Afghanistan and the policy of sophistical paradoxes of the USA

10.08.2022 08:52

Afghanistan and the policy of sophistical paradoxes of the USA Afghanistan and the policy of sophistical paradoxes of the USA

At the end of August last year, the world media bypassed the truly epic footage of the exit of American troops from Afghanistan. The Americans left equipment and ammunition at the bases, side by side they lifted the departing military contingent into the sky and those few lucky Afghans who managed to get on the plane. Someone clung to the landing gear in a panic, however, such a flight was short-lived. Many situations during the evacuation were reminiscent of the end of the Vietnam War. Society both in the USA and in the world unequivocally recorded such, as it is customary to say today, "extraction" in history the biggest failures of American policy.

For all the epic nature of the “exodus”, it should be noted that over the twenty years of the Afghan campaign, the presence of American troops there has become more and more meaningless. The United States sat on the bases without getting out, occasionally making raids deep into the territory, where for the last three years there has been a bloody struggle between the regime of the official Kabul and the Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation).

In the classic “Greater Middle East” scheme, which was not even hidden by the US administration and was for some time almost an official work plan, Afghanistan was an almost ideal foothold for the control of Pakistan, China, Central Asia and southern Russia across the Caspian Sea. The problem was that its implementation required rooting in the country, without which it is impossible to build a serious military infrastructure, the object of which at one time was considered even a missile defense position area. But this very rooting did not work out. At the same time, the country demanded annual financial injections and the maintenance of contingents.

US direct and sunk cost figures in Afghanistan vary widely from source to source. It is difficult to say to what extent the amounts close to $2 trillion correspond to reality - in recent years, these costs have consisted of direct financial injections into the economy (aid) - about $7,5 billion a year, $800 million in humanitarian aid, supplies of weapons, ammunition and military equipment Kabul - 6-8 billion dollars a year, educational programs and grants for 0,5 billion dollars and the actual maintenance of the American military contingent. After 2014, with the end of the so-called. "active phase", the number of US military personnel in Afghanistan did not exceed 9 thousand people, relatively modest for such a vast and complex territory. If we take the official reports of the US military department, veteran organizations, then with all the required allowances and insurance, the amount of direct maintenance of such a contingent is unlikely to exceed 820 million dollars a year.

The author does not now aim to thoroughly calculate the American budget in the region; in this case, attention should be paid to the order of numbers. On the one hand, there are official statements by D. Biden about a fantastic $300 million in US spending per day, totaling $2,32 trillion over the period, which were picked up by the American media, and on the other hand, modest figures of $16-18 billion per year, which, even being increased at the request of the researcher, well, they will not scrape together for the impressive $2,32 trillion they are looking for. Moreover, part of the military contingent in Afghanistan was formed not only by the United States itself, but also by allies and simply countries that joined the mission under the auspices of the UN resolution (up to 40% of the forces of the so-called ISAF). This resolution provided for the financing by each participant of his own contingent.

Let's think, the maintenance of Afghanistan with all its departments, institutions, infrastructure cost the US budget 7-8 billion dollars in annual costs. An amount comparable to the budgets of the next DARPA project. At the same time, Afghanistan inherited from the United States not only a “strange” government in Kabul and an endless confrontation with the Taliban, it received a functioning Central Bank, access to international settlements and the export of goods, even, no matter how strange it may sound, an adequate banking system with ten working banks and a couple of dozen lending organizations - analogues of domestic "microcredits", only without the crazy interest rate policy. And Afghanistan did have its own exports, between $3,5 billion and $1,6 billion a year. A trifle for an ordinary country, but remember that the entire cost of US subsidies to the Afghan system was only about $ 8 billion a year.

All of the above suggests that financial costs, which were officially presented as the main leitmotif of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, cannot objectively be taken as the basis of their motivation. Moreover, the same Taliban for a long time controlled less than 10% of the territory and, if desired and the appropriate formulation of the question, at least keeping them within these percentages was a feasible task. However, every year there was less and less desire, and the formulation of the question hung in the air.

