Al Qaeda was a creation of Western intelligence agencies, along with the Pakistani security agencies, who in the 1980's endeavored to create strategic opposition to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As such, Al Qaeda was formed to recruit and train radical Muslims to wage war against Russia. The goal was to create a "new Vietnam" for the USSR, which would lead to a humiliating defeat and ultimate collapse.
During the 1990's, the Taliban, who were the homegrown mujahadeen who fought the Soviet occupiers earlier, took power and allowed al-Qaeda to operate within their territory. Most notably, it gave same harbor to Saudi Osama bin Laden and al-Zwahiri, who were the putative leaders of the movement. From there, they plotted their moves against the United States, who, especially after the end of the first Gulf War became a major target of the terrorist group. They operated out of different territories: Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and even Indonesia. They have been implicated in a series of bombings against US targets, including a battleship in Yemen, our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. After targeting the United States in 9/11/2001, bin Laden and his Taliban associates were removed from power in Afghanistan. In February of 2002, bin Laden and many elite al-Qaeda fighters were lost in the epic battle of Tora Bora. Some suspected that he might have gotten away in Pakistan, but many reliable intelligence sources suggest that he died in Afghanistan during the battle of Tora Bora and is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the Afghan highlands, according to Muslim tradition.
The loss of al-Qaeda's leadership capacity over the past few years, along with the loss of key state sponsors, has deemed it a weakened movement incapable of coordinated action. But the al-Qaeda threat remains the linchpin of American policy in the region, specifically Obama's proposed buildup of military forces there.
Former Marine Gen. James Jones, NSA advisor to President Obama, made a revealing statement about the estimated size of the present al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Jones told that the Congress that "The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”
That means, for all practical purposes, al-Qaeda does not exist in Afghanistan. Yet we're sending 30,000 troops, in addition to NATO forces and the 104,000 private contractors that act as mercenary fighters over there, and the President deems it an immediate existential threat to the American people? That certainly doesn't mesh with the words of his NSA advisor.
Even in Pakistan, which Obama shows immense interest in, enough so to expand the war into these areas through the use of predator drones and other deadly targeted operations, the remnants of al-Qaeda are scarcely to be found there. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hunted by US drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. For Arab youths who are al Qaeda’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.”
If we follow the statement to its logical consequence, I must conclude that the reason American soldiers are dying in the mountains of Afghanistan has nothing to do with "winning the war against terrorism. We should demand a more honest public debate from our political leaders about the true purpose for sending more young people to die protecting a corrupt regime in Afghanistan.
The real target is not al-Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan. The purpose of maintaining our current operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan is in reality to place a major strike force in the center of the Asian continent. Our main concern is maintaining strategic dominance of that area by maintaining a military presence. At root of our concerns are increased economic and security cooperation between Russia and China, who together could easily dominate the continent and its vast natural resources.
Each Eurasian power brings something to the table: China has the world’s most robust economy, a huge young and dynamic workforce, an educated middle class. Russia, whose economy has not fully recovered from the privatization of state companies during the Yeltsin era, still holds essential assets for the combination of powers. Russia’s nuclear strike force and its military pose the only threat in the world today to US military dominance, even if it is largely a residue of the Cold War. The Russian military elites never gave up that potential. Russia also holds the world's largest treasure of natural gas and oil, resources that China desperately needs.
Both powers are increasingly converging after years of bitter rivalry at the end of the Cold War. China has a need for energy and Russia has a need for exports. This strategic partnership works out well for them. China is also looking at Iran, which is less geopolitically important in the broader picture, but our strategic outpost in Afghanistan allows us to influence events there too.
Officially, of course, Washington claims it has built its military presence inside Afghanistan since 2002 in order to protect a “fragile” Afghan democracy. It’s a curious argument given the reality of US military presence there. The bases which the US has constructed in Afghanistan are within striking distance of Iran, in addition to China, Russia and the politically critical Central Asian republics.
There is a long history of imperial aggression in Afghanistan that also needs to be accounted for.
Afghanistan has historically been the heartland for the British-Russia Great Game, the struggle for control of Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. British strategy then was to prevent Russia at all costs from controlling Afghanistan and thereby threatening Britain’s imperial crown jewel, India.
Afghanistan is similarly regarded by Pentagon planners today as highly strategic. It is a platform from which US military power could directly threaten Russia and China, as well as Iran and other oil-rich Middle East lands. Little has changed geopolitically over more than a century of wars.
I've emphasized strongly in this series of reviews the importance of geography as the reasoning behind our operations in the region. This is because Afghanistan is in an extremely vital location, straddling South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Afghanistan also lies along a proposed oil pipeline route from the Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean, where the US oil company, Unocal, along with Enron and Cheney’s Halliburton, had been in negotiations for exclusive pipeline rights to bring natural gas from Central Asia across Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron’s huge natural gas power plant in Northern India. Karzai, before becoming the US-backed President of Afghanistan, had been a Unocal lobbyist with strong connections to the CIA.
Read into it however you please, but there is clearly more to this story than our government is letting on. There is a massive chess match underway in Asia, with the players all targeting the same objectives: political power, control of resources, and enrichment of certain economic elites at the expense of the general public. The war on terrorism is all but a sideshow to maintain public support for this strategy.
