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Tariq Ali

Obamas War: A Lecture

Tariq Ali*
During his presidential campaign, President Obama pledged more troops, ground
intrusions, and drone attacks to end the war in Afghanistan. This is a promise he
has kept, but it will not work. In this lecture, Tariq Ali talks about why the war is
unwinnable and can only lead to a bloody stalemate.

fghanistan is now at a critical stage. And I am very proud to say that the

London Review of Books, whose 30th anniversary we are commemorating,

has over the years published others and myself on this subject, taking essentially a critical stance to this war. It became fashionable all over the worldnot
just in the United Statesto think of Iraq and Afghanistan as two very different
wars. On one level they are, but good-thinking people placed different moral values
on these wars. The view of large numbers of people in the United States todayand
the uninterrupted view of an overwhelming majority of Europeansis that the Iraq
War was a bad war that never should have happened. The Afghanistan War, on the
other hand, was meant to be a good war. This was the war against a country where
the people who attacked the United States on September 11 were based and this
had to be sorted out. The government that had given them refuge had to be toppled
and this could only be done militarily. As a small footnote, the official September
11 inquiry said that the Afghan government never formally refused to hand over
* Tariq Ali is a British-Pakistani military historian, public intellectual, commentator, and member of
the editorial committee of the New Left Review (e-mail: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com). His most recent
book is The Obama Syndrome (2010). The eruption of Eyjafjallajkull prevented him from delivering
this lecture at the School of Visual Arts in New York on April 19, 2010; instead, it was broadcast from
a studio in London. The London Review of Books granted Social Justice permission to transcribe and
publish the lecture. The following is an edited version. Thanks to Leanne Macey for her transcription
work.

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Social Justice Vol. 37, Nos. 23 (20102011)

Obamas War: A Lecture

11

these people; they just demanded to see the evidence. The commission of inquiry
made a point of noting that if convincing evidence were provided, the government
would hand them over.
Of course, no one supported this crazed attack on the United States, but some
of us asked at the time what the motive was for sending an army in to conquer
Afghanistan. Former president George W. Bush said the main aim was to sort
out al Qaida and capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, dead or alive, in
his unforgettable words. If they were dead, that was that; if they were alive, they
presumably would be brought to the United States to stand trial for having ordered
this attack. When that was said, I argued with one of the former presidents leading
supporters on the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, in a debate that took
place in Canada on Canadian television. If that was the case, I said, then the war
was a failure because this was a small terrorist organization that was not going to
hang around in Afghanistan for the U.S. army to capture it. It would flee and seek
refuge in other parts of the world, most likely in the border badlands of Pakistan,
but presumably elsewhere as well. So it would fail and did fail. If you announce
that you are going to occupy a country to capture a, b, and c, they will move on.
It is worth remembering that Afghanistan was captured without a struggle. No
segment of Afghan society resisted the U.S.NATO occupation. Why? Because
Pakistan was the key player in this war. It had armed the Taliban and had sent the
Taliban to take power and end a period of civil war. There were large numbers of
Pakistani soldiers, Pakistani air force personnel, as well as Pakistani military and
civilian intelligence people in Afghanistan who essentially told the Taliban leaders
that now was not the time to fight. Shave your beards and return to Pakistan, but
do not resist because you will all be killed. From their point of view, it was quite
sane advice and, more astonishingly, the divided Taliban leadership accepted it. So
Kabul fell without a struggle. For the first two years, the resistance to the United
States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan was limited, episodic, and localized.
What made it national was the U.S. decision to impose on Afghanistan a regime
led by one of its CIA assets, Hamid Karzai. He was propelled into power (more
on him later) and has since become a controversial figure by supposedly fighting
with the United States. Let us go through the chronology.
The United States imposed this regime and gave it a U.S. bodyguard. Blackwater, I believe, supplied bodyguards because Karzai astutely said that he did not
trust Afghans to provide personal protection. He was quite right about that. They
probably would have bumped him off. He then established a government, together
with his brother, of cronies and a tiny, narrow circle of supporters largely within
a small section of Kabul. Their aim in Afghanistan was that the only way to move
forward was to enrich themselves. In a country with the most appalling levels of
poverty in the world, these people enriched themselves with the money that was
being sent for reconstruction via NGOs and states after the Bonn Conference.
This is no secret. When intelligence reports coming into the United States from

