Anand Gopal: How to Create an Afghan Blackwater

Tom Englehardt posts an extract from Anand Gopal's book, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, in which Gopal relates How to Create an Afghan Blackwater.

Of course, even in the new Afghanistan there was no such thing as a free lunch. In return for privileged access to American dollars, Sherzai delivered the one thing U.S. forces felt they needed most: intelligence. His men became the Americans’ eyes and ears in their drive to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Kandahar.

Yet here lay the contradiction. Following the Taliban’s collapse, al-Qaeda had fled the country, resettling in the tribal regions of Pakistan and in Iran. By April 2002, the group could no longer be found in Kandahar — or anywhere else in Afghanistan. The Taliban, meanwhile, had ceased to exist, its members having retired to their homes and surrendered their weapons. Save for a few lone wolf attacks, U.S. forces in Kandahar in 2002 faced no resistance at all. The terrorists had all decamped or abandoned the cause, yet U.S. special forces were on Afghan soil with a clear political mandate: defeat terrorism.

How do you fight a war without an adversary? Enter Gul Agha Sherzai — and men like him around the country. Eager to survive and prosper, he and his commanders followed the logic of the American presence to its obvious conclusion. They would create enemies where there were none, exploiting the perverse incentive mechanism that the Americans — without even realizing it — had put in place.

Sherzai’s enemies became America’s enemies, his battles its battles. His personal feuds and jealousies were repackaged as “counterterrorism,” his business interests as Washington’s. And where rivalries did not do the trick, the prospect of further profits did. (One American leaflet dropped by plane in the area read: “Get Wealth and Power Beyond Your Dreams. Help Anti-Taliban Forces Rid Afghanistan of Murderers and Terrorists.”)

Emphasis Mine

The Americans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They had defeated the Taliban and expelled Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001.

Yet, the economic logic of Capitalism requires an on-going war against somebody. Whether it is the feudal monarchs of Europe, the native peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, or the islands of the Pacific. Capitalism must always expand or face collapse.

Through the good offices of people, like Gul Agha Sherzai, the Americans now have their endless war. US and Afghan companies can suck the US Treasury dry for their own benefit. This is not immoral under Capitalism. Companies exist to make profits in legal ways.