A flag-draped coffin honoring a soldier who has served the nation
As the USA is now on to its final withdrawal after waging a war against the Afghan Taliban (AT) for 20 years, the world has been perplexed as to why a superpower, the US, has been forced to flee from Afghanistan, and that too, after negotiating a dialogue with the same people against whom it had waged a war.
It has now been almost a year since I wrote an article in CounterCurrents on July 22, 2020, in
which I elaborated on the waning of the power of the US. In the same piece, I had cited
a report, published by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, which
had given the most crucial data to have forced the then US President Donald
Trump to enter into a 14-month gradual withdrawal, which is to end on September
11, 2021.
The report
had informed that Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) had devastated the US Army
to no end! To quote from it again, ‘Estimates of PTSD prevalence rates among
returning service members vary widely across wars and eras.
In one major
study of 60,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, 13.5% of deployed and
non-deployed veterans screened positive for PTSD, while other studies show the
rate to be as high as 20% to 30%. As many as 500,000 U.S. troops who served in
these wars over the past 13 years have been diagnosed with PTSD. This is what
forced the US to cool its heels.
Now, yet
another damning report has arrived, which proves an answer to the most vexed question as to why the US was made to retreat and vacate Afghanistan after bludgeoning it with the best imaginable weaponry, trillions of dollars, and support from NATO, and against what was called the ragtag army of AT!
This is the secret that the US and its entire state apparatus tried to hush for 20 years, and
now all the beans have been spilled and skeletons tumbled out of the cupboard. A
35-page report from the Watson Institute at Brown University, US, released on June
21, has disclosed that the main reason why the US could not fathom staying longer in Afghanistan was due to a stupendous rise in suicides!
The report
said, ‘Suicide rates among the US public have been increasing for the past
twenty years, but among active military personnel and veterans of the post-9/11
wars, the suicide rate is even higher, outpacing average Americans.
The
“post-9/11 wars” refers to ongoing U.S.-led military operations around the world that grew out of President George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” and
the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This paper estimates that 30,177 active
duty personnel and veterans of the post-9/11wars have died by suicide,
significantly more than the 7,057 service members killed in the post-9/11 war
operations.
The world is now to analyze through this devastating report that it is the rate of suicides that forced the US not to further blow its army men into the furnace and eventually come back home. If this figure of 30,177 US Army men committing suicide is not fudged, which surely it would be, as the US will never bring out the real figures, but even if this figure is contextualized, it is a clear indication that the US has never lost its army men in suchlarge numbers.
Perhaps,
this is the worst ever war that the US has ever fought, in all the centuries
of wars it has waged around the world. Whereas, on the contrary, there is a
probable zero percentage of suicides amongst AT.
The
researchers of tomorrow would reveal what made AT stand to their nerves,
and that too, against the mightiest of armies in the entire history of mankind,
if not for their motivation and perseverance! And, also in its stride, keeping
conformity with the old dictum that Afghanistan has always been the graveyard
of empires. Be that the once British Empire, or the superpower Soviet Union, or
now the US.
It is a larger-than-known fact of US life as to how much the US invests in its health industry and, more particularly, in its stress management. Imagine if the US did not invest
so much in stress management; this figure would have quadrupled. Interestingly, this figure of 30,177 deaths does not include those
US army men who died in combat or even those of the private militias owned by the
likes of Erik Prince, who runs Blackwater, etc.
Why would the US
army men lay down their lives on their own? Perhaps because they
may have found the war as useless and goalless, or else there is no point of
comparison between a US soldier, saddled with the most imaginable expensive
gadgets and ammunition, in combat with an AT in not even proper shoes.
China, by
hosting the most powerful AT delegation, has given a signal to accept the AT
government. Now, Russia is planning to come forward with the same. An article
in the Financial Times on July 27, 2021, suggests, ‘Russia seeks to forge ties with the Taliban as US troops leave Afghanistan.’ Zamir Kabulov, the Special
Representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, described the Taliban’s
advance as a security boost for Russia.
He also
announced that China, Russia, Pakistan, and the US are to meet on August 11 as an
‘extended troika’ to discuss the Afghan situation, but China may also be putting
to the US the issue of the latest blast at the Dasu Dam (KPK in Pakistan), in which 9
of its engineers were killed.
China had
conducted a joint investigation with Pakistan, and the report has been handed to
Washington. China is said to have been extremely angry over the killing of its
engineers. Unfortunately, India is nowhere near this formula of ‘extended
troika,’ as Zamir Kabulov had lately said that India does not have any influence
on AT, reported TOI on July 22.
Meanwhile, as fighting between Ghani forces and AT escalates, it is reported that on July 31, Ghani forces attacked Ariana Afghan Specialty Hospital in Helmand, where AT was getting their fighters treated.
The worst part is that the Ghani forces
attacked it using the helicopters provided by India. ‘ An aircraft provided by
India to the Afghan National Security and Defence Force (ANSDF) has been used
to bomb a hospital in Helmand province of Afghanistan, the Taliban alleged on
Saturday, calling the attack a ‘war crime,’ the Deccan Herald reported on July 31.
The Ariana
Hospital bombing seems to have disadvantaged India more, which has already
vacated its Kandahar, Herat, and Jalalabad consulates. India’s growing worry is
that a pro-China and a pro-Pakistan government, supported by Russia, is in the
making in Afghanistan, and it is here where India needs to streamline its
polity, particularly more so regarding China, which has been constantly interfering lately inside Indian states bordering it.
***
Culled from Muslim Mirror by Haider Abbas - The writer is a former UP State Information Commissioner and a political analyst.
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