I was on Democracy Now! earlier this week. Also, a press statement on President Biden’s proposal to pull US forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021.
Press statement on Afghanistan. Thank you Institute for Public Accuracy.
MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a member of the Eisenhower Media Initiative. He is a 100 percent disabled Marine combat veteran, and, in 2009, he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the Afghan War by the Obama administration. He was featured on an accuracy.org news release last month: “Biden Rejection of Afghan Agreement Means the ‘Taliban Will Resume Killing Americans.’ “Comparisons of Afghanistan to Iraq in 2014, play on the specious fear that a U.S. exit from Afghanistan will result in a comeback of Islamic militant forces, are disingenuous, and ignore the reality of what actually happened in Iraq after 2011. “The success of the Islamic State in Iraq in 2014 was not due to the absence of U.S. forces in Iraq, but rather was due to the brutal sectarianism of the Iraqi government against the Sunni minority, and, critically, the the direct and indirect support of the Islamic State in Syria by the United States and its allies. The U.S. believed it could control the Islamic State, and other jihadist groups in Syria, in order to overthrow the Assad government. The U.S. also believed the Islamic State would not cross the literal line in the sand that divides Syria and Iraq, the country that most of the Islamic State leadership came from. The Obama administration decided it could control the Islamic State for its purposes, which resulted in another example of catastrophic blowback in U.S. military and foreign policy. “Further, the idea Kabul will resemble Saigon in 1975 is again specious fear mongering. The Taliban, of course, want power, but they are not suicidal. They understand a violent takeover of Kabul, akin to the Islamic State takeover of Mosul or al Qaeda’s takeover of Aleppo, will result in Kabul being completely devastated by foreign air forces, just as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001, and in multiple cities in Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017, including Mosul and Aleppo. That is an outcome the Taliban are aware of and cannot want. “Additionally, the Taliban cannot win in Afghanistan without the support of the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis want a client state in Afghanistan, but they also do not want the instability and chaos of Afghanistan to continue, particularly if a Taliban takeover of Kabul results in renewed resumption of a U.S.-led escalation of the war similar to 2001. “The Pakistanis have an incentive to see stability and a power sharing agreement occur in Afghanistan, especially if their ally is given a prominent role. This outcome necessitates the need for negotiations and a peace process, and cannot occur if the Taliban are only given the option of victory or defeat. “This is the first formal peace process in Afghanistan in over 30 years in a war whose violence goes back to 1978, prior to the Soviet invasion. This peace process is dependent upon foreign forces leaving Afghanistan. Regardless of whether the 3500 acknowledged U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the U.S. military will still be present in the form of thousands of special operations and CIA personnel in and around Afghanistan, through dozens of squadrons of manned attack aircraft and drones stationed on land bases and on aircraft carriers in the region, and by hundreds of cruise missiles on ships and submarines. “A peace process is what the Afghan people need and deserve after so many decades of cruel and unimaginable suffering, much of which has been perpetrated and sustained by foreign forces and intentions. Violence has proven to be counterproductive and horrifically destructive, a peace process is the only chance for Afghanistan, its neighbors and the world.”
I hope 2020 is going well for everyone. Thank you so much to those supporting me on Patreon. Your assistance is invaluable, I can’t emphasize that enough. Thank you.
This year has begun for so many around the world the same way as the last one did, and the one before that, and the one before that, etc. Tens of millions of people are, from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan, living lives consumed and controlled by violence, suffering and homelessness. Medical care, food and clean water are near non-existent for many this winter as they live as refugees in tent camps or struggle to survive in their own cities and villages. The cause of this is war. I don’t use the plural of wars as the root cause of this mass suffering, a suffering unknown on the planet over such a stretch of geography and populations since the Second World War, is US foreign policy.
