Fifteen Years of Occupation: Afghanistan Since the Invasion
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- Published on Sunday, 09 October 2016 21:30
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1313 .... October 10, 2016
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Fifteen Years of Occupation:
Afghanistan Since the Invasion
Michael Skinner
7 October 2016 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. Many Western leaders claimed the invasion, dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom, was a humanitarian intervention to liberate Afghans and especially Afghan women and girls from the brutal Taliban regime. However, the evidence demonstrates the results have been anything but humane or liberating.
The people truly liberated by the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan are the wealthy investors in the military-industrial complex and those betting on successfully extracting Afghan resources and developing the infrastructure of the New Silk Road.
The Failure of Humanitarian Intervention
Civilian casualties: Perhaps the crudest measure of the failure of the humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan is to count... the growing number of civilian casualties. Mysteriously, no official agency actually counted Afghan civilian casualties prior to 2009; consequently, civilian casualty figures from 2001 to 2009 really are anybody's guess. Literally, countless numbers of Afghans were killed or maimed during the invasion and ensuing occupation.
The UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) only began counting civilian casualties in 2009 recording a trend of increasing numbers ever since. In the first half of 2016, 5166 civilians were killed or maimed -- almost a third of these were children.