Friday, March 21, 2008
Myths and the mujahideen
Simon Tisdall
Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, is a hilariously simplistic, enjoyable Hollywood romp through the vicious 1980s struggle between Afghanistan's US-backed mujahideen guerrillas and the occupying Red Army. On one level, its inanities make Mel Gibson's Braveheart look like a thoughtful documentary about 13th century Anglo-Scottish relations.
But entertainment aside, the film performs a serious function, too, by highlighting crucial issues of current concern. They include the winnability of asymmetric wars, the wisdom of military intervention, the rise of al-Qaida and Islamist fundamentalism, and Nato's present-day campaign in Afghanistan against the Taliban.
One of those who played a real-time role in the ultimately successful fight to eject the Soviet Union was Morton Abramowitz. He was assistant secretary of state for intelligence in the Reagan administration from 1985-89, when the $1bn covert CIA drive to arm the mujahideen described in Charlie Wilson's War was at its peak. Over a long career, his interventionist credentials were impeccable - and he knew most of what went on in Afghanistan in the 80s.
Speaking after a screening of the film at the Policy Exchange thinktank in London, Abramowitz offered several factual corrections to the storyline. Wilson, the hard-drinking, womanising Texas congressman played by Hanks, was not the first to urge sending weapons to the Afghan resistance, he said. That idea originated in 1980 with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser.
By his own account, Brzezinski travelled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan after the Soviet invasion, winning financial and logistical support for an effort to arm the mujahideen. Assistance was also forthcoming from Britain's MI6, Egypt, China and even Warsaw pact Czechoslovakia.
Abramowitz said that, contrary to claims made in the film, Mikhail Gorbachev, who became general-secretary of the Soviet communist party in 1985, decided to withdraw as early as 1986, believing the occupation could not be sustained. His decision actually preceded the deployment of the first US-supplied Stinger missiles whose devastating use against Soviet aircraft supposedly broke Russia's will.
The former intelligence chief was also dismissive of the film's suggestion that Wilson foresaw that anti-American fundamentalists and jihadis from around the Muslim world would move in and exploit the post-withdrawal power vacuum in Afghanistan. "Charlie Wilson did absolutely nothing about the problems of post-war reconstruction," he said. The failure to help rebuild once the Russians left was collective - and its fateful consequences were only understood much later.
Ali Jalali, a leading mujahideen fighter who later became Afghanistan's interior minister under President Hamid Karzai, told the Policy Exchange the commonly held idea that the Soviet retreat in 1989 was the moment al-Qaida and the Taliban, inadvertently armed by Washington, came into being was mistaken.
"The perception now is that the war created al-Qaida. But the spread of fundamentalism started long before, at the point when the Arab socialism movements of the 1950s and 1960s failed," Jalali said. Another little understood factor was Pakistan's dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, who insisted that all weapons destined for the mujahideen be channelled though his inter-services intelligence agency. Zia, widely seen now as prime mover in Pakistan's evolution into an Islamic state, wanted an Afghan government that Islamabad could control.
General Charles Guthrie, former SAS commandant and Tony Blair's envoy to Pakistan's current president, Pervez Musharraf, also said Zia's role was problematic. Zia's favouring of his proxies meant that more able, less anti-western mujahideen commanders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud, the "Lion of the Panjshir", murdered by al-Qaida two days before 9/11, received fewer weapons and supplies.
Abramowitz, Guthrie and Paddy Ashdown, the former Bosnia international administrator whose hopes of a top diplomatic role in Afghanistan were recently dashed by Karzai, all suggested the asymmetrical warfare that defeated the Russians could yet defeat Nato forces there.
"You cannot impose democracy by lethal force," Ashdown said. "We will not beat the Taliban. Only the Afghan people will defeat the Taliban." And that would take more time than "short-termist" western governments were likely to allow. As Rudyard Kipling had noted in Arithmetic on the Frontier, expensive weaponry and superior education did not guarantee success: "Strike hard who cares - shoot straight who can - The odds are on the cheaper man."
The experience of Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s, and today, plus what has happened in Iraq, had reduced his enthusiasm for and confidence in military intervention, Abramowitz said. "When I think about intervention now, I am much more modest in saying what we can achieve. To tell you the truth, talk of intervention makes me skittish."
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_tisdall/2008/03/myths_and_the_mujahideen.html
Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, is a hilariously simplistic, enjoyable Hollywood romp through the vicious 1980s struggle between Afghanistan's US-backed mujahideen guerrillas and the occupying Red Army. On one level, its inanities make Mel Gibson's Braveheart look like a thoughtful documentary about 13th century Anglo-Scottish relations.
But entertainment aside, the film performs a serious function, too, by highlighting crucial issues of current concern. They include the winnability of asymmetric wars, the wisdom of military intervention, the rise of al-Qaida and Islamist fundamentalism, and Nato's present-day campaign in Afghanistan against the Taliban.
One of those who played a real-time role in the ultimately successful fight to eject the Soviet Union was Morton Abramowitz. He was assistant secretary of state for intelligence in the Reagan administration from 1985-89, when the $1bn covert CIA drive to arm the mujahideen described in Charlie Wilson's War was at its peak. Over a long career, his interventionist credentials were impeccable - and he knew most of what went on in Afghanistan in the 80s.
Speaking after a screening of the film at the Policy Exchange thinktank in London, Abramowitz offered several factual corrections to the storyline. Wilson, the hard-drinking, womanising Texas congressman played by Hanks, was not the first to urge sending weapons to the Afghan resistance, he said. That idea originated in 1980 with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser.
By his own account, Brzezinski travelled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan after the Soviet invasion, winning financial and logistical support for an effort to arm the mujahideen. Assistance was also forthcoming from Britain's MI6, Egypt, China and even Warsaw pact Czechoslovakia.