This suffering floods home. While it is true the US does not endure the missile strikes, the drone attacks, the commando raids, the starvation blockades or the roadside bombs that have ruined so much life abroad, we are a nation that is as captive to this war as the people directly consumed by it. The violence that exists in our actions overseas is mirrored here at home. There are multiples of examples for this and such examples are not coincidence: we are the planet’s largest arms seller and we have more guns here in the US than people; we supply weapons to over 70% of the world’s dictatorships and autocracies, and, at home, anyone who wants a weapon, no matter how sick or depraved they may be, may have one; we have more than 800 foreign military bases, combined the rest of the world has about 15, while here in the US we have the world’s largest prison system ~ 25% of the world’s prisoners with 5% of the world’s population…the examples are seemingly inexhaustible. So it is very true, as Veterans For Peace says, we cannot have peace at home, until we have peace abroad, and vice versa.
As I write this, I am waiting to speak, via Skype, with 500 university students across Iran. Over the last two months, as the US and Iran have dangerously come close to a catastrophic war, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to appear on Iranian television a number of times. I have also had the opportunity to speak with US and European audiences as well, either by attending events virtually via Skype or Zoom, or by appearing on television, internet and radio programs. I will link several of these interviews below.
It is not a hidden fact the vast majority of public discussion on US foreign policy and war is dominated by a belief in violence, an ahistorical understanding of the world and the US’ role in it, and by a controlling interest of money and industry. However, there is nothing we can do other than fight against a system that continues to prolong, renew and create suffering unlike any the world has seen in three quarters of a century. We also cannot restrict our conversations to our own selves, we must reach out to those we are told are ourenemy and that is why I am so happy to have the time and ability to be able to appear on Iranian television and virtually attend conferences so I may speak to Iranians and others we are told to not just hate, but to see killed. For these reasons your support of me and my work is so very important and it is why I am so grateful.
Please let me know if there are things you think I should be doing more of or better, and please, if you are so inclined, pass along this note to others and encourage them to support me in my work via Patreon. Thank you again.
Update: Andrew Cockburn’s current article in Harper’s Magazine is an absolutely must read. I’ve not read a better summation of Saudi Arabian involvement, and the US government cover-up of the Saudi role in 9/11 than this: Crime and Punishment; Will the 9/11 Case Finally Go to Trial?
“…Owens was not impressed by what she found on Capitol Hill. Most of the senators and representatives she met didn’t seem to care who was behind 9/11. “They just didn’t want to be seen as voting against the 9/11 families. So they would vote yes for it, and then try to sabotage it behind the scenes. . . . Washington is an ugly place.”
For September 11th, I was a guest on RT UK’s show Going Underground. The host, Afshin Rattansi, is terrific. I’ve pasted below my appearance from the last time I was on his show, almost three years ago:
I’ve done a large number of tv and radio interviews the last few weeks about the American wars in the Middle East. I’ve been focusing a lot of my attention on the men who are behind these policies, Generals Mattis, Kelly and McMaster, as I believe understanding their world views, how they view themselves and their resulting intentions are crucial in understanding how American war policy evolved and, under Donald Trump, is different from the war policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Forgive the apparent vanity in sharing so many videos of myself right now, but I think I touch on a different aspect of the wars, and for that matter American society, in each of the following videos.
Comments on Syria, the world view of White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly, and the lineage of American wars and use of airstrikes. From the National Press Club, August 2017, aired via CSPAN:
The full news conference, that included Christie Edwards, John Kiriakou, David Swanson and Norman Solomon can be found here.
From Democracy Now, the morning after President Trump’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy announcement, August 2017. I focus predominantly on the connection between our wars abroad and our wars at home, and the influence Generals Mattis, Kelly and McMaster have on President Trump. A transcript can be found here.
In this Real News interview, I discuss the influence of money on the wars, particularly the circular motion of Congress appropriating money for war, the money going to defense companies, defense companies funding think tanks and lobbyists, and those think tanks and lobbyists than justifying further defense spending, and the wars, to Congress. This was taped the day of President Trump’s Afghanistan and Pakistan speech in August 2017.