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Tariq Ali

the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency were leaked,
this became very clear. (I assume the bits that have not been leaked are even more
severe in their judgments.) A country at war needs good intelligence and to be fair,
the intelligence they were receiving was good. It showed that the regime they had
implanted in Afghanistan was a total disaster story.
Could it have been different? Given the Afghan personnel involved, it would
have been difficult. Although I disagreed with the occupation, soon after it began
I wrote that if it went the way of most occupations, it would be a disaster. If by
some miracle the occupying forces in Afghanistan succeeded within the first year
of rebuilding the countrys direct social infrastructure and had a massive New
Deal-type program to build hospitals and schools, to provide employment, and to
use their military to do this and defend the social infrastructure, who knows? But
it was too much to expect that to happen. We were then living in neoliberal times,
when state intervention was never used for these purposes because everything in
the motherland was being privatized. What they could not do in Europe or the
United States, they certainly were not going to do in Afghanistan. For if they did,
worried U.S. citizens would ask, If you can do this for them, why cant you do it
for us at home? So the entire socioeconomic structure backed by NATO armies
made a tiny group of people very rich. This was in front of the eyes of the poor who
were swelling the slums outside Kabul, which grew by half a million within the
first two years of the occupation. Meanwhile, huge villas were being constructed.
Within the first three to four years, Karzais half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai,
became the richest man in Kabul through smuggling drugs and arms. As the familys
banker, he creamed off money coming in, and his brother gave him full authority
to do that. Part of the money is used to enrich them, and part is to buy a tiny social
base inside Afghanistan. With a bit of luck, they succeeded in buying a few tribal
leaders. They certainly have a larger social base now in Afghanistan than they did
in 2001, when Karzai was implanted in Kabul. It gives Karzai the sort of strength
needed to defy the people who put him in power.
Dissent over the Surge
This has happened before in U.S. imperial history. In the last, tormented years
of the Vietnam War, it became a commonplace to read about Ngo Dinh Diem or
General Nguyen Xuan Trang getting too big for their boots. When the people put
in place by the United States posed a challenge in terms of how to conduct the war,
they were systematically bumped off. That was the traditional way of dealing with
puppets that challenged imperial rulers. The difference between South Vietnam
and Afghanistan is that in South Vietnam the United States could always find a
replacement for deposed leaders. Ultimately, it did not work and the whole system
collapsed. In Afghanistan, there are no other candidates from the specific part of
Afghanistan where the real majority lives. Today, 50% or more of Afghanistans
Pashtuns live there, and Karzai is a Pashtun. Replacing him with a leader from the

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13

northern tribal alliances of Abdullah Abdullah or someone similar was not going to
work. That is the reason Peter W. Galbraith, the Deputy U.N. Envoy to Afghanistan,
was kicked out of Kabul. It was not because he was engaged in corrupt deeds with
the Kurds in relations to oil, but because he antagonized Karzai without having
an alternative. And that is why Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, seriously warned in private against the surge of 30,000
expert troops and against removing Karzai. He reportedly said that there was no
one else. Removing Karzai would be to hand the place over to the Taliban. Karzai
himself more or less defended that position and told the United States that if it
tried to get rid of him, he would join the Taliban. That would not be as much of a
political leap as people imagine, because he was part of the Taliban before he was
hauled out to do other work. He knows them, and the fact is that contacts between
these different groups in the Pashtun part of Afghanistan take place all the time.
Removing Karzai would have been disastrous for NATO and the United States,
and Eikenberry believed the extra surge would also be a disaster. In this short time,
he has been proved right. The surge was a new policy that allowed President Obama
to differentiate himself from the Bush-Cheney administration. The Iraq War was
bad, so a pullout would begin. That is what we were told at least, though I believe
it will not happen. They will remain in Iraq in huge crusader-style fortresses for
eternity unless the Iraqis drive them out. The British did this in the 40s and 50s
and were finally driven out. Whether that will happen now is another story. The
only withdrawal from Iraq will be from the towns to these big bases. That is what
was promised: withdrawal from Iraq, but escalation in Afghanistan. Religious
language was used, citing the Cold War rhetoric of Reinhold Niebuhr of fighting
evilgood versus evil. That is how it started. If we are in Afghanistan to fight
evil, we cannot leave. And because we cannot leave, we must send more troops to
stabilize the situationso that we can leave.
For a particularly contorted defense of this position, written for idiots who
know nothing about Afghanistan, I would recommend British Foreign Secretary
David Milibands article in the April 2010 issue of the New York Review of Books.
It is truly appalling. It lacks an understanding of what is going on in the country,
is bland, and one clich drips onto the pages after another. Interestingly, though, it
says that we cannot stay in Afghanistan. Even General Eikenberry has said that we
cannot stay there forever. The big difference between the situation now and when
the United States landed is that the occupation has made the country angry. Reading
between the lines, or even in the lines, written by people who go to Afghanistan
from the United Statesintelligence and non-intelligence people, intelligent and
unintelligent journaliststhey all come back with one story that no one challenges:
the bulk of the people do not want us there. We have antagonized them. And that
is why Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, opposed the surge. Sending
more troops, he said, will kill more civilians. And doing so will antagonize whole
new swathes of Pashtuns, who will then join the insurgency and the resistance.

