Afghanistan: Ten Years Later

This week marks 10 years since the invasion of Afghanistan. Kim Sengupta reflects on the people he has met – and the promises he's seen broken – during a decade spent covering the conflict

The Irish bar in the Mustafa Hotel became the hub of the adventurers and oddballs who had drifted to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban. There was a dancing Osama bin Laden doll, bullet holes in the ceiling and men who wore wraparound sunglasses at night while lovingly cradled their guns.
In 2001, Afghanistan was the Wild East. The invasion following the 9/11 attacks was deemed a success for the US and its allies. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary in Washington, was arguing that the job was done with the fall of the Taliban; America was not into nation-building and the troops on the ground would be thinned out. The customers at the Mustafa Bar, private security contractors, were there to fill the vacuum. From then on these men would be very much the camp followers in the various fronts of the War on Terror, leaving a highly controversial, and sometimes bloody, footprint.

Afghanistan was just the pregame show as American's say.  Once the Taliban had been defeated in less than a month and with its leadership trapped in the caves of Tora Bora with  U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 572 the only U.S. military personnel operating in that area the task of killing or capturing those surrounded at Tora Bora was given to troops from the Northern Alliance who managed to let all those trapped escape into Pakistan.  


What followed was the intense propaganda campaign of the Bush administration to convince the world and American's that the real enemy lay not in Afghanistan but in Baghdad.  
To say that nation-building wasn't ever going to be part of the war plans for the Iraqi invasion is an understatement. General Eric Shinseki  spoke about what the U.S. would need in troop levels for pre and post invasion Iraq:

Shinseki publicly clashed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the planning of the war in Iraqover how many troops the U.S. would need to keep in Iraq for the postwar occupation of that country. As Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who was another chief planner of the invasion and occupation.^[7] From then on, Shinseki's influence on the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly waned.^[8] Critics of the Bush Administration alleged that Shinseki was forced into early retirement as Army Chief of staff because of his comments on troop levels, but the claim is disputed as his retirement was actually announced nearly a year before those comments.^[9]

Once President Bush had declared major combat operations over in  his now infamous speech aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln the U.S. administrator for Iraq L Paul Bremer continued the administration's willingness to do nothing to help Iraq rebuild its self.


    

Disbanding of the Iraqi Army

Main article: Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2

On May 23, 2003 Bremer issued Order Number 2,^[26] in effect dissolving the entire former Iraqi army and putting 400,000 former Iraqi soldiers out of work.^[27]The move was widely criticized for creating a large pool of armed and disgruntled youths for the insurgency to draw recruits from. Former soldiers took to the streets in mass protests to demand back pay. Many of them threatened violence if their demands were not met.^[28][29]It was widely asserted within the White House and the CPA that the order to disband the Iraqi Army had little to no practical effect since it had "self-demobilized" in the face of the oncoming invasion force. This was revealed to be false, however, insofar as the CIA had conducted psychological operations against the Iraqis, such as dropping leaflets over the Army's positions prior to the invasion. The leaflets ordered the Iraqi Army to abandon their positions, return to their homes, and await further instructions.
Bremer was later heavily criticized^[30] for officially disbanding the former Iraqi Army. Bremer, however, contends that there were no armies to disband. He says that the brutality of Saddam's rule over his people and his own Iraqi soldiers led to many simply leaving after the fall of Baghdad to go home; some to protect their own families from the rampant looting. Critics claimed his extreme measures, including the firing of thousands of school teachers and removing Ba'ath party members from top government positions, helped create and worsen an atmosphere of discontent among those who did not "fit in" with the socioeconomic profile the Americans were working with. As the insurgency grew stronger, so did the criticisms. Bremer was also in personal danger because of Iraqi perceptions of him and was henceforth heavily guarded. Attempts to assassinate him took place a few times - one of the more publicized attempts occurred on December 6, 2003 when his convoy was driving on the dangerous Baghdad Airport Road while returning to the fortified Green Zone. The convoy was hit by a bomb and gunfire, with the rear window of his official car blown away and as bullets flew, Bremer and his deputies ducked below their seats. No injuries or casualties were reported and news of the assassination attempt on Bremer was not released until December 19, 2003, during his visit to Basra.

Just more lies

Investment, we were told, would pour in for development as security was established. Bin Laden, it was true, had escaped with a handful of followers from Tora Bora into Pakistan. But, we were assured, it would be a matter of months, if not weeks, before he was killed or captured.
In Kandahar, at the home of Mullah Omar, the semi-literate cleric who had headed the austere Taliban regime, with its gold-plated chandeliers, formica wall panels and a rococo mosque with green and blue mirrors, American soldiers prowled looking for souvenirs.
A corporal from Alabama lay on the mullah's bed with its imported Italian mattress, a big grin on his face saying "ain't this something". In Mazhar-e-Sharif in the north, Donald Rumsfeld stressed to a group of us during a flying visit that the war was truly over. "The Taliban are marginalised, they will have no future role to play. This is a new Afghanistan."

 Mullah Omar has neither been killed or captured and is believed to  living in Pakistan

After the US led Operation Enduring Freedom began in early October 2001, Omar went into hiding and is still at large. He is thought to be in the Pashtun tribal region of Afghanistan or Pakistan. At first, the United States offered a reward of US$10 million for information leading to his capture^[1] but eventually the reward was raised to US$25 million.

Claiming that the Americans had circulated 'propaganda' that Mullah Omar had gone into hiding, Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil stated that he would like to "propose that prime minister Blair and president Bush take Kalashnikovs and come to a specified place where Omar will also appear to see who will run and who not." He stated that Omar was merely changing locations due to security reasons.^[31]

In the opening weeks of October 2001, Omar's house in Kandahar was bombed, killing his stepfather and his 10-year old son.^[32]