If you have any doubt how much money an extra 4,000 troops sent to Afghanistan generates in additional war spending, understand that we spend roughly $4 million dollars per soldier per year in Afghanistan. We have 11,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, soon to be 15,000, and we spend $44 billion dollars, in direct costs only, on the war. This spending, as well as the roughly $30 billion we are spending on the wars in Syria and Iraq is independent from the base defense budget, which the US Senate is currently considering. [This year’s budget is $700 billion, which is about $40 billion MORE than Donald Trump proposed with his $54 billion increase in the defense budget last spring, which it is important to remember is only 3% greater than what President Obama proposed to spend; President Obama having spent more money on the military than any other president since FDR and World War Two, in inflation adjusted dollars.]
The United States also utilizes 2.5 contractors for each soldier in Afghanistan. So the amount of money to be made on even a small troop increase is phenomenal, as the troop increase comes alongside increased air and artillery strikes in Afghanistan and the requirement for more bases and facilities to be built. (Disregard what people like Anthony Cordesman, who works for a think tank heavily funded by the defense industry, when they say things like new troops will utilize existing infrastructure in Afghanistan and not that much more extra money will be spent on the war with a troop increase. The generals always want more bases, because they always do; contractors always want to build more bases and sell more services; and there has not been an instance of per troop costs diminishing over the time of the conflict, only expanding – God forbid the journalists point these things out or ask the “experts” who are funded by the interests about which they are speaking to justify their assertions)
It is very simple: 4,000 more American soldiers to Afghanistan means more than $15 billion in spending for the Pentagon and defense industry.
A transcript of the following interview can be found here.
In this interview with RT America, from August 31, 2017, I speak about the totality of American war policy, and there really is no other policy than the war policy, in the Middle East and Afghanistan and how the policies in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Somalia are linked and united under a common strategy that seeks military control or subjugation of the local population through collaborating and subservient allies and proxies. The brutal use of military force, particularly that which we have witnessed in Iraq and Yemen by the Iraqi and Saudi militaries, supported directly by American air forces and commandos, is the strategy that will be put in place in Afghanistan and is what the United States is utilizing with its three air bases in Kurdish controlled Syria and the Kurdish army. We have also seen an increase in this use of strategy and operations in Somalia, I expect Libya will see the same.
This strategy differs from the Bush II and Obama strategies as there is no consideration for a political end state or political control of the population. No such thing as elections, negotiations, economic development, no attempts at winning hearts and mind, only subjugation and punishment. Yes, the Bush II and Obama wars were immoral, un-winnable and counter-productive, but there was an attempt or desire to have a political end state. Under this administration, with the policy controlled by the three generals, Mattis, Kelly and McMaster, the end state is military control of areas not sympathetic to the government through massive fire power and the use of highly trained commandos as the focus of effort against the enemy and the local population. So, in effect, the Pashtun areas of southern, eastern and northern Afghanistan will become free fire zones with nightly kill/capture raids by commandos into villages and homes with subjugation, military control and punishment as the objectives of this violence and killing.
Finally, I did this interview with my friend Cat Watters. It’s been awhile since I’ve spoken with her. A very free ranging and relaxed interview which I really enjoyed doing, because Cat gets the emotions and humanity that underlay all of what I am talking about. Thanks Cat!
Just a short post with links to interviews I did on the war in Afghanistan with The Real News Network and on the occupation in Palestine with Scott Horton. The transcript for the interview with TRNN is included at the bottom of this post. Also, the trailer for the documentary feature on the Veterans For Peace delegation to the popular resistance in Palestine is pasted below, please give it a watch. Wage Peace!
Matthew Hoh, a Marine veteran and former State Department official, discusses his recent activism on Palestinian rights issues; the common myths recited to Americans to keep them from learning the truth about Israeli apartheid; the new generation of Palestinian and American non-violent activist leaders; and why Gaza is shaping up to be one of history’s greatest human catastrophes.
