The Real Battle for Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan - As Ground is Laid for Resource Plunder, High Time Progressives Support the Insurgency and End this War

~Younus Abdullah Muhammad


A recent interview conducted for Forbes online entitled In the Shadow of the Taliban, Afghanistan Mining Sector Open for Business (HERE) documents the pillar points of the elite establishment's post-occupation policy for the war-torn country. In remarks that represent initial efforts to usher in an era of multinational exploitation of Afghanistan's vast resources, the latest economic dimensions of the conflict become clear. 

In parallel efforts to what was witnessed in Iraq as the war there grew more complicated, the new Afghan elite are now being pressured to assume more indigenous responsibility for the fiscal strings that propel the war. Because there is no present flowing crude, gas, or pipeline, the country has been destroyed (again), and the people do not represent a reliable or sufficient tax base to maintain the civil wars and looting coming after occupation, the nation's mineral wealth will become the subject of focus for potential corporate plunder.

Pressure for heavy returns and limited regulation will allow foreign investors to make a killing on high risk investments while labor costs will be as low as anywhere in the world and the absence of financial regulation will allow for all kinds of new corruption, speculation and embezzlement. Regular Afghans will never see a dime. It is the latest attempt to implement the neoliberal economic policies that are the norms of  'globalization' as America, on behalf of the corporations and international elite it serves, tries to turn a profit and sustain control of the corporatist world order.

The interview was conducted with Afghan Minister of Mines, Wahidullah Shaharani, during his recent trip to the United States where he held bilateral and multilateral meetings with the US Departments of State, Treasury, and Commerce; USAID; the World Bank; IMF and others before engaging on a month long tour with fellow diplomats holding conferences and public speakings that touted the economic prospects of Afghanistan and the 'successes' of the American partnership.  The quotes included by Forbes, a  magazine largely in favor of the international elite, are troubling in some prominent ways. Here is a selected section with comments,

 Forbes: The Aynak project had allegations of corruption. How is Hajigak going to be different?

Shahrani: There was a lengthy bidding process for Aynak for which the government received support from the World Bank. We recognize there have been reported allegations. But the process was very transparent and MCC was the clear winner. Companies’ bids are public for everyone to see. The process for awarding the Hajigak deposit will be transparent and open.  

The Aynak project refers to copper mines that were granted to a Chinese State Corporation so enthusiastic about the prospects it outbid its competitors by $1 billion.  The contract represented the first major international exploitation of Afghanistan in the post-American era.  As in Iraq, Chinese State Corporations were authorized to receive initial contracts so to play down speculation that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were of the imperialist variety. The press plays along; the New York Times critically commented that, "while the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce."  In truth of point the occupation itself is commerce for many American individuals and corporations.  

Shahrani was questioned not only due to the granting of concession to a Chinese company but also because U.S.-Chinese are growing more tumultuous. As a result, there is considerable concern that more contracts will go to international firms apart from the Anglo-American arena and thus the potential for a disruption of the balance of power in the world. The truth however is that as long as the private, corporate order is preserved it matters little where the contracts go. The U.S. is concerned with controlling the entry way to the Middle East and preserving the continuation of dollar dominance as reserve currency; all the dollars floating freely through Afghanistan almost guarantee that to be the case, but for Shahrani touting capitalism, while at the same time assuring Western investors that the mineral wealth of Afghanistan is theirs for the taking, guarantees his continued successes within the system. He goes on to explain that legal requirements and problems with taxation and capital flight have been removed as well,

Forbes: How safe is it to invest in Afghanistan?

Shahrani: Regarding the security of contract, the minerals law in Afghanistan provides a clear legal basis for a mineral right. It allows the repatriation of capital and there are no foreign exchange restrictions. Afghanistan also has a new law on private investment which encourages and protects private investment. 

"Repatriation of capital" is also known as the potential for 'capital flight.' Shahrani is letting potential investors know that laws have been laid to guarantee that profit made in the country can be transferred abroad with little to no taxation. This phenomenom has been a crucial component within the international looting of the third world in the modern era. It is quite common knowledge that repatriation of capital represents one of the many ways the international economic order creates opportunities for continued imperialisms to exist in the post-colonial world and any policy for Afghans must include capital flight restrictions if the vast resources of the country are to be used for internal development rather than to create a group of oligarchs that run the country into the ground.  

It is a familiar process to anyone who understands neoliberal imperialism. The process was initiated when we saw the minerals of Afghanistan used by the NY Times to stimulate interest amongst the elite, liberal classes in the West. Publicizing the widespread presence of resources, something known for many years, helped gain support at home from an educated class that was starting to doubt the benefits of occupation abroad.  Despite plummeting support for the war in Afghanistan, most understand it is elite opinion that counts.  Shahrani, in typical neoliberal fashion, and in accordance with this awareness laid the framework for the potential looting of the country.

Structures like these are not new. The catastrophe of this situation lies today in the reality that the ravishing consequences of financialized globalization are commonly known throughout the world. It is not possible to argue on behalf of such principles any longer. However, because the phenomenon of contemporary globalization was mostly inaugurated by back room political and economic maneuvering, it is  most troubling to note that the implementation of such policies in Afghanistan and Iraq represents a potential new wave of 'gunpoint globalization' where policies, known to effect disastrous consequences for the population on the whole, are implemented regardless and via American/NATO military occupation and genocide rather than corporate hallways and within think tanks.

Capital fight allows financial institutions to loot whole countries. It has accompanied numerous operations in the past and is a major part of maintaining the international order that dominates the world today.  The European Network on Debt and Development reports,

Illicit capital outflows are a major challenge for states in all regions. According to experts' estimates, crossborder illicit flows from developing countries amount to $1 trillion each year. More than 60% of these illicit flows are related to corporate tax avoidance and evasion schemes, mostly using tax havens as a conduit. These outflows dwarf official aid to developing countries.

