Dr Farrukh Saleem

The writer is an Islamabad-based

freelance columnist

farrukh15@hotmail.com

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, has lain to Americans. British have been lied to by Anthony Blair the "Ambassador-at-large of the US who also holds the portfolio of PM of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." They were told that their armed forces are in Afghanistan to get the terrorists. After five weeks of dropping hell over Afghanistan how many terrorists have they managed to get so far? President Bush now says, "this could last weeks, months, even a decade." Two-thousand Afghans have been killed in five weeks while the UN says that a million could die of starvation and 100,000 children may freeze this winter. So how many Afghans will still be alive by the end of the decade?

This week I am going to try and cover four different but essentially inter-related issues. First, the future of Afghanistan. Second, American bases both in Uzbekistan and in Tajikistan. Third, the development of an anti-terrorism doctrine. Fourth, fascism as a political tendency in America.

My principal premise is that America is not in the business of nation building (Candidate George W Bush had pledged during his presidential campaign that he would never get involved in "nation building" outside of the US). In the past, America has bombed Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Sudan and Yugoslavia. There was no post-bombing American-led reconstruction.

If previous American bombings are any guide then Afghanistan's future, unfortunately, isn't going to be much different from its past. The most stable period in recent Afghan history began in the '30s and lasted till the early '70s (when Zahir Shah was the king). Even during Zahir Shah all that Afghanistan had was a mere semblance of a central government. A little more than a spectacle of central authority restricted to major urban towns. Tribes occupying around two dozen of the thirty provinces remained autonomous never fully submitting to the will of a central government. To be sure, Afghans continue to value their independence more than anything else.

The brutish warlords of the Northern Alliance, in the meanwhile, are milking the US to the hilt. They are all tried, tested and failed figures. Now they know that the US is in a fix. Their view of life itself is a long, stretched war. Their current objective is to stockpile as much weaponry as possible for future wars when the US won't be around.

The most resourceful country on the face of the planet is now bent on subjugating the least resourceful. The superpower will be successful albeit in a limited way. The Congress committed $40 billion to teach a lesson to a country whose annual GDP is $4 billion. It has taken the Americans six weeks and a million tons of smart and dumb bombs to realize that Afghans cannot be bombed into submission. If the Americans think that they can bring back Zahir Shah who will then form a government in Kabul with authority over the rest of Afghanistan then they will fail. Since the start of bombing the Americans have changed their definition of success at least a dozen times.

It is becoming clear now that air-power alone isn't going to do it. If there are 30,000 to 40,000 Taliban then an offensive ground-force of some 100,000 to 120,000 will be needed to dislodge them.

The new American-crafted dispensation that is being planned would have to be content with a mere appearance of a central government with writ severely limited to Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Kabul. By the time Mazar-e-Sharif is presented to the Northern Alliance in a platter and a hotchpotch of a government in Kabul, odds are that American craving for vengeance would begin to taper-off.

Now on to Central Asia. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are said to be rich in oil and gas. Americans now have bases in both those countries. Are the Americans here for the oil? To begin with, the acquisition of bases could not have been possible without Russian approval. The Americans must have given the Russians an explicit assurance that they shall not take either Uzbekistan or Tajikistan out of Russia's sphere of influence. Secondly, the kind of troop deployment that America has undertaken is all special services operations the kind of personnel that do not stay away from their home bases for very long. Thirdly, America can buy all the oil it wants to buy at around $20 a barrel from its current suppliers. In that sense, it does not need to look for alternative sources.

Furthermore, inflation-adjusted price of crude oil (1996 dollars) over the past one hundred years has come down from $80 a barrel to around $20 a barrel indicating that supply has actually overtaken demand. There was an oil shock in 1973 (when the price of crude doubled) and another one in 1979 (the price doubled once again) but the possibility of a third one is low.

Saudi Arabia, the major producer, is heavily in debt, runs a high budgetary deficit and continues to be a rentier state (a rentier government is one that derives a large part of its revenue from external rents such as export of oil or minerals). Saudi Arabia must continue pumping and selling oil to whoever is willing to pay for it just to make its own two ends meet.

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan may be resource-rich but everything so far is underground. Development of a massive infrastructure alone could cost tens of billions of dollars while the major consumers in the region are India and China. Why should the US be spending money so that others can benefit?

On to anti-terrorism. We are in the initial phase of the development of a comprehensive anti-terrorism doctrine. Terrorism is going to be classified and categorized--perhaps as conventional, bio, nuclear, state, religious and political. Terms are going to be defined, as always by the rich and the powerful (read: Nato). It won't be easy. If the attacks on WTC by an informal militia were terrorism then indiscriminate carpet-bombing by a recognized state also amounts to terrorism. One of the consequences of the new doctrine may, however, be that both India and Pakistan are forced to abandon violent means to settle political disputes. Secondly, we would have to open up our nuclear facilities for IAEA's (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections.

Next comes fascism as a political tendency in the US. To be certain, America always had the essential prerequisites, namely centralized authority and stringent socio-economic controls. Add to those, belligerent nationalism and suppression of dissent. It is shocking how the American public has willingly sacrificed its liberty and freedom for a false sense of security. It is so depressing to see the American government being successful in convincing the American media to blindfold itself. It is saddening to see a country like America heading into fascism. The CIA bought all images generated by commercial satellite operators over Afghanistan. A debate on foreign policy was suspended in the elected houses. Anyone arguing the pros and cons of the war on Afghanistan becomes an instant traitor. The police can now lock up citizens on mere suspicion. Wire tapping, eavesdropping, e-mail interception and racial screening all in the name of security. Civil liberties earned over a period of two-hundred years gone in a matter of weeks. The most free nation on the face of the planet shall be no more.