Finally, here is the trailer for the documentary film Chris Smiley is producing on the recent Veterans For Peace delegation to the Palestinian popular resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank:
Transcript for TRNN interview on Afghanistan:
Aaron Maté: It’s “The Real News,” I’m Aaron Maté. The 16-year war in Afghanistan is deadlier than ever. A new US government report says, “Last year was the worst so far for Afghan civilians and soldiers. A recent Taliban attack killed more than 160 Afghan recruits and the violence could grow as the spring fighting season begins. In a recent visit, Defense Secretary, James Mattis, said he expects a tough year ahead.James Mattis: And I’d say that we’re under no illusions about the challenges associated with this mission. 2017’s going to be another tough year for the valiant Afghan security forces and the international troops who have stood and will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with Afghanistan against terrorism.Aaron Maté: The White House is now considering a request for more US troops. At a hearing earlier this year, the US commander in Afghanistan, said he needs several more thousand.John McCain: How many more do you need to get this stalemate reversed?General Nicholson: Mr. Chairman, I have adequate resourcing in my counter terrorism mission. In my train, advise and assist mission however, we have a shortfall of a few thousand.Aaron Maté: So with the potential of more US forces, what is next for this never-ending war? Well joining us is Matthew Hoh. He served as a Marine in the Iraq war and later resigned from the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of US policy there. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Matthew, welcome.
Matthew Hoh: Hello and thank you for having me on.
Aaron Maté: Thanks for joining us. So talk to us about what is now being considered. There’s about 9000 US forces on the ground in Afghanistan right now. The White House is considering adding what is said to be a few thousand more. What do you make right now of the current US strategy?
Matthew Hoh: The policy and the rhetoric for the Americans in Afghanistan have remained the same. Basically, since the Americans and NATO have started the military escalation of the war, which predates the Obama escalation. I mean, this goes back to the NATO escalation in Afghanistan, which begins about 2005, 2006, which if people remember, is when President Karzai was being criticized for being only the mayor of Kabul and for the humanitarian interventionists out there are the folks in the western part of the world who wanted to see democracy flourish, who felt that we had to prove that the Western way was the right way, that couldn’t be allowed.So what you had in 2005 was this escalation of the NATO presence in Afghanistan and that’s when you really start to see the insurgency start to re-flourish the Taliban, rather than reentering forcibly into Afghanistan in many cases being pulled back into Afghanistan. And so, much of what we’re seeing Aaron is the same rhetoric, the same policies, the same type of things we’ve seen over and over again on the American side, on the NATO side of, “We’re going to send in more troops, more money, we’re going to help the Afghans build, we’re going to help them stand up,” but the reality is, is that we’re just fueling the same type of corruption. We’re keeping the same warlords and drug lords in place and we’re seeing the conflict continue to grow because all we’re doing is continuing the bloodshed.
Aaron Maté: Okay Matthew, so if the US wanted to seriously change course, what would some tangible options be? There have been some fitful attempts at something resembling a peace process, including negotiations with the Taliban, or indirect negotiations, but those never seem to pan out. And part of the conventional thinking on that is that the Taliban isn’t seriously interested in an accommodation because they are doing well.
