwhile, a country that clings to the notion that the current version of universal suffrage has become a critical component of its “democratic” foundation is in the throes of an unrelenting Republican-led effort to do everything possible to make voting more difficult and less universal. The reasons for this are simple: racism and privilege. Universal suffrage to white conservatives is only a good thing if the “universe” is overwhelmingly composed of right-wing white people. Unfortunately for that dwindling crowd, the universe includes a lot of black and brown people, and a whole bunch of young people who see “universal” as a plus.

      There is an easy way to stop the reversal of the democratic process in America. It is to pass legislation at the national level that sets clear voting rights standards, that increases access to the ballot for all eligible voters and that provides fierce enforcement measures to ensure legal compliance. But you can’t do any of this on vacation.

      While many of those vacationing legislators may come face-to-face with constituents in places where everything is burning, and heatwaves, drought and smoke spread daily devastation, nothing can be done about this either while on vacation. Therefore, environmental laws, climate change legislation, and economic incentives and regulatory mandates remain on hold. The legal framework for cleaner energy production, research and use remains unchanged and woefully inadequate to meet today’s planetary challenges.

      While climate change is taking its deadly toll during the congressional vacation season, we should not forget about gun violence and police violence. Hardly a day goes by in America without multiple firearm deaths and some measure of police overreaction or undertraining resulting in the death or serious injury of someone in some community that the cops are supposed to be protecting. It will be hard to get a full tally from these events over the coming vacation weeks, but every congressperson knows that critically-needed federal legislation to address rampant gun violence and police reform will be on hold, as well.

      No matter how completely oblivious most Americans have become to gun violence (until it hits very close to home), America remains the most likely developed country in which at any moment someone is being killed or killing themselves with a firearm. Since it has been a few weeks now since the nation’s latest high-profile mass killing, it will be hard to make it to the end of this congressional vacation without another one. Thoughts and prayers are all we get when Congress is in session, so their absence shouldn’t change the landscape much on this one. But we should all be disgusted that these public servants can go on vacation while the gun carnage continues unabated and has remained unaddressed in meaningful federal legislation for decades.

      The List Goes On

      I could go on. The list is long. But so is the vacation. Think about how a functioning legislature might be able to make some legislative progress in the coming weeks on universal access to meaningful health care, child care and family leave, a living minimum wage, tax reform and access to quality education.

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      There might even be the opportunity to debate the crippling and continuing impact of America’s systemic racism and how to do something about it. And maybe if they weren’t all on vacation, they could do something constructive, instead of sound bites, about the implementation of America’s long-overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan and its human rights implications, about immigrants and refugees, and about ensuring that the vaccines that Americans are throwing away get into the arms of those begging for them elsewhere.

      They could be doing some of this, but they are doing none of it. They are on vacation.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Why did we ignore the lessons of history in Afghanistan? We need a public inquiry | Jonathan Steele

