Zhou Xin: The six major debts of the United States in Afghanistan

Source: World Wide Web

On August 30, the 20-year-long war in Afghanistan came to an end with the last U.S. military transport aircraft carrying the last U.S. troops in Afghanistan under the cover of night. The withdrawal of US troops does not represent the end of responsibility, let alone a write-off of debts. Looking back after 2 months, the debt owed by the United States has become clearer.

War debt

In the past 20 years, the United States has invested more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at its peak, and at the end of the war in 2021, a total of 2,461 people have been killed, more than 20,000 people have been wounded, and the number of casualties in the other 11 participating countries is close to 3,000. In the Gulf War 30 years ago, 148 American troops were killed and 458 wounded. The Brown University War Costs Program estimates that U.S. taxpayers have spent about $2.261 trillion on the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and April 2021. According to the assessment of other third-party agencies, the indirect investment in the United States is estimated to exceed $4.2 trillion. $2 trillion can buy more than 200 of the latest Ford-class aircraft carriers with a full load displacement of 112,000 tons, and 444 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers with a full load displacement of 100,000 tons (calculated at the latest cost), which is equivalent to 31.2 times India's military expenditure in 2020 and 33 times Russia's military expenditure.

Counter-terrorism debt

The United States paid huge casualties and financial expenses in the war in Afghanistan, and instead of achieving the goals and strategic intentions of counter-terrorism, it was "more and more afraid" and "more and more chaotic." According to incomplete statistics, in 2001, there were 20 terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, killing 177 people; in 2020, there were 2373 terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, with a death toll of 6617 people, which was called the "bloodiest year" by the Afghan media. Not only have terrorist organizations in Afghanistan not been completely eliminated, but the number has increased, and terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State have increased from single digits to more than 20. The Associated Press believes that it is the Afghan people who pay the "highest price" for the war in Afghanistan. According to the "War Costs Project" report released by Brown University in the United States in 2021, from 2001 to mid-April 2021, the US military and its allies have caused a cumulative total of 174,000 deaths in Afghanistan in the past 20 years, including 70,000 Afghan military police and at least 47,200 civilians, with hundreds of thousands injured. In addition, there have been frequent terrorist attacks, bombings, violent clashes and countless landmines planted on the country, maiming large numbers of Afghans. According to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, more than 14 per cent of the population in Afghanistan is disabled.

Human rights debt

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan wantonly threatens and tramples on the Afghan people's basic human rights, such as their right to subsistence, labor, development, health, and education. The despicable acts of the US military in indiscriminately killing civilians, torturing prisoners, and desecrating religions have been continuously exposed. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. carried out less than 1,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2015 and 7,423 in 2019, an increase of more than 6 times. In 2010, the U.S. military formed killing squads to shoot Afghan civilians for entertainment purposes. In 2012, a U.S. military broke into an Afghan village and shot and killed 16 civilians, after which the soldier managed to escape death by reaching a plea bargain. According to the 2020 report of Brown University in the United States, since 2017, the United States has relaxed the rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan and significantly expanded the scale of airstrikes, thereby exerting pressure on the Taliban, resulting in a surge in the number of Afghan civilians who died in airstrikes. On the eve of the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a human tragedy was also created in which civilians in Kabul were indiscriminately killed, resulting in the deaths of 10 civilians, 7 of whom were children. According to Agence France-Presse reported on November 3, the US Air Force said after investigation that the "manslaughter" of 10 Afghan civilians was due to communications interruptions and "execution errors", which were inadvertent, did not violate any laws, including the laws of war, and no one was responsible. For the United States, which regards itself as a "beacon" of democracy and human rights, it is simply an excellent textbook for great ridicule and self-exposure.

The U.S. Open Society Fund reported that the United States has set up a number of "black jails" in Afghanistan, and thousands of people have been detained as suspected terrorists, as many as 50,000 in the first three years of the war. The torture and mistreatment of prisoners at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan by the United States has been condemned by the international community. In 2016, the International Criminal Court noted that the U.S. military and the CIA used cruel and violent means of extracting confessions between 2003 and 2014, and that at least 61 detainees had committed serious human rights abuses such as torture, ill-treatment, and sexual violence. Between December 2002 and March 2008, the CIA tortured and abused at least 27 detainees.

The Afghan people believe in Islam, and the Quran is the most important text of Islam and cremation is prohibited. The United States, which flaunts religious freedom and universal values, has committed serious acts of desecrating the religious beliefs of the Afghan people, such as burning the Quran and burning and insulting the bodies of Taliban personnel. In February 2012, CNN published footage of U.S. troops burning the Quran. In 2005, an Australian television station exposed a video of the U.S. military burning the bodies of two Taliban militants in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, a serious blasphemy against Islam by the "cremating of the gates" that caused an uproar in the Islamic world. In September 2012, the British newspaper The Guardian published a video in which four U.S. soldiers took pleasure in making insulting gestures at the bodies of three Taliban personnel.

