Dispatches from Afghanistan and Pakistan 2011 #1

by Michael Skinner

Sunday, 27 February 2011

I’m on my way to New Delhi, Kabul, and Islamabad. This journey started with an invitation from the Indian Major General Dipankar Banerjee, of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, to speak at a conference organised to assess Canadian and Indian policy on Afghanistan. Since I was so close, I took the opportunity to visit friends in Afghanistan and Pakistan to assess the current situations there. On the way home I’ll stop in the UK for a few days for speaking engagements at the University of London, Bradford University, and at the University of Leeds where my daughter Kira is currently studying. It will be great to see her for the first time since she left home in January.

Monday, 28 February 2011 

I arrive in Kuwait via Heathrow on schedule at 7:30PM. Compared to the international transportation hub in Dubai, which is opulent and state of the art by any standard, the Kuwait airport is of a far lesser standard. It is obviously intended to facilitate the massive movements of workers between their jobs and homes separated by great distances across this region – the new division of labour. The filthy washroom I can smell even before nearing the door, not unlike some in the Toronto Transit Commission subway stations, indicates it is working class people rather than foreign tourists and international business people who are served by this airport.

The plane to New Delhi is filled to capacity with Indian workers, almost all men, returning to India. My seatmate tells me he is a driver for a wealthy Kuwaiti family. Low paid “guest” workers in Kuwait are either directly or indirectly dependent on Kuwaiti oil wealth. When I retrieve my luggage in the New Delhi airport, I see that few of these workers have luggage – most pack their things in a blanket roll bound with rope. The flight must be a huge expense for these workers.

The cabdriver cannot find the United Services Institute residency where I’m booked to stay. I am getting impatient considering my plane arrived at 4:30AM and I have a meeting five hours later. I don’t think he believes the residency is behind the checkpoint staffed with armed soldiers that we keep passing until I finally spot the USI sign.

Tuesday, 1 March 2011

Finally, I’m into a bed at 6AM Tuesday after departing Toronto Saturday afternoon. But not for long; I have a 7AM wakeup to get ready and meet my ride to the conference.

The conference titled, Afghanistan 2011: A Canada-India Policy Dialogue on Future Developmental Efforts, is organised by the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, but sponsored by the High Commission of Canada.

I sense the High Commissioner as well as the Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan and the Canadian Representative to Kandahar who are participants at the conference are deeply annoyed by my analysis of the situation. I suspect they wish they had not agreed to pay for my visit.

The conference organisers asked me to write a paper analysing Canada’s policy in Afghanistan. In my paper titled, A Clash of Principals and Interests, I analyse the concrete and historical reasons why so many Afghans mistrust the interests of the powerful and wealthy states, including Canada, which now occupy Afghanistan. The clash I describe is between the principals Canadian and other Western leaders claim are the reasons for invading and occupying Afghanistan and the evident geopolitical and economic interests actually served by the military mission. I conclude that Afghans are not served by the American led coalition’s geopolitical interests and only a very few elite Afghans share in the economic benefits created by the war. Canadians have made a grave error in judgement by aligning our foreign policy so closely with that of the United States.

Canadian leaders, like their American and British counterparts claim, we invaded Afghanistan to liberate Afghans and especially Afghan women from the tyranny of the Taliban regime and the al Qaeda terrorists they hosted. They claim global and national security will improve when terrorism is eliminated.

However, in reality, American led OEF forces that included Canada allied with a regime as fundamentally repressive as the Taliban. These are the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (UIF) better known by the euphemistic English translation the Northern Alliance. Afghans are now caught between two repressive Islamic regimes with former UIF warlords and other powerbrokers controlling the Afghan state with our assistance.

Most resources going to Afghanistan during the past decade were for military and security costs with little going toward human development. The infrastructure of roads, water supply, sanitation, etc. remains in an incredible state of advanced decay and according to most reports things are getting worse. The mission has, however, begun to turn a corner with billions of dollars beginning to pour into Afghanistan to finance mega scale industrial projects such as the Aynak mine (one of the largest copper deposits in the world), the Hajigak mine (one of the largest iron mines in the world), as well as the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India (TAPI) gas pipeline, and CASA1000 power transmission project. However, it is unlikely many Afghans will benefit from these and other potentially profitable ventures. Many people will inevitably be displaced. Means to adequately compensate and resettle the people who will be displaced do not exist. Adequate environmental protections do not exist, which will inevitably lead to environmental destruction and yet further displacement of people. The few Afghans who might be employed by these new projects will not be protected by adequate labour standards or health and safety regulations.

After my last visit to Afghanistan, I compiled a list of interests Afghans identified as objectives of the U.S. led OEF and NATO led ISAF forces. These geopolitical and economic interests clash with the stated principles of liberating Afghans, building democracy, and eliminating terrorism. After intensive research, I conclude none of the purported principles have been fulfilled and none are likely to be fulfilled any time in the foreseeable future. However, the geopolitical and economic objectives listed below are being fulfilled.

Geopolitical interests

• to assert America’s global primacy;
• to establish NATO as an American-led forum of global governance with the capacity and legitimacy to bypass UN authority, abrogate existing international laws, and create new international laws;
• to demonstrate US/NATO resolve for war;
• to test the capacity of new military equipment and interoperability of national military systems, and to train personnel;
• to establish forces in Afghanistan, because it is strategically located between the emerging empires of Russia, China, and India, the politically volatile Central Asian republics, a potentially ‘failing’ yet militarily powerful Pakistan, and a ‘rogue’ state, Iran;
• to initiate a strategy of creative destruction in Greater Central Asia to allow the subsequent stabilization and reconstruction necessary for the further globalisation of liberal world order.