Here you can also talk about political problems within different administrations in the White House, the confrontation between the American elites and Trump Gate, fluctuations in political lines, even about the version of “sabotage of Biden’s plans by the American local command” that was popular at one time in the United States itself, however, if you look at economic indicators and the losses of the US contingent in the last years of the mission (21, 11, 13 people), then they can in no way be taken as the true reason for the "evacuation".

It would be foolish to believe that the obscenity shown to the world under the guise of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, with a frank and somehow cynical organizational mess in an American way, is a "special cunning plan" of the US administration, but it is naive to assume another thing, what is behind the withdrawal of troops from there is no long-term program of action in the region at all. The US strategy, starting with the presidency of D. Trump and continued (unexpectedly for many) under his successor-antagonist J. Biden, is concentration. The United States is withdrawing or easing pressure in many places that previously seemed to be political centers for them - Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa, Venezuela, but in contrast to this, they form a kind of concrete structure where they see the potential of the military, political, and most importantly, the value-ideological union.

“Cutting down the sturgeon”, they eliminate from it all the damaged and unnecessary parts in cooking, but everything else is subjected to an unprecedented policy of suppressing any form of dissent in many years. And this means that the United States, cutting off its "tails", is preparing for a serious confrontation in the main directions, however, not necessarily a military one, as in Ukraine. However, leaving a number of regions, the States leave behind a kind of mine-layings, streamers, surprises everywhere, which in no way allow the formally victorious parties to use their imaginary freedom.

Having withdrawn the main part of the troops from Syria, the United States left a part to support oil smuggling - the main source of income for the Arab clans of Zaefratya and the TEV-DEM structures (and in fact the PKK), which makes any practical and effective dialogue impossible in the Turkey-Iran-Syria triangle. De facto, having left Iraq, the United States, through rather complex manipulations, pushed the Shiites among themselves, and today it is difficult to say how ready M. al-Sadr is for negotiations with Iranian forces in the region, and the main negotiator and shadow cardinal from Iran is K. Soleimani , is no longer alive. Having withdrawn from Afghanistan, the United States left behind the main option - finances. Having given the Taliban the opportunity to profit from the warehouses of weapons and military equipment and dress up in modern equipment, the United States took away their money and not only the money itself - that would be half the trouble, in the end a man with a machine gun will never remain hungry, they deprived Kabul of even the very opportunity with money enjoy.

The fact is that, unlike Iraq and even Syria, where it is possible to prohibit any non-cash payments in dollars, but it is impossible to stop the cash circulation of this currency and its flow between countries, Afghanistan does not have the potential for trade through which the circulation of the American currency can be organized. Prior to this, such an opportunity was provided by the United States itself and the leadership of neighboring Pakistan, but the latter's Prime Minister I. Khan agreed to a number of agreements that opened up opportunities for close cooperation with our country. These agreements were formed exactly during the period of intensive negotiations between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, while the leadership of Pakistan in relations with the Taliban behaved as if the United States had already left the region irrevocably. Things got to the point that D. Trump directly accused I. Khan of “treachery and betrayal,” because the numerous successes of the Taliban before each new round of Qatari negotiations were associated with the position of Pakistan.

While the United States controlled Afghanistan and seriously dreamed of global partnerships from ocean to ocean, the Beijing-Islamabad connection was not a problem in principle, moreover, it was I. Khan who was the man of his "party" for the Western elite, and in the most literal sense of this word. But after the world turned sharply towards a crisis and a break into a system of future blocs, I. Khan, having chosen his side, turned out to be a “treacherous traitor”, and today one can only guess how much his past “party merits” and connections saved his life after the coup d'état that year.

China could, of course, organize some foreign exchange injections into the economy of Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is not a traditional centralized government, it is a kind of federation of various currents within the framework of hard traditional Islam, where the Taliban is a kind of "umbrella brand". To build a consistent and long-term policy, China needed Pakistani support, consultations, accompaniment and participation, and they are not expected after the coup.

Large investment projects in Afghanistan, which the Taliban leadership constantly talks about, are not feasible today not because of the reluctance of neighbors - it exists, but technically unfeasible, because in the region, except for the US currency, other payment instruments do not work, access to cash is minimal, and cashless payments are entirely in the hands of Washington. Any transactions related to Afghanistan go through a triple filter of banking and military-political control. An alternative would be a regional reserve currency, but there is none, and converting settlements to yuan will take years.