Matthew Hoh: Well that’s been a complete and total lie on behalf of the American government and I think that’s very clear now in late … I mean that’s part of the reason why I resigned. I mean, my story is a minor story. I was a US State Department officer in Afghanistan, I was a mid-level one but part of my … When we were approached by Taliban surrogates my instructions from the embassy was, “Do not talk to them. Negotiation is not what we’re here for.” It is now certainly clear that what General Petraeus did in Iraq say, was not to negotiate peace in Iraq, was negotiate an exit for the Americans in Iraq, was to negotiate a retreat. A way to get President Bush right out of Iraq. The same thing is true for what he did for McChrystal, was going to do for President Obama in Afghanistan; escalate the war, make it look good enough for the Americans to withdraw and then blame it on the Afghans that they couldn’t handle it. Same with the Iraqis. In our case, was there was no interest in negotiations on the Americans’ part and this has been shown over and over again. If you look at various press from the Middle East from Western Central Asia, you can see that throughout 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, there were overtures. 2011 even. There were overtures by the insurgency to negotiate. The American media, unfortunately, never really picked up on this. Most importantly though, and there are other figures too who were commenting on this from the United Nations. Sherard Cowper-Coles, who was the UK and the NATO senior diplomat in Afghanistan has spoken about this, a complete absence, a complete lack of desire on the part of the Americans for anything resembling peace, only wanting victory, only wanting a military win in Afghanistan, only demanding surrender from the insurgency. But most importantly, most recently, at the end of 2016 the New York Times reported on the Norwegian attempts to negotiate a peaceful end to the war in Afghanistan. It lasted for three years, from 2007 up until 2011 when the United States put 100,000 more American troops into Afghanistan and escalated the war dramatically. Said, “We’re not going to negotiate. We’re going to beat you. We’re going to force you to surrender.” The Norwegians actually met with Mullah Omar. Up until last year there was no indication that no Western or no non-Muslim had ever met with Mullah Omar. Now we learn that Norwegians had actually met with him to discuss peace in the years up to the American escalation of the war and Americans had no interest. My government, your government, our government … had no interest in talking about peace in Afghanistan. We only wanted a military victory.
Aaron Maté: Is the current approach of relying so heavily on the Afghan forces to fight the Taliban, is that sustainable? Because already in the first six weeks of this year, according to that report that we talked about, more than 800 Afghan forces have been killed and every year about one third of the Afghan military and police desert their post, which is a dynamic very similar to what happened in Iraq before the time that Isis took over control of towns like Ramadi and Mosul. They would do so in part because the Iraqi military just fled.Matthew Hoh: I think it’s sustainable as long as the American Congress continue to spend three and a half, four billion dollars a year propping up the Afghan military, that’s what we’re doing right now. So as long as we continue to do that, it’s sustainable because the Afghan economy has nothing else. There is nothing else in the Afghan economy. Of course, with the exception of the Afghan drug trade, with the exception of the opium trade. So as long as that’s continuing, there will be people who are desperate enough to go into the military or into the police services or into the intelligence services but as you said Aaron, 1/3 of them are getting into it and realizing that, one, “I don’t want to die for this.” But there’s another part of why they’re also leaving. Part of it is, “I don’t want to die for this, it’s not worth it.” The other part is what they’re seeing. What they’re seeing is obscene.One of the reports that came out recently from the United Nations is the prevalence of torture that is used by the Afghan security forces across the board, whether it be the Afghan army, the Afghan intelligence or the Afghan police forces, torture is so widespread in use by the Afghan security forces. It is used by every branch of the Afghan security forces and it is used on a common and routine basis. Anywhere from 25 to 50% of detainees are reporting torture being used against them by various branches of the Afghan security forces. So many of these recruits, many of these Afghan recruits who are entering and then leaving the Afghan security forces, certainly are doing it because they say, “Hey, I don’t want to die for this corruption. I don’t want to die for these drug lords and warlords ultimately who I’m working for on behalf of the Afghan army.” But a lot of them are also leaving Aaron, I believe, because of what they’re seeing.
Aaron Maté: Finally Matthew Hoh, Pakistan, Afghanistan’s neighbor. Can you talk about this strange dynamic we have where there are elements of the Pakistani government that support the Taliban inside Afghanistan but at the same time, Pakistani military getting huge amounts of support and aid from the US every single year. So can there be a solution to the Afghan war without a serious change in policy inside Pakistan?
