In Afghanistan, appearances often deceive. This well-dressed man sporting a modern wristwatch is an honest, hard-working truck driver, yet he killed 11 Russian soldiers occupying his land. As a husband and family father, he used weapons hidden at home to engage in hit and run attacks before blending back into the civilian background. He fought a just war of independence against a regime which did not represent him.
The methods of guerilla warfare which drove the Russian army from Afghanistan were not new. In fact, the colonial Minutemen of 18th century America used precisely the same tactics. As husbands and family fathers, they used weapons hidden at home to engage in hit and run attacks before blending back into the civilian background. They fought a just war of independence against a regime which did not represent them.
Roughly 20 years ago, Pashtun tribesmen in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region were secretly armed by the CIA to resist the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. After forcing the Russian army to withdraw, they were hailed as noble freedom fighters by the Western press. But flooded with Russian and American weapons and without a functioning central government, Afghanistan soon descended into the chaos of civil war. Within a few years, the same tribesmen were once again called into service by the Pakistani and American secret services, armed with not only substantial firepower, but also a powerful doctrine of Islamic fundamentalism. The Taliban, promising the long-suffering Afghani people peace and security, stormed into Kabul and in less than three years after their emergence on the scene controlled 90 percent of Afghanistan. As their rule became ever more conservative and their guests, including Osama bin Laden, ever more distasteful, their Western sponsors suddenly found their creation spiralling out of control. Plans for an America-friendly Afghanistan willing to host an pipeline to carry oil from the rich Caspian Basin to American supertankers waiting in the Indian Ocean had come to naught. Even worse, the same Pashtun tribesmen who had proven such useful geopolitical pawns in the past had suddenly become the enemy. The American solution was to switch sides - declaring their erstwhile Taliban friends the new enemy and sending arms to their erstwhile enemy, the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance which had been fighting for survival in a few isolated pockets of northern Afghanistan. Through the use of hugely destructive Daisy Cutter bombs (boasted to kill every living thing within a 300 meter radius) and the carpet bombing of well-defended positions by waves of American B-52 bombers, the Taliban regime was defeated, vanishing suddenly into the mountains from where they had come.
And so we stand today - the same Pashtun tribesmen who were schooled by the CIA in the operation of Stinger missiles, who liberated Afghanistan from Russian occupation, and who put an end to six years of civil war, are today damned by the Western press as the "enemies of Afghanistan." Over 25'000 American and NATO soldiers currently occupy southern and eastern Afghanistan, combing the mountains and waging a war of extermination against their erstwhile brothers in arms.
This well-dressed man sporting a modern wristwatch is an honest, hard-working truck driver, yet he may well be planning attacks on American soldiers occupying his land. He is fighting a just war of independence against a regime which does not represent him.
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