Economic interests

• to generate profits by further opening Greater Central Asia to global free trade;
• to generate profits by re-connecting Eurasia along the underutilised transportation, communications, and energy transmission corridors that crisscross the Greater Central Asia region in which Afghanistan is a central node;
• to generate profits by transferring public resources of allied states to corporations in the military, security, and development sectors;
• to generate profits by selling new weapons proven on the battlefield;
• to generate profits by privatising Afghan industries and abundant natural resources.

In short, the Great Game continues with one difference. During previous innings of the game, the rival empires – first Russia, Great Britain, and Persia and then later the U.S. and USSR – used Afghanistan as a barrier to separate their rival empires. Today, the American led Empire of Capital is using Afghanistan as a bridgehead to expand liberalisation deeper into Eurasia.

Not surprisingly, the Canadian diplomats participating in the conference were not happy with this analysis, but Indian academics and media representatives at the conference were intrigued.

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

I spend the day sightseeing in New Delhi. First stop the Qutb Minar complex the Muslim city established in the 13th century. Next stop is Humayun’s tomb; the mausoleum built in the 16th century to inter the Mughal emperor Humayun. Its scale and beauty are surpassed only by the Taj Mahal. The Red Fort built by the Mughal Shah Jahan in the 17th century as his personal palace and centre of government is my next stop.

From the Red Fort I walk to St. James Church built by James Skinner in 1836. Skinner was the son of Hercules Skinner, an officer of the East India Company, and a Rajput princess who Hercules Skinner seized as bounty when she was 15. After bearing six of Hercule’s children she killed herself. The good old days of British imperialism! We might want to believe that young girls are no longer kidnapped as sex slaves, but this is still occurring in conflict zones around the world often facilitated by our own military actions.

Because of English racism, James Skinner was not allowed to fulfill his dream of joining the British military. So using his inherited wealth he built his own cavalry militia, the Skinner’s Horse, also known as the Yellow Boys, because of their saffron tunics.

The church caretaker is delighted to hear my name is Michael James Skinner. She guides me to the graves of both James and Michael Skinner who had commanded Skinner’s Horse, the later beginning in 1960. Legend has it that James Skinner promised to build St. James as he lay on the battlefield suffering from a potentially fatal wound. He survived and kept his promise spending a considerable sum to build the church.

One of the Indian military officers I met at the conference, noting my name, suggested I visit the military library that holds the regimental records of Skinner’s Horse. The library, coincidently, is in the building beside the residency in which I am staying, so I plan to look at those records tomorrow.

I wander along the Chandi Chowk browsing the tawdry shops selling cheap merchandise and then weave southward through the densely packed and chaotic markets of Old Delhi. I finally arrive at Connaught Place where I have an overpriced dinner. But it is an immaculately clean restaurant so worth paying Western prices. I’ll have enough time to acclimatise my digestive system, so I don’t need to get sick this early in the trip.

Thursday, 3 March 2011 

I drive across town to have breakfast with Suba Chandron the director of IPCS. He is an expert on Afghanistan and the organiser of the conference I attended. Suba takes me to a wonderful Sri Lankan dosa house where we spend the morning discussing the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I spend the afternoon at the Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research reading the history of Skinner’s Horse. The centre secretary Rana Chhina is very familiar with the story and he is quite helpful in my search for records. If I believed in fate or karma I might be spooked – it is a curious coincidence that I discover Skinner’s Horse under James Skinner’s command sacked Kandahar, Ghazni, and Kabul during the first Afghan war in the 1830s. Rana takes me to a case full of war medals to show me the medal struck for the members of Skinner’s Horse who attacked Ghazni – the medal features the walled citadel and the huge gap destroyed by the British artillery. I recall visiting Ghazni and thinking how sad that the city walls had been destroyed and never repaired. Maybe it is karma that I should be criticising the modern day version of the sacking of Afghanistan for profit and geopolitical advantage.

Friday, 4 March 2011

I meet Afghan expert Vishal Chandra at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis, which is also immediately beside my residence. We chat for the morning until I have to leave to catch my plane to Kabul.

The flight to Kabul is uneventful. Unlike my last visit, the police do not shake me down for a bribe before allowing entry and I retrieve my luggage and get out of the airport quickly. It’s great to see my Kabuli friends again.

As we drive into the city from the airport I note that the only things that seem to have changed are the garishly lit Las Vegas style wedding halls that now line the newly paved airport road. However, every other road is an off-road adventure of grinding through axle deep mud and pounding across bone-jarring rubble and potholes on roads that have not seen any maintenance for more than three decades.

I settle into my accommodations in a comfortable guest house in the NGO quarter. My comrades are in delighted shock when I pull a litre of vodka I bought at the New Delhi duty free shop out of my rucksack. They question how I brought this into the country without being arrested. I had no idea the Islamic regime had enforced total prohibition. The last time I was here, alcohol as well as hashish was readily available in shops and restaurants with alcohol openly advertised in many places. I’m not sure if I had known about the prohibition whether I would have been too nervous to bring it in, or whether I might have been tempted to buy as much as I could carry. The vodka was well appreciated and we talked late into the night.

Saturday, 5 March 2011

I’m off to a slow start today getting logistics in place for the next few days in Kabul and my trip to Herat. Much of the morning is wasted trying to get my computer setup on the house wireless network in between sporadic electrical blackouts.

I finally meet my host in the late afternoon. I’m not going to name my various hosts and other comrades here because of the security issues. They are particularly worried about the recent spate of kidnappings that have been perpetrated most often by criminals as opposed to insurgent groups. We chat about the current situation and the historical context of Afghanistan through the afternoon, dinner and late into the night. My host tells me he clearly sees the Western forces are here “not to distribute bread, but to distribute bullets.” It reminds me of General Rick Hillier’s comment: “We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people.”