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Tariq Ali

This has happened in every resistance from time immemorial. And that has been
happening since the surge began. The big publicity machines kick into operation:
another victory, Marjah in Helmand Province, and then capture some other place
before attacking Kandahar. In fact, they are total disaster stories. Alongside these big
propaganda stories are many smaller, quite shocking stories. The vernacular press
in Pakistan reports them, but occasionally they find their way into the mainstream
press in the United States, Britain, and other parts of Europe.
In one such story, a U.S. special black operations squad targeted a house because
they thought insurgents were inside. Without explaining why they thought that, they
said they were pretty sure. They attacked the house and killed everyone. The entire
large, joined family was killed, including women (pregnant ones, too) and children.
Realizing what they had done, the story went out: a big attack on an insurgent house
had been successful. But then a London Times journalist who was embedded with
the troops discovered what really happened. A completely innocent family had
been killed and a cover-up ensued. The Marines on this special operation returned
with knives to remove the bullets from everyone there, especially the women and
children, so that no one would know American bullets had been used to kill them.
After this tiny cover-up, big ones followed. A week after this event, a passenger
bus on its way to Kandahar was hit by helicopter gunships. Troops on the ground
had said that the bus was travelling in a funny way and that insurgents might be on
board. So they fired on the bus, killing a few dozen people and wounding several
dozen others. Even Karzai decried this as atrocious and asked how anything could
get done with such things going on. This is the concrete result of the surge. And
General Petraeus, who ordered it and convinced President Obama to go ahead
with it against the advice of Eikenberry and others within the U.S. army, must
be held accountable. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee should summon
him and question him about what the surge is accomplishing. How is this going
to help the Afghans or even the United States? How is this sort of behavior going
to help anyone? In my opinion, the situation is totally out of control. They know
it, and that is why Karzai is speaking about joining the Taliban. The official line
of the West is clear in Foreigner Secretary Milibands New York Review of Books
article and in statements by Vice President Joe Biden and others. They have now
discovered that there is a good Taliban and a bad Taliban. Just as there was a good
war (Iraq) a bad war (Afghanistan), there is a good Taliban and a bad Taliban. The
good Taliban are directly controlled by Pakistani military intelligence and led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a veteran guerilla jihadist, who fought with the United States
and Pakistan against the Russians in the 1980s. Long on the payroll of Pakistani
military intelligence, he claims to have a group of people in Afghanistan who are
prepared to collaborate with and even join Karzais government, provided that the
United States behaves itself and stops killing civilians. The bad Taliban are those
who say they are prepared to be part of a national government once all foreign
troops leave. More and more Afghans are now putting that view forward.

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Obamas War: A Lecture

The people upon whom the United States depends, the Northern Alliance in
the north, basically take their orders from Moscow. To be totally blunt, much will
depend on what the Russians tell them. In the Russian press, many veterans of the
Russian war in Afghanistan are feeling a sense of Schadenfreude. They are saying,
it happened to us, and now it is happening to you. You will have to get out. During the upheaval in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010, the new president, Roza Otunbayeva
(named after Rosa Luxemburg in the old days), declared in one of her first statements that they were going to ask the Americans to close down Manas Air Base.
After a conversation with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, she agreed to
negotiate the American presence. Clearly, pressure is building. The Iranian clerics
are the other ally to green light the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. That
is no secret now. President George W. Bushs close advisors were in the White
House negotiating with the Iranians over the tricky business of getting them to
agree to both occupations. They publicly admitted on the Charlie Rose show
that Iranian neutrality or their lack of opposition was absolutely crucial. And they
are right, because without Iranian backing it would have been very difficult for the
United States to pull off Iraq and Afghanistan. But they are now in the business
of antagonizing the Iranians, threatening to impose sanctions and refusing to deal,
all largely due to Israeli pressure.
Lessons Not Learned
So the United States finds itself more isolated in Afghanistan now than it was in
2001, when virtually the whole world supported it. The only way out is the one the
Russians took and the British before them. By the way, the British were driven out
of Afghanistan in the 19th century. They fought two wars and were driven out. At
the time of their defeat, weapons were very straightforward and simple. Of course,
the British had the Maxim gun, or something similar that later became the Maxim
gun. They had quite advanced technology for the time. Defeating them were tribal
guerrillas with old-fashioned, single-shot rifles that were normally used for killing
animals. Realizing they had lost, the British left the country. Despite their claims,
they never did leave it alone because they continued to occupy and rule over what
was then British India. When for the first time native Afghans attempted to create
a popular democratic constitution between 1918 and 1919, inspired partially by
the Kamalists in Turkey and partially by the Bolsheviks, the new king, Amanullah Khan, committed to a democratic constitution and elections. His wife, Soraya
Tarzi, said women would be given the right to vote. This was in the Afghan draft
constitution. Had it gone through, women in Afghanistan would have had the right
to vote before they did in the United States, Britain, and most parts of the West.
But a British plot defeated this plan. They conspired with deeply conservative
and reactionary tribes and toppled the government. In its place, a semi-puppet
regime was installed that was always unstable. So, it has all been tried before. The
Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979 after two unanimous Politburo decisions