Matthew Hoh: Well none of these wars. Whether they be in Asia or Africa or the Middle East or the Americas or wherever will stop until the Western world, in particular the United States, as well as Russia, stops exporting arms as well as stops funneling money into these conflicts. Pakistan, this is probably maybe one of the heights of absurdity and the heights of obscenity, because we do. We don’t have as many troops in Afghanistan as we once did and we’re certainly not taking a little [inaudible 00:10:38] as we once did, but we did for many years. We were having our young men and women being killed by the people who were being funded and trained by the military that we were giving billions of dollars in assistance and aid and intelligence and support and who are generals were going out for cocktails with them, Washington DC, with their generals and above the surface there was some cat-fighting going on and maybe when Admiral Mullen left office he said some nastiest things about the Pakistanis but for the most part, they got along. But yes, there is this very real and the word “obscene” keeps coming to mind because I’m not sure how to describe it, but that is what we’re dealing here with Aaron. We’re dealing with this conflagration, this unholy mixture of the arms industry, of these politicians, of these generals, who are willing to trade various interests in order to get their way, in order to see their career ambitions fulfilled, in order to see the maps on the board colored the way they want. And so if that means young men and women from Florida, Arkansas get killed in a country 9000 miles away by a bomb-maker who was trained by an intelligence operative who is funded by money appropriated by the U.S. Congress, but if that means that that country is then going to buy our F-16s, then so be it. Because they’re not going to buy, you know, MiG-31s from the Russian then. I mean this is the reality of what happens in Washington DC.
Aaron Maté: Matthew Hoh, former US Marine and State Department official, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Matthew, thanks.
Matthew Hoh: Thank you Aaron.
Aaron Maté: And thank you for joining us on “The Real News.”END
I was grateful for the opportunity to author a guest post over at the Strategies and Tactics for the Anti-War Blog at the Veterans Reparations Project. The Veterans Reparations Project is a joint project between Veterans For Peace and the Islah Reparations Project and is something very meaningful to me, something with which I hope to become more and more involved. Please visit the Veterans Reparations Project’s webpage to see how you can be involved and how you can help with the grassroots reparations process.
Breaking this Cycle of Imperial Violence:
I’m in my local Starbucks—yeah I know corporate evils and all that, but at 5pm on a Sunday in Wake Forest, NC you take what you can get, and I can walk here. So you take all the good you can get with the bad. Here in Wake Forest we’re not far from Ft. Bragg, home to the US Army’s paratroopers and special operations forces. Thousands of them have been ordered to deploy to Kuwait, where they will be sent into Iraq and Syria to make their own contributions to a decades long folly that has brought death, mental and physical mutilation, and societal destruction to the peoples of Iraq and Syria, profits to American defense corporations, corporate board memberships and university professorships to retired generals, and thousands upon thousands of new recruits to foreign terrorist groups; if there is something else these wars have brought, please leave a reply below, because I certainly can’t think of anything.
There is a large, neon green sign, hand written, like you would see announcing the homecoming dance in the high school hallway or your neighbor’s kid’s lemonade stand on your intersection’s stop sign: “Our Troops Are Deploying, Help Us Thank Them With Coffee.” A large cardboard box is about a 1/3 of the way full of bags of coffee and boxes of k-cups, hopefully no decaf for those young paratroopers.
I’m not lying to you when I tell you I’m wearing a t-shirt with a Howard Zinn quote on it that reads “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people” as I stand next to that box of coffee bound for the Persian Gulf. I linger for a bit hoping that maybe someone will read the shirt and the sign, that maybe something will register, someone will say something to me, something to medicate me, numb me, tell me that this cycle isn’t starting all over again for several thousand young men and women, barely more than an hour’s drive from me, about to travel halfway around the world to do irreparable harm to people they’ve never met and irredeemable harm to their own souls, hearts, and minds.