Humanitarian debt

In the 20 years of the war in Afghanistan, crises and conflicts have led to countless Afghans being displaced from their homes and becoming refugees. According to UNHCR, a total of 250,000 Afghans fled their homes between January and May, 80 percent of them women and children. To date, Iran has received a cumulative total of 800,000 registered Afghan refugees (another 2.2 million unregistered), more than 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan (another 1.3 million unregistered), and the United States, the "initiator" of the Afghan refugee crisis, has received only 37,000.

In addition to failing to effectively crack down on drug trafficking in Afghanistan, the United States has led to a substantial increase in the area of drug cultivation in Afghanistan, becoming the world's largest opium poppy grower and opium producer, accounting for about 85 percent of the world's total opium production, forming a criminal "drug economy." According to the U.S. Special Attorney General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan (SIGAR), from 2002 to 2018, the United States invested $1.5 million a day in Anti-Drug Programs in Afghanistan. In 2020, opium production increased by 37% compared with 2019.

Fifth, rebuild the debt

In the 20 years of the War in Afghanistan, Afghanistan's economic and social development has fallen into a standstill, and the development of culture and education has seriously lagged behind. In 2020, Afghanistan's GDP was only $19.81 billion, 72% of the country's population lived below the poverty line, life expectancy plummeted to 53 years (the world's first to last), and nearly half of the country's children were malnourished. At the end of 2011, the Training Department of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization released information that the illiteracy rate of Afghan nationals had reached 74 per cent, and that the literacy rate of the Afghan army and police responsible for security was only 11 per cent. In 2021, the overall illiteracy rate in Afghanistan is still as high as 63.7%, of which the female illiteracy rate accounts for 88%, and the overall national education level has hardly improved.

The United States claims to invest about $145 billion in reconstruction funds in Afghanistan, but most of them have not been really used for development and people's livelihood improvement due to improper use, corruption and waste, let alone cultivating the endogenous driving force of Afghanistan's development. The U.S. Special Prosecutor for Reconstruction in Afghanistan acknowledged that the United States has invested huge amounts of development assistance in Afghanistan, but not even a decent modern factory has been built. What is even more ironic is that some of the U.S. reconstruction projects in Afghanistan are simply "burlesque", such as the investment of $3.35 in 2007 to build the tarakhil power station, which actually generates only 2% of the design capacity; the freight fleet that invested $500 million only flew for one year; the commercial hotel that planned to invest $85 million was never opened; the purchase cost of camouflage military uniforms for the Afghan security forces was as high as $28 million; and a proposed Afghan medical rehabilitation center was located in the Mediterranean...

U.S. aid has shaped a deformed "aid economy." The former Afghan government was jokingly called a "beggar in a suit", 70% of fiscal revenue, 80% of military expenditure came from international aid, food, energy, daily necessities, medicine and other basic supplies were heavily dependent on aid or imports. The "aid economy" hit the Afghan national economy, causing a large number of people to lose their jobs, about one-fifth of the population is concentrated in the capital Kabul, many of which rely on aid and its ancillary industries to survive, living on less than $2 a day.

Credit debt to allies

The U.S. collapse in Afghanistan and its related irresponsible behavior have seriously undermined the confidence and trust of allies in the United States and become a rift between allies that is difficult to heal. In the process of evacuating Afghanistan, a series of operations by the United States have once again vividly demonstrated the "America First", taking over Kabul International Airport and giving priority to ensuring the evacuation of US personnel. In order to ensure that "the United States comes first", the United States once did not allow any other aircraft to take off and land at Kabul International Airport, allowing Britain, France, Germany, South Korea and other countries to go out of the ocean and rush to the fire, and dissatisfaction with the United States rose sharply. British Defence Secretary Wallace has publicly criticized the U.S. decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan as a "mistake" that would lead to a deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan and that the entire international community could bear the consequences. Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to the United States, said the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan had shaken the belief within Britain that there was a common recognition of the special relationship between Britain and the United States. There are also voices in the European strategic community that the era of unconditional support from the United States is over. Shortly after Afghanistan's withdrawal, The European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Borrelli, proposed a 5,000-strong rapid reaction force. The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan is a "wake-up call" for the EU's strategic autonomy, and European Council President Michel said Europe does not need another geopolitical event like Afghanistan to push itself to realize that the EU must strive for greater decision-making autonomy and greater global action capabilities.

As the world's only superpower, the United States has returned home from the poor and weak country of Afghanistan, which is exactly the old Chinese saying that many acts of injustice will kill themselves.

(The author is Zhou Xin, a Chinese scholar of international studies)