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not to do so. Zbigniew Brzezinski boasts that the United States drew them into a
bear trap. Was false information given to the Politburo indicating that Hafizullah
Amin, the president of Afghanistan, was a CIA agent? Probably. They did change
their minds, went in, and were stuck in an unwinnable, bloody war for 10 years.
Finally, Mikhail Gorbachev decided to withdraw unilaterally and General Boris V.
Gromov crossed the bridge across the Amu-Darya River at the head of his troops
and marched out. It was quite a courageous thing to do given the enormous casualties they had experienced.
The big difference between then and now (one that should not encourage those
who favor an indefinite war) is that the entire West backed the Afghan mujahedeen,
the jihadists, Osama bin Laden, and the groups from Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, and
Saudi Arabia who were fighting the Jihad with funds from Pakistani military intelligence. Even the Israelis were involved, and for the first time Mossad personnel
were giving concrete advice inside Pakistan to the jihadists fighting the Russians.
There was no shortage of weapons, munitions, propaganda, or money. Pakistani
intelligence built up all these jihadist groups to defeat the Russians. I opposed the
Russians invasion and occupation at the time because I knew the Americans would
come in, it would become a Cold War battlefield, and the whole area would be
a mess for 30 years. It has been longer than that now: Afghanistan has been in a
bloody, brutal war since 1979. That is longer than the Vietnam War, the First World
War, and the Second World War. Imagine what that does to a people.
At least the Russians built an educational infrastructure and hospitals. While they
were there, they successfully attempted to educate Afghan women. Many people
were trained as technicians, were taught sciences, and were given a free room and
board, as well as an education at higher institutions in Moscow. Their successors
in the invasion occupation business, the United States and NATO, have not done
that. They claim they have, but the statistics are a joke. Any serious person who
goes to Afghanistan reports as much; statistics are cooked, manufactured, handed
to them and they believe them. Intelligence forces in that country know that this
is far removed from the truth.
This war is unwinnable and will end. Neither the United States nor the insurgents can win it. The insurgents lack the power to inflict a Vietnamese-style
defeat. We tend to exaggerate the indigenous impact in the defeat the Vietnamese
inflicted in 1975. It was very strong, but we must not forget that the Vietnamese
armies had state-of-the-art weaponry from the Soviet Union and, in the early days,
from China. So they were incredibly well armed to take on the United States. Even
though their causalities were huge, they inflicted very heavy damage. The gigantic
anti-war movement that erupted in the United States also helped the Vietnamese.
Because of the conscript army, every family was affected by that war. These two
factors are missing in the case of Afghanistan, and so there is not going to be any
quick victory for the insurgents. Yet large swaths of the population now support
them; previously, they had been indifferent given their experience of the regime

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Obamas War: A Lecture

they had imposed on Afghanistan. They became supportive of the insurgents, with
large numbers of youth joining the insurgency, because of how the NATO armies
have operated. It is not just the killings or the regular massacre of innocents. It is
the whole tone and tenor of the occupation. The way in which Western soldiers,
journalists, administrators, and NGOs live is in such sharp contrast to the ordinary
people of the country that it excites anger and makes them feel that they will never
get anything this way.
The argument being used today by Obama and his British camp followers is
that they can create a stable Afghan army of 100,000 soldiers and an Afghan police
force. That may exist on paper, but do you know how many of the soldiers and
policemen you are training are on your side? It is no secret what the insurgency has
instructed people to do. In the villages and towns, they have said, If the Americans
offer you military training, if they say they will teach you how to use weapons,
join it. We need people in there. These classic resistance tactics have been used
by virtually every resistance struggle over the last century. The Vietnamese asked
many opponents of the government to join the South Vietnamese army. That is why
entire sections collapsed as if on cue in 1974 and 1975. Because this is so obvious, the Afghans are doing it too. In this case, it is even more pressing. No one is
backing or training them. A tiny segment of their forces receive regular, informal
help from the Pakistanis. By and large, they are dependent on the weapons they
capture and the training they get. Lately, there have been episodes of supposedly
loyal Afghan policemen turning on and killing British officers. In a famous case,
an Afghan working for the U.S. intelligence agencies entered a heavily guarded
secure facility and killed people. That is not surprising given the anger that exists
at the moment.
Exit Quickly
What, then, is to be done? Get out of Afghanistan and get out quickly. Do not
announce that you are leaving the towns and building four huge military bases
in Afghanistan, because that will not work. It might work in Iraq as long as the
Iranians allow it. But when the United States first announced that it was going to
build bases in Afghanistan for perpetuity, public street demonstrations broke out in
every big city, south, west, east, and north. No one wants thatnot even U.S. allies.
Whether Karzai will accept permanent forts is an open question. If he wishes to
stay in Afghanistan, he will not. If he wants to leave with the NATO troops, he will.
The big remaining question regards the mode of withdrawal. Sometimes
people ask whether leaving would create a bigger mess. That probably would be
the case for a short time. However, a withdrawal must be organized after serious
discussions with the neighboring countries. In no way can a Pakistani regime be
excluded from the process, because apart from other considerations, millions of
Pashtuns live on the Pakistani side of the border. Before the recent occupation and

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Tariq Ali

during the Soviet occupation, it used to be a nominal border that was never seriously policed. Anyone could cross the border, including any Pashtun. No one ever
asked them or their children for their passports. The same tribes live on each side.
Such obvious links must be taken into account; the spillage from the Afghan war
is now totally destabilizing Pakistan. There is no truth to the notion that simply
because Pakistan has an elected government, it is calm and peaceful. It does what
the West asks it to do, but that is a very different business from actually knowing
how to run the country.
Pakistan has its own Karzai-style figure, Asif Ali Zardari, who is a thief, a
crook, and possibly a murderer, who will be swept away soon by the democratic
process if it is permitted. All he has done since he and his cronies came to power
has been to make money. Backing such allies in these countries, regardless of how
they came to power, does not help the United States in any way. The Pakistani
military is obviously a key player and must be part of the process of withdrawal
from Afghanistan. The same is true of the Iranians, Russians, and Chinese. These
are the four critical players. The Chinese have investments there and their money
is needed to rebuild the country. The Pakistanis, Iranians, and Russians must tell
their supporters that a national coalition government is needed in Afghanistan for
10 years, that they will disarm them, and that no violence will be tolerated so that
they can rebuild the country.
That is the only way forward. I know it seems utopian at the moment. But the
alternative of sending more and more troops will lead to more and more Afghan
deaths, more and more U.S. deaths, and more and more NATO deaths. The Germans have started participating in clashes and have sent in more troops than most
European countries. In one of their first clashes, they shot and killed their allies
in the Afghan army, which created havoc in that country. The last opinion poll in
Germany showed that 84% of the German population wanted German troops to
withdraw. In Britain, the figures are lower. The recent general election campaign
elicited little enthusiasm, unlike the presidential election in the United States. But
63% of the British population favors withdrawing their troops and has declared
its opposition to the war. None of the three major political parties contesting the
election reflected that position. In Spain, Italy, and France, it is exactly the same. In
Holland, the government has collapsed because the Labor Party there, to its credit,
said it would not vote to continue the Dutch presence in Afghanistan. Apart from
Britain, the Dutch are probably the country most likely to do whatever the United
States wants, so that spells trouble. The European population is unhappy about this
war, but wont act. That is because they feel disempowered. They think it is not
going to help. Yet a way out is absolutely necessary. If the United States decides
to stay on indefinitelykill and be killedit will not help anyone. In brief, the
United States must concentrate not on surges or wishful thinking, but on beginning

