Throughout US War on Afghanistan, “We Could Clearly See Failure Was Coming”

Por Amy Goodman — Truthout

The “war on terror” is still ongoing in Afghanistan despite US withdrawal, journalist Emran Feroz says.

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This week marks 25 years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of what would become the longest war in U.S. history. After installing a pro-Western government in Kabul in December 2001, U.S. and other NATO troops would remain in the country for the next two decades battling a stubborn insurgency — until a chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021 that saw the Taliban return to power.

“During the 20 years of America’s longest war in Afghanistan, we could clearly see that failure was coming,” says journalist Emran Feroz, just back from a month of reporting in Afghanistan. He says the relative economic and political gains under the Western-backed government were undercut by widespread corruption and violence, particularly in rural Afghanistan. “You had torture prisons next to Burger King and KFC and Starbucks.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This week marks 25 years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of what would become the longest war in U.S. history. Less than a month after the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, the United States launched airstrikes against Afghanistan. The Taliban government was ousted within months, but the U.S.-led war and occupation would continue for nearly two decades, during which more than 100,000 Afghan civilians were killed, according to the U.N. More than 2,300 U.S. service members died. The U.S. spent trillions of dollars on the war and efforts to build an Afghan government and military, that ultimately collapsed with stunning speed in August 2021.

Today, Afghanistan is facing a deepening humanitarian crisis. Women and girls have been shut out of higher education and face sweeping restrictions on their work, movement and participation in public life.

AMY GOODMAN: Our next guest, Austrian Afghan journalist Emran Feroz, is just back from a month reporting in Afghanistan. His new piece for Truthout is headlined “The War on Afghanistan Was Launched 25 Years Ago. It Still Hasn’t Ended.” He’s joining us from Stuttgart, Germany.

Emran, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you lay out what you found, as you’ve just returned from Afghanistan? The U.S. bombed Afghanistan when the Taliban were in power, and the Taliban are back a quarter of a century later.

EMRAN FEROZ: Hi. Thanks for having me.

So, yes, I spent almost a whole month in Afghanistan, and the thing is that, as I wrote in this piece, I believe the “war on terror” is not over, especially because since the U.S. withdrawal, a lot of airstrikes are still taking place, especially in the last weeks and months. And all these airstrikes are being conducted by the Pakistani military regime, which kind of took over America’s role and is now using the same “war on terror” arguments that we heard for 20 years, again to hit Afghan civilians. And the recent strike just took place a few days ago in the south of the country, close to the Pakistani border. And again, most of the victims were civilians, especially children.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Emran, if you could say — you know, a lot of people were surprised by the fact that the Taliban came back to power so quickly. Who was supporting the Taliban in all those years?

EMRAN FEROZ: I mean, during the 20 years of America’s longest war in Afghanistan, we could clearly see that failure was coming. The Afghan regime in Kabul, the pro-Western Afghan regime in Kabul, was highly corrupt and was engaging in a war that seemed to be endless because too many people were profiting from it. And this war actually made a lot of people angry and, you know, left them frustrating, and a lot of these people, actually, especially in Afghanistan rural sites, started to support the Taliban again.

But I also want to highlight that a lot of the places that I visited during the last weeks, for example, Bagram Air Base, close to Kabul, were in fact breeding grounds for America’s enemies, because you had this huge prison complex in the middle of the country, which became kind of a Little America. You had torture prisons next to Burger King and KFC and Starbucks, and a lot of young men who vanished there and who never came out, or a lot of people, including Taliban fighters, who were brought there and, in fact, became even more radicalized through the things that happened there.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, you wrote this piece, just out, headlined “Why Bagram Air Base Remains a Target Five Years After U.S. Exited Afghanistan.” If you can talk about what’s happened to women and girls there now?

EMRAN FEROZ: The situation of women and girls is pretty bad in Afghanistan. I mean, it’s — as already mentioned, they have no access to higher education. Also, there is a lot of — like, you know, a lot of problems when it comes to letting them work, allowing them work. And you could clearly see that girls and women in Afghanistan are facing these repressions, and that, actually, unfortunately, the Taliban themselves declared war against them. That’s what at least a lot of Afghan girls and women are going to tell you.

And you see that also a lot of people, for that reason, still try to leave the country. Afghanistan is still producing a lot of refugees, tens of thousands of people who want to leave the country. And especially in the cities, when you talk to people, including my own relatives and friends, they say, “OK, what should we do here? Especially when it comes to the future of our daughters, there is no future here. So we are forced to leave, even if we don’t want to do that.”

And this is, unfortunately, the harsh reality that everyone knows about, including a lot of Taliban officials. And if you talk to them, you will also hear different things. For example, there is kind of a discrepancy between the Taliban leadership in Kabul and the one in Kandahar, which is making the laws. And it seems that, especially in my case, like the things that I experienced, is that a lot of Taliban themselves do not really support these repressions, but they are forced to do it because there is a strict hierarchy, and they fear that they’re going to be split if they start to fight about this.

AMY GOODMAN: Emran Feroz, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Austrian Afghan journalist, author of Graveyard Empire: Four Decades of Wars and Intervention in Afghanistan.

That does it for today’s show. Steal This Story, Please!, the documentary about Democracy Now!, will be viewable online for the first time in an exclusive special event starting Tuesday, October 13th, at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. If you live in the United States and Canada, you can watch the film in your own home and be part of the post-screening Q&A, question and answer, with me and the filmmakers, the Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin. The conversation will be moderated by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa. To find out more, you can go to StealThisStory.org. You can join us and help support the impact of this film that celebrates the importance of independent media. I’ll also be at Fort Collins and in Boulder at University of Colorado the 26th and 27th of October. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, for Democracy Now!

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Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Nermeen Shaikh is a broadcast news producer and weekly co-host at Democracy Now! in New York City. She worked in research and nongovernmental organizations before joining Democracy Now! She has a masters of philosophy from Cambridge University and is the author of The Present as History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power (Columbia University Press).

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Fonte: Truthout