Columns

The 90 000+ classified US military documents released by Wikileaks last week have revealed a refreshingly honest if startlingly grisly picture of the realities on the ground in the ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan. Ubiquitous cover-ups of civilian deaths, extrajudicial assassination squads, the rise and rise of the Taliban …

you name it, and if it’s illegal, inhumane, and inimical to the interests of the Afghani and American people alike, it’s there on Wikileaks in black and white. 
   Nine years down the blood-splattered track, as Osama Bin Laden moves into the fat Elvis stage of his career in global terrorism in a warm little cave in Whereveristan, these documents provide us with a timely opportunity to return to a perennial question: what the fuck are New Zealand troops doing in Afghanistan? Insofar as they feel compelled to justify our presence there at all, our politicians have come up with some doozies …
   Paving the way to stable democracy: Roll me another one. The ruling Northern Alliance is a motley crew of warlords and religious fundamentalists, bankrolled by industrial-scale opium production and the CIA. It could barely maintain control of Kabul, let alone the country, without perpetual US support. Its dual mandates are an election marked by widespread fraud and the support of the powers that are illegally occupying the country. Afghanistan recently received the dubious distinction of being ranked the world’s second most corrupt country by Transparency International. 
   Fighting global terrorism: US National Security Advisor Jim Jones recently declared that there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda members currently operating in Afghanistan. It seems that now might be the time for Obama to re-deploy the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner that embarrassed Bush so badly in 2003. Except of course that al Qaeda still exists – its incentives to operate out of Afghanistan are just rather diminished. Terrorists no doubt continue to hatch their plots in Syria, Pakistan, Northern Africa, Hamburg, Paris, London … and their latest atrocity will always be accompanied by the same old cheaply-made home video explaining their motivation: they are protesting US occupations in the Middle East. Like, duh.
   Introducing and enforcing human rights: It would certainly be difficult to beat the Taliban at the game of flagrant human rights abuse, and the current US-backed regime does not quite manage it. Minor progress in this area will, however, be cold comfort for Afghanis who continue to receive the death penalty for converting from Islam, life sentences for cross-dressing, or imprisonment without trial and torture for suspected militancy.
   Supporting our allies: Okay, so this one actually rings true. But let’s be honest about the implications: our SAS troops are essentially hired thugs. The problem is that the US is behaving like a gambling addict who knows he’s losing but has already lost the holiday house and the kids’ college fund and can no longer afford to quit. If New Zealand wishes to be on the winning side of history, it ought to cut its losses and leave the US to it.