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Obamas War: A Lecture

the process of pulling out of Afghanistan. When it does, all the Europeans, highly
relieved, will follow suit.
Discussion
Question: Despite the terrible cost, isnt the accelerated demise of the United States
one of the good things about this war?
Tariq Ali: I am very skeptical of the notion that the American empire is about
to disappear. I wish we could celebrate it, but it is not going to happen as quickly
as many people think simply because they have had a few disasters. The United
States is undoubtedly the strongest country in the world militarily. Its military
budget is larger than the next eight countries combined, including the three other
large countries, Russia, China, and Israel. It is not going to give all that up. How
do empires collapse? There is usually massive resistance in all the countries they
occupy, and/or the desire of people at home not to carry on in the old imperial
fashion and to withdraw. Sometimes they go out with a whimper, because they can
no longer afford it. These three possibilities exist, but today there are U.S. military
bases or a military presence in about 90 countries. There are about 121 states in
the United Nations. This U.S. military presence means that the American empire
could possibly go away in 50 or 60 years, but not immediately. You did not imply
it, but sometimes celebrating the collapse of the American empire can be an alibi
for doing nothing. Since it is going to happen anyway, there is no need to act; lets
just sit back and wait. And that is a mistake.

Question: Could you please elaborate on Hamid Karzai?

Tariq Ali: The United States put Karzai into power. He is an effective public
relations operator, though the bulk of the Western media is easily impressed these
days. He wears many tasteful shawls, but arrived in the country without a social base.
He is considered a puppet. He grew rich and his brother became the richest man in
the land. He built a tiny base largely of cronies and happily rigged elections, which
is the way in that part of the world. But one day the United States suddenly said
it would not tolerate that kind of behavior. The man saying it was Peter Galbraith,
and behind him was Richard Holbrooke. Without Holbrookes backing and green
light, Galbraith would not have done that. I do not know Secretary of State Clintons
role. But at a critical point in the war they made a very serious attempt to get rid of
Karzai and replace him with Abdullah Abdullah. The latter, a northern Tajik, does
not represent any Pashtuns. An enraged Karzai began to tell people close to him
that if that was how they were going to deal with him, he could play games too. In
Kandahar, he established contact with all the tribal elders and some local leaders
of the insurgency. He pronounced himself an Afghan first, but did not specify what
he was second (a puppet, a CIA agent?). By the way, his brother was also an agent
for the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Tariq Ali

Karzai then began to fight for a tiny bit of space and outmaneuvered the State
Department. From the point of view of the United States, he entered a dangerous
stage. An ally who has become too big for his boots and thinks he has gotten away
with it believes he can get away with it again. So, the only alternative discussed (and
which Galbraith had supported in the Balkans and in Iraq for a while) was to have
no Afghans in the government at all. Instead, a high representative of a NATO or
U.S.NATO government could run the country. That stupid plotting, once revealed,
strengthened Karzai. He remained on the side of the United States, but wanted it
to back him in whatever he does. That does not always suit U.S. interests. In this
Dialectic of Partial Conquests, a man they thought was in their pocket for nine
years had outgrown the pocket, believing himself to be a player in his own right.
In the history of the 20th century, many people like him had become such players
for a long time. Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo and the Shah of Iran started off
like that, but the situation in Afghanistan is too impossible for Karzai to do it. The
money they acquired in the billions is mainly stored in banks in the Westin Switzerland, not Goldman Sachs. That money gives them a feeling of strength. They
can leave whenever they want, and probably will do that. If the United States and
NATO decide to withdraw, it is an open question whether Karzai would be invited
to sit at the table. Though not totally impossible, it would be difficult. He may not
know it, but his future is closely linked to that of the U.S. presence in the country.

Question: President Obama might say that your perspective is persuasive, but then
explain why his actions were necessary. What is the American interest in this war,
the economic and material bases for an invasion?
Tariq Ali: If Obama did not believe in this policy, he would not pursue it. The
situation in this war differs from a permanent presence in Iraq. With the militaryindustrial complex in the United States having spent so much money and taken hits,
and knowing the economic value of Iraq, it does not want to get out too quickly.
Iraq is strategically placed in relation to Iran and the Middle East as a whole. A
majority of the U.S. high command probably does not favor total withdrawal from
Iraq. Afghanistan is a different case. In the debate over the strategic interests of the
United States in Afghanistan, some of the crazier people around NATO argue that
it has nothing to do with Afghanistan. They concentrate on China. Since we have
bases on Chinas borders, they say, why should we give them up? We can watch
them. They talk as though the Chinese are not listening or are unaware of what
is going on. Although the Chinese do not talk much in public, their think tanks
do carefully study every move the United States makes in Asia. As part of an old
Chinese habit, they think about matters for years before they do or say anything.
And when they do, it is a surprise. Strategic bases are an insane concept. Is there
any conceivable notion of trying to balkanize China, take it over, or bomb it when
it becomes too powerful as a rival? Even the craziest president the United States
might elect would not consider it a serious option.