Abramowitz said that, contrary to claims made in the film, Mikhail Gorbachev, who became general-secretary of the Soviet communist party in 1985, decided to withdraw as early as 1986, believing the occupation could not be sustained. His decision actually preceded the deployment of the first US-supplied Stinger missiles whose devastating use against Soviet aircraft supposedly broke Russia's will.
The former intelligence chief was also dismissive of the film's suggestion that Wilson foresaw that anti-American fundamentalists and jihadis from around the Muslim world would move in and exploit the post-withdrawal power vacuum in Afghanistan. "Charlie Wilson did absolutely nothing about the problems of post-war reconstruction," he said. The failure to help rebuild once the Russians left was collective - and its fateful consequences were only understood much later.
Ali Jalali, a leading mujahideen fighter who later became Afghanistan's interior minister under President Hamid Karzai, told the Policy Exchange the commonly held idea that the Soviet retreat in 1989 was the moment al-Qaida and the Taliban, inadvertently armed by Washington, came into being was mistaken.
"The perception now is that the war created al-Qaida. But the spread of fundamentalism started long before, at the point when the Arab socialism movements of the 1950s and 1960s failed," Jalali said. Another little understood factor was Pakistan's dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, who insisted that all weapons destined for the mujahideen be channelled though his inter-services intelligence agency. Zia, widely seen now as prime mover in Pakistan's evolution into an Islamic state, wanted an Afghan government that Islamabad could control.
General Charles Guthrie, former SAS commandant and Tony Blair's envoy to Pakistan's current president, Pervez Musharraf, also said Zia's role was problematic. Zia's favouring of his proxies meant that more able, less anti-western mujahideen commanders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud, the "Lion of the Panjshir", murdered by al-Qaida two days before 9/11, received fewer weapons and supplies.
Abramowitz, Guthrie and Paddy Ashdown, the former Bosnia international administrator whose hopes of a top diplomatic role in Afghanistan were recently dashed by Karzai, all suggested the asymmetrical warfare that defeated the Russians could yet defeat Nato forces there.
"You cannot impose democracy by lethal force," Ashdown said. "We will not beat the Taliban. Only the Afghan people will defeat the Taliban." And that would take more time than "short-termist" western governments were likely to allow. As Rudyard Kipling had noted in Arithmetic on the Frontier, expensive weaponry and superior education did not guarantee success: "Strike hard who cares - shoot straight who can - The odds are on the cheaper man."
The experience of Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s, and today, plus what has happened in Iraq, had reduced his enthusiasm for and confidence in military intervention, Abramowitz said. "When I think about intervention now, I am much more modest in saying what we can achieve. To tell you the truth, talk of intervention makes me skittish."
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_tisdall/2008/03/myths_and_the_mujahideen.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
28 comments:
buy viagra australia viagra stories mexico viagra cheap generic viagra cost of viagra get viagra cheap viagra walmart viagra rrp australia viagra manufacturer viagra professional free viagra samples before buying buy viagra in england viagra from india viagra cialis levitra
buy soma who makes generic soma - buy-soma
order soma online generic soma mg - buy generic soma
generic soma soma drug usa - soma kendrick lamar
buy tramadol rx tramadol 50mg usa - buy tramadol online florida
buy tramadol without prescriptions buy tramadol online without script - tramadol 100mg bula
buy tramadol online tramadol al 100mg nebenwirkungen - tramadol online no prescription usa
buy tramadol online dosage of tramadol 50mg - tramadol 100 mg gotas
generic xanax xanax drug for dogs - xanax generic equivalent
generic xanax xanax side effects fetus - xanax drug insert
xanax online xanax xr 1mg half life - xanax side effects shaking
generic xanax buy xanax no prescription usa - xanax side effects pregnant women
buy cialis online cialis 20 mg - cialis online for sale
cialis online generic cialis online usa - how to buy cialis online us
20000 :) order effexor online - venlafaxine without prescription http://www.effexorfastorder.net/#venlafaxine-without-prescription , [url=http://www.effexorfastorder.net/#cost-of-venlafaxine ]cost of venlafaxine [/url]
20000 :) cheap celebrex 200mg - order celebrex no prescription http://www.celebrexpharmsite.net/, [url=http://www.celebrexpharmsite.net/]celebrex pills [/url]
buy klonopin online klonopin for ocd anxiety - much 2mg klonopin worth
buy tramadol online no prescription overnight buy tramadol with cod - tramadol hcl recommended dosage
03 zyban smoking - zyban stop smoking http://www.wellbutrinforsaleonline.net/, [url=http://www.wellbutrinforsaleonline.net/]zyban medication [/url]
4, buy lasix without rx - where can i buy lasix http://www.lasixordernow.net/, [url=http://www.lasixordernow.net/]lasix for sale [/url]
klonopin online does smoking klonopin get you high - purchase klonopin online no prescription
buy klonopin online klonopin side effects for women - teva best generic klonopin
buy klonopin online no prescription klonopin for alcohol withdrawal dosage - high off klonopin
all, buy accutane no prescription - cheap isotretinoin http://www.freeyogablog.com/#cheap-isotretinoin , [url=http://www.freeyogablog.com/#buy-accutane-without-prescription ]buy accutane without prescription [/url]
ooo, propecia no prescription - finasteride 5mg http://www.usbonlinegroup.com/, finasteride for sale
buy carisoprodol online without prescription carisoprodol 350 mg drug interactions - buy soma carisoprodol online
carisoprodol 350 mg carisoprodol 350 mg vs flexeril - carisoprodol hair drug test
acheter cialis cialis 10mg cialis
Post a Comment