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Kerry’s Middle East Tour Prepares Endless War in Afghanistan, Syria
By Alex Lantier at World Socialist website, via Information Clearing House.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry left Kabul for Paris yesterday, after a Middle Eastern tour to Jordan and Afghanistan to plan broader wars across the region. In Paris today, he is expected to discuss arming opposition forces fighting Washington’s proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with French officials.
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During his unannounced two-day visit in Kabul, Kerry held a joint press conference with President Hamid Karzai, the leader of the American puppet regime in Afghanistan. He announced that US forces will remain in Afghanistan beyond the Obama administration’s 2014 withdrawal deadline.
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Kerry and
Karzai both called upon the Taliban to open an office in Doha,
the capital of the US-allied Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, from
which location they could negotiate with Karzai. To encourage
the Taliban to accept the offer, Kerry stressed that the Taliban
should not count on a US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Currently
there are some 100,000 occupation troops in the country,
including 66,000 US forces. American officials have reportedly
discussed a lasting presence of roughly 12,000 US and European
troops in Afghanistan.
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Kerry also
offered to hand over formal control of Bagram prison to the
Karzai regime. This was apparently designed to allow Karzai to
posture cynically before the Afghan people, claiming he is
restoring Afghan sovereignty over the country. The US-controlled
prison, notorious for the killings and torture of Afghan
resistance fighters imprisoned there (innocent farmers of Pashtun background who are falsely fingered by the Tajik dominated security forces), has become a hated symbol
of the NATO occupation. (To the former dominant Pashtuns at least, but as with Iraq the USA deliberately stoked ethnic tensions and turned the occupied society upside down in moves that have been perceived as in the interests of the USA....obviously beyond the symbolic situation where the 1000 year old dominant group no longer controls the country, but instead the country partially is handed over to war lords and people of criminal background, there is going to be some problems for the occupation....even if the armed opposition is run by the CIA through Pakistan.)
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This
action was apparently aimed at smoothing US relations with
Karzai, strained after the latter criticized Washington for
“colluding” with the Taliban. (Controlled Opposition)
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The
handover of Bagram has nothing to do with ending US rule in
Afghanistan, however. Karzai made clear that Washington would
continue to effectively control detainees at the prison,
promising that an Afghan review board would consider
intelligence provided by US authorities before deciding to
release prisoners. Afghan officials also reportedly gave
“private assurances” that no “enduring security threats” would
be released from Bagram.
By
threatening to continue the bombing and occupation of
Afghanistan, Kerry is pushing the Taliban leadership to
negotiate a political settlement with Karzai that would include
a lasting US protectorate in Afghanistan. Washington’s control
would rest upon US air superiority and a permanent occupation
force stationed in the country. It would be based on
collaboration between Washington, the warlords backing Karzai
and the Islamic fundamentalist leadership of the Taliban to
suppress resistance to foreign occupation by the Afghan people.
The
American ruling class sees Afghanistan as a launching pad for US
operations in Central Asia, such as the hundreds of drone
strikes Washington has launched in Afghanistan and neighboring
countries. The New York Times commented, “The Obama
administration has made a priority of reaching an agreement on
an American military presence here after 2014 that will allow
the United States to keep tabs on Iran and Pakistan.”
Significantly, Kerry had hoped to visit Pakistan during his
tour, but decided against it. There is deep anger in that
country over US drone strikes and the collaboration of the
Pakistani army and intelligence with Washington. (See also: “UN
says US drone war in Pakistan violates international law”)
Instead,
Kerry reportedly met privately with Pakistani army chief General
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in the Jordanian capital of Amman on
Sunday, before traveling to Afghanistan.
Washington’s neo-colonial war in Afghanistan—like its proxy war
in Syria, Iran’s main Arab ally—aims at establishing US
imperialist hegemony over the Middle East and Central Asia. This
involves not only controlling and manipulating the conflicts in
Pakistan and broadly across Asia unleashed by the Afghan war,
but also organizing regime change in Iran, an oil-rich state
that Washington sees as the main obstacle to its interests in
the Middle East.
Kerry’s
visits both to Amman and to Kabul were clearly bound up with
Washington’s war drive against Iran and its regional allies. As
the Secretary of State left Jordan for Afghanistan, the
Associated Press (AP) reported that the US is working in Jordan
with Britain and France to train Syrian opposition fighters.
These fighters then cross the border into southern Syria to
carry out attacks.
The AP
wrote that these forces were “secular” forces, apparently in an
attempt to distinguish them from Al Qaeda-linked forces that
provide the bulk of the Syrian opposition’s fighting forces. The
wire service’s description of these forces made clear, however,
that they are largely army deserters recruited on a religious or
tribal basis.
It wrote,
“The training has been conducted for several months now in an
unspecified location, concentrating largely on Sunnis and tribal
Bedouins who formerly served as members of the Syrian army,
officials told the Associated Press. The forces aren’t members
of the leading rebel group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which
Washington and others fear may be increasingly coming under the
saw of extremist militia groups, including some linked to Al
Qaeda.”
The AP
report came a day after the New York Times published an
extensive report detailing how Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
helped finance and arm the Syrian opposition for over a year.
This took place under CIA supervision and after General David
Petraeus, the CIA director until last November, “prodded various
countries” to arm the Syrian opposition. The White House was
regularly briefed on these arms shipments. (See also: “The
CIA war against Syria”)
On Monday,
White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed that the US “has
provided some logistical nonlethal support that has also come in
handy for the Syrian rebels.”
With Kerry
now headed to Paris to discuss stepping up the war in Syria, the
Arab League also joined in the campaign against Assad yesterday,
formally seating Syrian opposition officials as Syria’s
representatives to the Arab League.
Qatari
emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani officially welcomed Moaz
al-Khatib, the former imam of Damascus’ Umayyad Mosque who
recently stepped down as the Syrian opposition’s official
leader, to represent Syria. Al-Khatib was replaced by Ghassan
Hitto, a US-based information technology executive. This move
apparently aimed to present the opposition as less Islamist and
reliant on Al Qaeda-linked forces from Libya, Iraq and Chechnya.
Al-Khatib’s
speech at the Arab League made no secret of the Syrian
opposition’s continuing ties to far-right Islamist elements.
Denouncing Assad and supporting Hitto, he defended the presence
of foreign jihadist fighters among the anti-Assad
militias—though he awkwardly tried to downplay this by
suggesting that if Islamist fighters’ families needed them at
home, they should return to their families.
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