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21

Once the argument about China is eliminated, what is the strategic game? Some
people say that being in Afghanistan allows the United States to keep an eye on
Pakistani nuclear weapons. But the Pakistanis built their nuclear weapons while
the United States was in the country fighting the Russians. It already controlled the
Pakistani army, funding it to the tune of billions of dollars each year. The notion
that that army will use nuclear weapons against an American ally, or anyone at all,
is foolish. The argument that the jihadists might capture Pakistani nuclear weapons
is equally foolishunless the army splits. That could happen only if the U.S. war
were to spill over into Pakistan in a bad way. Then all bets are off. We do not know
what is going to happen. If a split does not occur, there is as little chance of jihadists
capturing Pakistani nuclear weapons as there is of the Brooklyn settlers in Israel
capturing Israeli nuclear weapons or Sarah Palins Tea Party-backed vigilantes
doing so in the United States. These sites are the most heavily guarded. I have yet
to read a serious argument from the U.S. side on the strategic gain deriving from a
presence in Afghanistan, aside from the time-honored imperial adage, Well stay
because we are already there. The Romans used to argue that they should not
leave any space unoccupied, and that once they had done so, there was no reason
to leave. That is a very shortsighted argument. Moreover, the U.S. establishment is
severely divided on Afghanistan. Senior Marine and civilian intelligence officers
like Matthew P. Hoh wrote a detailed commentary on why this war is a disaster.
U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry publicly voiced strong dissent about a U.S.
troop increase. In recent U.S. military history, it is unheard of for generals (such
as Eikenberry and David McKiernan) to state mid-war that more troops were not
needed. This indicates that it is much more of a politicians war than a generals
war, just as the Iraq War was in the beginning. In short, I do not think the United
States has any serious strategic interests in Afghanistan.
Question: Given the beliefs or political calculations of politicians likely to succeed
the Obama administration or politicians in the Obama administration itself, what
trajectory will the occupation take in Afghanistan and what will the geopolitical
repercussions be?
Tariq Ali: I have argued that if the United States prolongs its occupation of
Afghanistan and sends troops beyond the 30,000 in the last surge, the situation will
become even bloodier. The ratio of local people to U.S. troops killed is always huge.
In Vietnam, 2.5 million Vietnamese died, versus 50,000 U.S. soldiers. As bad as it
was for the United States, it was much worse for the Vietnamese. The ratio in Iraq
is similar, where over one million people have died since the occupation began. In
Afghanistan, the ratio will not differ significantly, but the United States could soon
become isolated because, apart from the British, serious dissent has emerged in
most European countries. Most of the European power elites are calibrating how
long they will stay there. Even Silvio Berlusconi, regarded as a figure of fun, has
publicly said that they cannot remain in Afghanistan permanently. If the Europeans
begin to pull out and only Britain and their new eastern European satellites (e.g.,

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Tariq Ali

the Romanians and Bulgarians) remain to shore up American forces, it will not look
very convincing as the others leave. Pressure might build on the Obama administration, but similar to other administrations he and David Axelrod will already be
determining whether it will help or hurt Obamas reelection chances and fine-tuning
accordingly. In this connection, members of Congress speaking on television said
that 77 congressmen opposed the final health bill as worse than useless, but voted
for it anyway because the president took them aside. Dennis Kucinich related that
the president took him on Air Force One and gave him a pep talk, saying it was
really about one thing: his presidency was on the line and the stakes were whether
the Democrats would win next time or not. Afghanistan will probably be the same.
They will assess how unpopular the war is, and in the last figures I saw, 40 to 43%
of Americans opposed being in Afghanistan, a huge percentage. It is not yet a
majority, so I think that is how cynical the operation will be.

Question: Pakistani politician Imran Khan opposes the drone missile strikes there.
If he were win high office, would the United States tolerate it?
Tariq Ali: Imran Khan recently had friendly conversations with Vice President
Joe Biden in the United States and in Pakistan. Imran would not do everything the
Americans told him to, but the possibility of him becoming the president of Pakistan
is remote. So the question is largely academic. You could ask whether the United
States would accept it if Pakistan were to elect a government that collectively no
longer agreed with doing the U.S.s bidding and carrying out U.S. policies. The
United States would not accept that, but would not invade Pakistan either. They
would just switch off the money. Without U.S. funds, which have been flowing into
the country in a huge way since September 11, Pakistans economy would collapse
overnight, with or without an IMF plan. People may not realize how bad the situation
in Pakistan is. In huge Pakistani cities with millions of people, temperatures recently
reached 44 degrees centigrade (111.2 degrees Fahrenheit). The electricity was off
for several hours each day because the state could not supply it. Factories closed
down every day and people died because of the heat. The conditions of everyday
life in Pakistan are reaching a crisis point, not just for the poor who comprise 65
to 70% of that country, but also for the middle classes and even the upper-middle
classes. Every day, busses are burned because of rising public transport fares, angry
citizens attack police stations, and people who were demanding to know why they
are being charged so much stoned the water and power development authority
headquarters. The population is really angry over the high cost of the war and over
what is happening to them every day. Any illusion that this government is doing
something for its people is nonsense. If the United States were to turn off the aid
spigot, any government in Pakistan would collapse overnight.
Question: Given the state of demobilization and confusion of the anti-war forces in
the United States and Europe, how might a serious anti-war movement be rebuilt
that could counter the risk of an indefinite U.S. occupation of Afghanistan?