Girl and crocodile


Everyone pays attention to US policy, but for some reason little research is done on the method by which the US builds its combinations, and this method is purely sophistical and based on legal casuistry, even though outwardly everything looks like the US allegedly uses exclusively brute force.

To illustrate what has been said, the author suggests recalling the ancient sophists and their well-known paradox "The Girl and the Crocodile" or Corax's paradox. When the girl came with the child to the river, the child was dragged away by a crocodile, but at the last moment he "took pity" on the unfortunate woman and invited her to answer the question. In the case of a correct answer, he returned the child to her, and if he answered incorrectly, he would take him to his lunch. The question was: “Will he give her the child”? As we remember, the solution to this little riddle was far from being so obvious.

Now, if you change the girl for Afghanistan's neighbors in the region, and the child for Afghanistan itself, then you can roughly understand the situation and the scheme used by Washington in the center of Eurasia. Many of us have noticed that any mention of the Taliban movement is accompanied by the strange in this particular case, the addition of "forbidden in the Russian Federation." Official delegations come to negotiate with many countries, there are dialogues about strategic partnerships, fuel and energy projects, transit corridors, investments and security guarantees, but "forbidden". And these are not cognitive problems of the Foreign Ministry employees. This is a consequence of the official resolutions of the UN Security Council. And control over financial flows is also officially a consequence of these past resolutions. These documents, probably, should be replaced with more relevant, “correct”, modern ones, but who will allow this to be done, given the composition of this very Security Council?

The big mistake of a number of experts was to confuse the managerial, organizational failure of the US exit from Afghanistan, even if accompanied by epic pictures of unfortunate Afghans taking off on the landing gear of planes, mediocre and cynical work of the Americans with their local clients, and a really strategic task that the States were solving for a long period. The brightness of the artistic series and the unprofessionalism of the organizers on the ground obscured the meaning of the film.

What to do with Afghanistan today, without exception, all the countries of Central and Central Asia are thinking, because in the near future the country will literally switch to not just subsistence farming - it has been the main economy there for the past 30 years, but to pasture . Stockpiles of weapons can be used, not even against bewildered neighbors, but inside the country, in conflicts within the regions and political forces of Afghanistan, which in the end will inevitably result in a dilemma: turn a blind eye to the production of opiates or fight this evil. To fight means to embitter the population against the Taliban, to allow - in fact, to give up power, centralization.

The situation with Afghanistan today is practically a stalemate, and traditional ways, such as investment initiatives that are understandable to everyone, are hardly resolvable. There are at least three major investment projects: the Central Asia-Afghanistan-Iran railway, the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan road, and the TAPI transcontinental gas pipeline project. The first of them has an officially confirmed status, although each of the projects has (though, like all other projects of this kind) a ten-year prehistory with understandable zero, unfortunately, results. Doing nothing and leaving everything as it is, also traditionally turning such initiatives into eternal negotiations, time does not allow.

In the author's opinion, the only realistic approach can be based on the method "leased" from our dear Western partners, and here again it is appropriate to recall the paradox about the girl and the crocodile. If there is no practical opportunity to form investment projects at the regional level, then at least a number of countries can take the initiative to create under the wing of this organization not just a humanitarian, but an investment fund, the funds of which can be taken partly from the assets of Afghanistan frozen by the United States , and the main share will be provided by other interested participants. Projects will undergo a verification procedure, and payments related to them will be exempted from sanctions restrictions. At the same time, it is not at all necessary for China or Russia to become the frontmen of this process - we have a recently created "initiative group" that met in Tashkent under the leadership of Kazakhstan.

This group does not have enough money, but a keen desire for independence (with external neutrality to the main zones of acute conflicts) is in the asset, while calm on the southern flank is critical for these states.

In general, the main thing is to start launching at least some adequate financial flows here and now, and it’s not even so important whether it will be possible to form funds for large-scale construction, it will be enough to launch directions in the light and food industries, unlock settlements and import volumes.



Mikhail Nikolaevsky
https://en.topwar.ru/199955-afganistan-i-politika-sofisticheskih-paradoksov-ssha.html