COVERT OPS
Operation Anaconda: A Vision of the Future?
by Trevor Paglen
"We could hear them laughing at us," said Spc. Wayne Stanton, as his
unit bunkered down and called for reinforcements during Operation
Anaconda, the largest U.S.-led assault since the beginning of the war
in Afghanistan. By the end of the battle, eight U.S. soldiers were dead
and scores were injured. While U.S. commanders claim that around 700
enemy fighters were killed in the assault, independent estimates put
the toll between one and two hundred.
It now seems clear that when
Northern Alliance troops marched into Kabul and Kandahar late last
year, thousands of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters fled into the
mountains to regroup. Employing the tactic that Afghan fighters used to
successfully end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the late '80s,
Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters have begun to wage a guerrilla war in the
mountains of southern Afghanistan. Despite the "success" of Operation
Anaconda, the United States' troubles in Afghanistan are far from over.
Tommy Franks, a U.S. general, has hinted at more military operations in
Afghanistan, saying that further U.S. operations in the region "are
likely to be the same size as Anaconda."
Notwithstanding the United
States' creation of a new government in Kabul, led by Hamid Karzai, the
country is far from secure. Karzai's government, with no army and no
tax revenue, barely has control of its own capital city. Pre-Taliban
warlords have taken back most of the Afghan countryside and Karzai has
little leverage with which to quell tribal infighting. One could argue
that U.S. efforts to "stabilize" the region through military aggression
have had the opposite effect - that violence and anarchy have increased
as a result of the U.S. invasion. Even if we take the official enemy
death toll from Operation Anaconda seriously, one is tempted to ask how
many new anti-American fighters the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan
have created - particularly if we consider the number of people living
in warlord-controlled areas who long for the stability of the Taliban.
The fact that state violence begets violence is becoming clear in
Israel, where Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been busy waging his own
self-described "War on Terror" against the Palestinians in the
territories that his army occupies. His stated goal with the current
campaign is to inflict so much pain on the Palestinians that they will
abandon violent efforts to end the Israeli occupation.
In the last few
weeks, the Israeli army has launched its largest assault since the
invasion of Lebanon in 1982, invading refugee camps and racking up a
Palestinian death toll in the hundreds. Sharon's ploy has been far from
successful, leading only to an escalation of violence and insecurity on
both sides. Sharon's popularity as a prime minister has waned as
Israeli security has declined in proportion to the brutality of their
army's assaults. Even George Bush has described Israeli aggression as
"unhelpful" to the pursuit of peace.
So, if Bush recognizes that
Israeli aggression is "not helpful," then why can't he see that
American aggression is equally futile? If the case of Israel
demonstrates that an escalation of state violence tends to provoke
renewed passion in those who feel targeted by the state, then why is
Bush targeting nuclear weapons (the ultimate in state aggression) at a
handful of countries including Russia and China? Yes, you heard me
right - Bush is setting up first-strike scenarios using nuclear weapons
against several countries.
In the March 10 edition of The L.A. Times,
William Arkin reported on the contents of the Bush administration's
Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The NPR is a document that makes plans
for first-strike capabilities against Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya
and Syria, as well as nuclear weapons holders and "normal" trade
partners Russia and China.
By devising schemes for nuclear assaults
against the named countries, Bush violates the 1995 international
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in addition to being morally
abhorrent to the vast majority of the world's peoples. Bush is sending
a clear message to the world that the United States is willing to
consider (damn the law) the use of weapons of mass destruction against
any nation that might potentially fall out of step to the march of its
drum.
As we saw on September 11, the world is getting smaller. The
distance between the United States and the rest of the world is coming
closer to the distance between Israel and the occupied territories in
which the Palestinians live. As Bush, like Sharon, escalates the levels
of violence that he is willing to inflict on the rest of the world, we
can be sure that the ranks of Al-Qaeda and other anti-American
terrorists will swell. With Israelis and Palestinians suffering daily
assaults on one another, we have a clear model of the kind of sustained
state and guerrilla terror that our current path could be leading us
toward.
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www.paglen.com
Illustration by David Merrit
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