Obamas War: A Lecture

23

Tariq Ali: Countries differ markedly in their political traditions, how people
think, the level of their political parties, etc., but a few general points can be made.
Whichever way you look at it, politically, historically, and globally the present
period is very different from Vietnam. The one lesson the U.S. government learned
from Vietnam was never to fight a conscript war on such a huge scale again. It
was an intelligent decision, because a conscript war affects every family in the
country; everyone is engaged to some degree or another in politics. Even people
who support the war read about what is happening and the level of consciousness
becomes quite high. That occurred during the Vietnam War, not just among kids on
the campuses, but also among ordinary people. Remember the huge demonstration
by GIs against the war outside the Pentagon, when the hippies tried to levitate the
building. The presence of GIs in uniforms, on crutches, and wearing medals hurt
the generals inside the Pentagon much more than anything else because it was
their own army. It created havoc for them, made Lyndon Johnsons reelection in
1968 an impossibility, and forced Richard Nixon to reach a settlement, though at
tremendous cost because he destroyed Cambodia in the process. Together with the
scale of the Vietnamese resistance, that is what brought it about.
Today, professional soldiers fight American wars and recruitment has dried up.
Instead of reintroducing conscription, they have hired mercenaries or contractors.
Blackwater (renamed Xe Services in 2009) is the shining example, but many other
companies are involved, including former white South African soldiers and policemen who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the killers of Steven Biko,
the great South African black consciousness leader, died fighting in Iraq. I was in
Johannesburg when the news was announced and a huge cheer went up in the hall.
How wars are fought is one aspect, and the response of citizens globally is another.
In the case of the Iraq War, the massive attempt to stop it, especially in Western
Europe and North America, was without precedent in world history. Millions of
people came out and marched against the war. In the United States, half a million
people demonstrated in New York, three-quarters of a million in San Francisco,
a quarter million in Los Angeles, one hundred thousand in Minneapolis, and two
hundred thousand in Chicago. These cities had never seen such demonstrations,
even at the height of the Vietnam War. Citizens in these global demonstrations
most of whom were not part of any organized political groupdeeply sensed that
they were being lied to by the politicians, from Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and
Silvio Berlusconi, to Spains Jos Mara Aznar. Two and one-half million people
marched in Madrid and three million in Rome. When these efforts to stop the war
failed, large numbers of people felt disempowered, thinking nothing they could
do would change the situation. The demoralizing impact this had on people has
been underestimated. In relation to Afghanistan, one thing currently being done
is the teach-in, which grew up and was widely practiced in the United States. In
these organized debates on the war, both sidessupporters and opponentsare
represented. Many people attend, including those who have not made up their

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Tariq Ali

minds. That worked really well during the Vietnam War. It is a good way to do it,
and the way we should go.

Question: According to the New York Times, President Karzai stated that the
United States wants to maintain bases in Afghanistan to dominate all of Central
Asia. Chalmers Johnson, Pepe Escobar, and others discuss how U.S. bases are
related to controlling the oil and natural gas of Central Asia. Journalist Dahr Jamail
notes that the largest U.S. bases being built in Afghanistan are along the route
of a proposed pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan through
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and into India. In 2008, those four governments agreed on
such a project. Many Western oil companies have huge investments in the oil and
natural gas of the Central Asian countries. Could you comment on why the United
States, in spite of everything you have said, remains there?
Tariq Ali: I do not totally accept that argument by Chalmers Johnson and others,
because it is not necessary for the United States to occupy a country physically
to preserve, maintain, or have some control over its oil or energy resources. They
have not done that in the past, even during the Cold War, and there is less need to
do it now. Who is challenging them? Why do they need to do that in Central Asia?
Apart from anything else, they have a military presence in Central Asia itself. Having bases in Afghanistan does not necessarily shore up those bases. In reality, the
major power they must deal with in Central Asia is Vladimir Putin and the Russians,
not the Central Asian states whose strength is miniscule. Sometimes the Russians
enter talks and conclude deals and sometimes they do not. They ensure that the
flow of energy from the Ukraine or Central Asia reaches the intended destinations.
I never fully accepted that argument even regarding Iraq. It was different in
that it was a huge oil-producing country and the Western companies obtained long
leases on its oil. I would be surprised if they permitted the transitional puppet
state in Iraq to control the oil, but the point is that they were never denied access
to Iraqi oil, even under the Saddam Hussein regime. After Iraq was made into an
enemy state and sanctions were imposed, the United States bought oil from third
parties, knowing full well that it was Iraqi oil and that Saddam was selling it to
them. Except for a limited period in 1973, no country to my knowledge has ever
switched off the oil flow to the United States or to anyone else. The oil is there to
be sold and that would happen regardless. There is a larger question of whether the
United States needs to control these countries as a shot across the bow of China.
That is to say, China will always have access to the gas and oil it wants, provided
that it understands that the United States is the suzerain, or power, there. Even that
argument is not very convincing. Thus, I cannot see any real imperial rational for
continuing the occupation of Afghanistan.