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      OpinionAfghanistanWhy did we ignore the lessons of history in Afghanistan? We need a public inquiry Jonathan SteeleThe US and Britain’s dogged pursuit of reform and regime change made the return of the Taliban almost inevitable Wed 18 Aug 2021 12.30 EDTLast modified on Wed 18 Aug 2021 12.32 EDTWhen rising British casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq started to raise public doubts 15 years ago, a new mantra began to be heard: Iraq was a war of choice, Afghanistan a war of necessity. The argument was that the US and its faithful ally, Britain, had launched an invasion in Iraq that was unjustified as it was based on a false premise: the hollow claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.Fear of refugees must not shape the response to Afghanistan’s crisis | Daniel TrillingRead moreThe intervention in Afghanistan was different, it was said, even by many who opposed the Iraq war. Al-Qaida had organised the atrocities of 9/11 and its leader, Osama bin Laden, was based on Afghan soil. George W Bush was right to give the Taliban an ultimatum to hand him over or face invasion.But here, too, there was a false premise, or indeed several. Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership were as surprised to see the twin towers crash to the ground in New York as everyone else. They had never been consulted by Bin Laden on his strategy, let alone his targets. Anticipating US reprisals, Bin Laden and his large entourage of Arab fighters left Kandahar and hid in the Tora Bora mountains. Bush’s call on the Taliban to arrest him was unrealistic. So going after the Taliban was just as unnecessary as bringing regime change in Iraq.It was also equally dubious from the standpoint of international law. There was no UN security council resolution authorising the US assault on Afghanistan. It was clear that Bush would want to punish al-Qaida for 9/11, but international law does not permit armed force for revenge or retaliation. The US claimed that al-Qaida had declared war on the US and it was entitled to respond with force in self-defence. International law only allows this if an enemy attack is imminent. In the autumn of 2001, imminence was hardly a relevant concept. None of the 19 9/11 hijackers was Afghan and they had mainly trained in Germany and the US. It had taken two years to prepare the attack, so there was no way al-Qaida could have mounted another similar atrocity imminently.After 9/11, a few analysts argued that if the US was determined to use force it should have limited it to a search-and-destroy operation against al-Qaida in Tora Bora. Their view was ignored and Bush added a new war aim: the building of a modern democracy in Afghanistan. Joe Biden repudiated that in his speech on Monday when he stressed that US policy should be based on security from terrorism rather than any humanitarian reforms. His remarks are sparking a furious debate, but they are correct.Britain, too, needs to re-examine its Afghan policies. It should hold an inquiry along the same lines as the Chilcot report into Iraq (except that it should report much faster). The first item on its agenda must be whether the decision to go for regime change in 2001 was wise or foolish. The events of the past two decades, culminating in the triumphant return of the Taliban that we have just witnessed, flows from that decision.It is true that Kabul and other major Afghan cities have enjoyed 20 years of patchy progress. Women in particular have benefited and a generation of young people has grown up with the expectation of secure and free life choices. If the Taliban had not been ousted from power in 2001, none of this would have happened. But the country would have been spared the ravages and killing of the civil war that resumed in 2003 once the Taliban recovered from the shock of defeat. Like the Ashraf Ghani administration, it also just gave up in 2001 under the weight of US bombing with barely a shot fired. It was bound to seek ways to reverse it, however long it took.In the century since Afghanistan gained independence from Britain in 1919, the country’s tragedy has been the constantly repeated cycle of defeat for the minority of Afghan modernisers who have sought to break the hold of conservative rural patriarchy. It happened with the first post-independence leader, Amanullah Khan, who took power on a wave of popularity but lost it after he introduced co-educational schools and stopped women wearing hijab, let alone the full burqa. Conservatives marched on Kabul in 1929, the army deserted and Amanullah abdicated.Resistance to a new wave of reform arose again in the 1980s when Afghanistan’s communists, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), expanded education for girls and increased opportunities for women to work outside the home. When they took Soviet support, they opened the door for an alliance of religious and tribal leaders (helped by western governments at the height of the cold war) to rise up as mujahideen warriors and brand the PDPA as atheists and lackeys of the Kremlin. When Moscow withdrew its aid in 1992 (like Trump and Biden today), the modernising regime quickly fell. Now we are seeing a third turn of the wheel of conservatives ousting reformers.Observers wonder how the Taliban managed to achieve so sweeping a victory. The sad fact is that its patriarchal views are popular in rural and small-town Afghanistan and it could never have made its stunning military advances without local support. People had also lost faith in a corrupt central government and an army that the Pentagon was well aware was ineffective and unmotivated – as revealed in the “Afghanistan Papers”, hundreds of confidential interviews with US military and diplomatic leaders obtained by the Washington Post.Many Afghans felt the Taliban produced quicker and more honest justice in village disputes between families. The UK government should have known this. Surveys commissioned for the Department for International Development in Helmand in 2010 showed that people preferred Taliban courts to the Kabul-appointed ones, where they had to bribe prosecutors and judges.Afghans do not like invaders, whatever their motives, and the Taliban were able to exploit the narrative of patriotic resistance. Why did Britain ignore the lessons of history and follow the unhappy experience of the Soviet invasion and occupation? That must be the central issue in the public inquiry we need.
      Jonathan Steele is a former Guardian correspondent and author of Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground
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