I’ve been involved in this war effort since before it even had a name, taking part in training exercises with Indonesian, Malaysian, Philippine, and Thai counterparts that actively engaged in fighting Muslim insurgents in their own countries prior to 9/11. Whether as a willing participant of the wars or as a vocal war opponent, as an occupier or now as someone who hopes to do more to support those who are occupied, I’ve seen very little explained as to how to right the wrongs done in war and even less done to repair, to rebuild, to resuscitate, or to resurrect. Surely, I have never walked into anyplace in America since we began killing more than 1 million people overseas in response to the attacks of 9/11 and seen a box asking for coffee for the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, or Yemen.
Now, of course, reparations may be the proverbial bridge too far at this point, as all the nations for which we have transgressed against are still receiving the blows of our aggressions, and those of others, from both internal and foreign belligerents and villains. However, I do recognize that waiting for our government to act in the future to administer some form of restorative justice to the people of the Greater Middle East may be as great a sin as the original acts of violence themselves, because we know that our government, the United States, will never do such a thing, and if our government ever does act the list for such reparations will be a long and worthy one.
So, I am extremely grateful for what the the Veterans Reparations Project is doing. Through grassroots reparations projects we can make a difference, we can begin to help rebuild and repair, and we can begin to fix some of what we destroyed.
Nothing we do will absolve us of what we have done in these wars, I am clear on that; the spot is on and always will be on our hands, to use one of my favorite allusions from high school English class. So be it and so it goes. However, we don’t have to go along with the killing any longer and we don’t have to go along with sitting idly by either and not helping to rebuild and repair. We can and we must do what we can to help those who we hurt. I do not believe we have any other choice.
From an interview I did in the summer of 2011 on Afghanistan with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This may be the most complete summation of my views on the war in Afghanistan, on counter-insurgency, and on American political and military decision making. I do not believe anything I said in this interview differs from what I said in 2009 when I resigned from my State Department position in Afghanistan and I don’t believe I have said anything different in the past four years as I have worked against these policies. Sadly, I think the results of our military and political policies in Afghanistan delivered the consequences I feared so greatly.
I am also horrified, four years later, that my t-shirt was showing during this interview…
The program that aired in Australia can be found here:
The web page for the program also has other extended interviews with some of the other commentators on the program, including Major General Nicholson, whom I remember meeting and speaking with a number of times in Kandahar, I always liked him. Please give them a watch and let me know what you think. I am not looking to be told I was right, I am just looking to be told I am not crazy.
From my friend Kadir, representing a point of view not often heard in the West:
July 13, 2015
To the Honorable Daniel F. Feldman
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
The U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Room 1517
Washington, DC 20520
Dear Ambassador Feldman:
The negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan on July 7, 2015 between the Afghan puppet government, the Pakistan government and current prisoners of Pakistan, are a sham. These negotiations will not lead to true peace in Afghanistan. However, maybe that is what the governments of the United States and Pakistan want– negotiations they know will never lead to peace. I believe the “sham” negotiations are for appearance only, so that the United States and NATO look like they want peace. It is common knowledge that the current Afghan freedom fighters were not represented at the negotiations. However, the U.S. Department of State has reported that it has held face to face negotiations with the Taliban in Pakistan but that is a big lie. It is common knowledge that the Taliban will not participate in negotiations inside Pakistan. The United States government knows this fact. Such deception and sham negotiations will not bring peace, which the majority of Afghans and the American public want.
Also, the Pakistani government’s involvement in any negotiations is definitely an obstacle to peace. Pakistan profits from the United States’ war in and occupation of Afghanistan. I believe it is a repeat of the mistakes made in the 1980s during the Soviet Union’s war in and occupation of Afghanistan when the negotiations went through Pakistan.
I believe these negotiations will not work because the Afghan Freedom Fighters are not at the table. To achieve true peace, I strongly believe the United States needs to directly negotiate with the representatives of the Afghan villagers, who are resisting the illegal war and occupation and fighting the thugs of the Afghan puppet government, who are carrying out ethnic cleansing and retaliation against the Pashtun.