Question: Is Afghanistan a Central Asian or South Asian problem? India is the

second-largest donor to Afghanistan, maintains cultural emissaries there, and has
a huge influence culturally, if not politically. Yet it must be careful not to antagonize

Obamas War: A Lecture

25

Pakistan regarding the strategic space it has always sought in Afghanistan. Thus,
what is South Asia in the war in Afghanistan?
Tariq Ali: Afghanistan belongs to both South Asia and Central Asia. It is a bridge
from one to the other historically. The Moguls and all the people after them who
conquered India came from Central Asia via Afghanistan. So Afghanistan has a tip
in South Asia and is part of Central Asia. A South Asian attitude toward Afghanistan should be for the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Indians to help
create a space where there is no war for 10 years and to rebuild the country. India
is crucial because it can help economically. Collective pressure will be needed to
have an impact in Afghanistan, but if they succeed we might see an end to this
long war. It has been going on since at least 1979, so it is not just an American
war. There is a role for the South Asians to play, but they need to sort out their
own problems. The absolute misery and oppression inflicted on the Tamils in Sri
Lanka has received little coverage. There is a human rights crisis in Sri Lanka, and
the continuing sore of Kashmir paralyzes relations between India and Pakistan.
Before South Asia can act collectively as an aggregate of countries with common
interests, it must first sort out these matters.
Question: Are the Taliban and al Qaeda connected, and will U.S. internal security
be jeopardized if the United States loses the Afghan War?
Tariq Ali: No intelligence sources say that today. Even David Milibands speech
states that the Taliban cannot be subsumed under al Qaeda. According to all intelligence reports, Al Qaeda is essentially a small organization with between two
and four thousand members. The war in Afghanistan has probably strengthened it,
but not to a huge extent. It has not carried out any serious attacks anywhere since
September 11. I believe it is a gravely weakened organization. Whether its central
leader, bin Laden, is still alive is an open question [he was subsequently assassinated
by the United Stateseds.]. Many senior people in Pakistan say informally that he
is dead. I do not know whether that is true, but the organization is tiny.

Question: As an observation, some in the United States believe that the September
11 attacks were an inside job rather than an al Qaeda operation. Do you believe
President Obama will accelerate the war in Pakistan, through the use of drones
and possibly nuclear weapons? Doesnt he know that Afghanistan is hopeless? In
addition, what are your thoughts on the rhetoric against Iran?
Tariq Ali: I do not take kindly to this U.S. obsession with conspiracy theories.
The country creates it in a way because of secrecy, but at no time did I disbelieve
al Qaidas leaders when they took credit for the September 11 attacks on video. It
is a useless waste of much time and more important things need to be done. We
need to build public opinion against these wars and occupations.
The war in Pakistan has already been escalated. I doubt whether further escalation through direct actions by U.S. troops in Pakistan will occur. If that were
to happen, the Pakistani army would split. Former army personnel have told me

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Tariq Ali

that if it did occur, many army officers would remove their uniforms, don guerrilla outfits, and fight. People are fed up with this war, including those inside the
Pakistani military. It is not in their interest for this war to continue indefinitely.
Although they are well paid, there is a limit to their patience and to the effect of
money. Politicians like Obama fail to see the hopelessness of the war, because when
in power they can develop a capacity to cut themselves off from the truth and see
what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. He has taken a big
risk by escalating the war with 30,000 more troops. I hope he realizes it is wrong,
but that might take some time.
In terms of the rhetoric against Iran, I have never accepted the view that the
United States would actually carry out bombing attacks on Iran. There is a very
simple reason: the Iranians are capable of fighting back on three fronts and escalating the conflict. Iraq would become an explosive battlefield again. In Iraq, proIranian groups are mostly already in power and Muqtada al-Sadrs forces could be
unleashed. Moreover, when a government crisis occurs in Iraq, they turn to Tehran,
not Washington. That is where the deals are being made. Irans influence in Iraq
should neither be underestimated nor overestimated, but it certainly should not be
ignored. An attack on Iran would create a war zone on the Tigris and Hezbollah
might defend Iran by carrying out attacks on Israel, which the whole world knows
is the main force pushing for this. They could not defeat the Israelis, but they could
provoke them into a new war in Lebanon. In western Afghanistan, the whole region
is very closely linked economically and politically to Iran. Were they to join the
insurgency, it would mean the end of the occupation. Thus, the U.S. military simply
will not accept an assault on Iran on the say-so of some politicians.
What if the Israelis were to attack Iran on their own? They cannot. Were the
Israelis to tangle with the U.S. military on this, all bets would be off. And they
know it. Benjamin Netanyahu is all bluster. In private and in the Israeli press, he
claims that Israel is the big power in the Middle East, and that even the Americans
cannot tell them what to do. He is perfectly aware of Israels dependence on the
United States. Though carrying out a bombing attack on Iran would be technically
possible, doing so without a green light from the United States would pose a grave
risk to Israels political and economic links with the United States. I am not saying
that they would never do it, but they would have to think very hard before doing
so. Generally, a lot of rocket-rattling is going on in relation to Iran.