I am also concerned that Pakistan has imprisoned thousands of Afghan villagers, who are mostly Pashtun, since the tragic events of 9/11. These villagers are sitting in prisons for years without having been convicted of any involvement in 9/11 or other crimes. Also, I believe the thousands of Afghan villagers, who the majority are Afghan/Pashtun and Muslim, imprisoned in CIA “ black hole” detention centers around the world, need to be released. Their continued detention violates international law. Detaining these villagers are war crimes. I believe this unlawful detention of Afghans creates an obstacle to peace and security in Afghanistan, the region and the world. The rendition and detention of Afghans in these “black hole” CIA detention centers is itself terrorism. When will the superpowers and its puppets stop terrorizing the Afghan villagers? I thought the U.S. Department of State was about diplomacy and not promoting terrorism.
As a concerned U.S. citizen, who was born in Afghanistan, I strongly believe that it is time the United States government changes its war/occupation policy to a “sincere” negotiation and peace policy. I have been waiting for 4 decades for true peace in my motherland. I have been waiting for 15 years for the government of my homeland, the United States, to follow the law and end the war in and occupation of Afghanistan. The Afghan villagers have never received justice these past four decades. Don’t the Afghans, who are victims of war crimes from 1978 to the present, deserve justice just like the Jewish people, the Bosnians and the Rwandans received? Justice delayed is justice denied. Without justice there can never be peace.
Sincerely,
Kadir A. Mohmand
Former Representative of the Afghan Freedom Fighters for North America during the 1980s
And a quick interview I did with Chinese TV from last March where I briefly discuss how a military first US foreign policy has led to war, chaos and terrorism throughout the Muslim world.
As long as the Afghan government aligns itself with the US, which is keeping troops, planes, special operations and drones to bomb targets in Afghanistan or Pakistan, there will be no peace, says former US Marine Matthew Hoh.
RT: Peace talks between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives have ended with both sides agreeing to meet again after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. After more than a decade of war the Afghan government and the Taliban are finally talking. Was it worth the thousands of lives lost, both military and civilian?
Matthew Hoh: No, it wasn’t and I think the proper way to look at the Afghan War, as you look at all wars or all conflicts, is not in an isolated vacuum or is because of one solitary event, in this case the last fourteen years of the war in Afghanistan as being caused by the Al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11. However, it should be viewed as this is a war that has been going on continuously since the 1970s.
“In war, truth is the first casualty.”
— Aeschylus 525-456 BC
As reported by the BBC this month, the Taliban have rejected an offer by the newly installed President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, of Cabinet positions and governorships in three Afghan provinces. The provinces include Helmand and Kandahar, where thousands of American and Western troops have been killed and wounded, particularly since 2009 when President Obama chose to escalate the war in Afghanistan rather than seeking a political solution to end the war.
Five years on and Afghan civilian and security force casualties are at record highs, the Taliban is larger and stronger than it has been at any point since 2001, government and police corruption is massively untamed, and Afghans last year were subjected to their third incredibly fraudulent national election in five years. In fact, the only thing going well for anyone in Afghanistan, besides the Taliban and those on the take of Western foreign aid, are the bumper narcotics crops, which each year produce historic yields.
The Taliban, having been offered power in their home region, have spurned any opportunities for reconciliation and compromise. “Moderates” within the Taliban, whom we could have negotiated with in 2008 and 2009 prior to President Obama’s escalation of the war, have been proven wrong and largely eliminated. The hard-line elements of the Taliban, having seen the Taliban weather the full force of the United States of America, see history as repeating itself or, at the very least, rhyming. Like the departure of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989, it is now just a question of time before the foreign backed regime in Kabul collapses. Time, among many other factors, was always on the side of the Afghan insurgents. Continue reading →
Matthew Hoh 