Yet, Shaharani is touting that in Afghanistan capital outflow has conveniently been legalized. The devastating effects of the liberalization of Afghanistan are evident in the recent corruption and bailout of Kabul Bank, where a run on the nation's biggest bank and banking home of its elite almost created a national crisis. Afganistan is a country that reportedly has millions of dollars worth of currencies illicitly flown from it each day in capital flight associated with the thievery of international aid, corruption in government, and illicit trade in narcotics.  The declared capital flight from 2009 alone was greater than cumulative government revenues. However, as former British spy and novelist John la Cerre explained on Democracy Now recently,  illegal money is a necessary component of the contemporary order. He said,

On the grand scale, it’s endemic to banking. You have to bear in mind that when Lehman Brothers wasn’t going to function anymore and the big banks weren't lending to one another, back at that terrible time, $352 billion of illegal money were then tacitly released upon the market, and that was about the only money people were lending to one another. So, money laundering is not some distant fantasy. It’s actually how you handle the profits of extortion, tax evasion, criminal conspiracy and huge quantities of drug money, how you get that into the white sector.  And what we are gradually learning from these little exposés that come to light is that there is almost no way of denying people, in the end, the profits of their crime, which is a tragedy. And it’s also a frightful annoyance, because we pay vast sums of money across the way here to agencies that are supposed to stop money laundering. It doesn't happen.

So while heavy corruption should plague foreign investor interest in a country like Afghanistan, as long as the legal framework is set for quick withdrawal, limited risk and heavy return in accordance with the international norms of globalization, all is well. And so the promotion of resource wealth in Afghanistan is to not only sustain interest in the country's occupation but also to help cement the continuation of policies and practices that have been exposed as fraudulent for quite some time.

Professor Noam Chomsky explains that the process and function of capital flight is akin to a "virtual senate", where the private power that controls the politics of the developing world "can effectively decide social and economic policy by capital flight, attacks on currency that undermine the economy, and other means that have been provided by the neoliberal framework of the past thirty years"

It is now common knowledge that the liberalization of capital benefits only an elite, both domestic and foreign, and is a sure sign of conscious imperialism most in the world recognize but are concerned little with doing anything about. Professor Gerald Epstein published a detailed volume that accounts specific examples of capital flight catastrophe on several developing nations since the onset of globalization and which also helps to refute the standard and now ancient myth that capital liberalization leads to positive gains in income distribution and growth. Professor Epstein says in his introduction to the work that, "capital flight is an inherently political phenomenon involving the role of the government and the prerogatives of those – usually the wealthy – with access to foreign exchange. As a result, the issue of capital flight necessarily involves the political economy of class power, conflict and the state."  No example could be more evident than in this type of showboating by a foreign official inside the country occupying his nation while that country and its occupation is widely resented by a substantial majority of the citizenry he claims to represent.  Shaharani is a fraud, but is part of a much larger endemic disease.  

While governments agreed at the 2005 UN World Summit to “support efforts to reduce capital flight and measures to curb the illicit transfer of funds,” little has been done to curb the mechanisms which help to preserve a parasitic, financialized economy that serves a speculator class gambling on real world economic variables that potentially spell disaster for millions. As long as foreign investors can pull out at first sign of crisis, a little help from the World Bank and IMF can postpone any crisis or devaluation long enough to save investors and then destroy the population.  The same effect will be possible in Afghanistan, thus the 'virtual senate' will forever hold the people's fate in their hands.    

This is a familiar scenario that has been played out time and time again.  The corruption we have grown accustomed to hearing about with regard to the Karzai regime and international  assistance would be nothing in comparison to the looting and corruption associated with the country's rich natural resources.  Of course, in this case we should expect to hear absolutely nothing about the private, corporate looting of the entire landscape.   Thus this new, evolving threat is as important as exposing the atrocities committed by boots on the ground, which leads to the million dollar question upon which the success of the looting operation ultimately relies,

Forbes: And what about the physical security?

Shahrani: The international coalition has been instrumental in building Afghanistan’s security institutions as well as fighting the extreme elements of the Taliban. Additionally, efforts to reach a political solution are likely and will help us achieve long term security. But not all of Afghanistan is unsafe. The area around the Hajigak deposit is very safe. The government is also setting up a Mines Protection Unit which would provide security to companies coming in for exploration and mining.

In reality, as all know, the "international coalition" has completely destroyed the country. While this may prove an effective strategy for potential investors in the event that military efforts prevail, the insurgency is far from defeated and most unbiased reports place momentum with the "extreme elements of the Taliban," more properly defined as 'Afghans that see through the propaganda of the elite and refuse to hand the country over to foreign, corporate plunder'. In reality, the infrastructure that is required for the extraction and exploitation of these minerals is also non-existent and security of transport is dependent on defeat of the insurgency as well in order to protect routes leading to export.  The posed political solutions and negotiations with moderate Taliban are in essence a psych-op, an effort to buy time and lure undedicated insurgents away from a growing insurgency while efforts continue to murder the majority of them.

Make no doubt about it, the only successful end in Afghanistan for the imperialists requires a military defeat of the insurgency and so a formidable obstacle stands in the way. In order to effect that outcome General Patreus' plan, as he launches a much touted offensive in Kandahar, home of the resistance, is for more air raids that will kill more civilians and probably push many more Afghans to support the insurgency.  The other, more probable end, is the complete annihilation of Southern Afghanistan with indiscriminate airstrikes reminiscent of ends in Vietnam and Cambodia. The domestic, U.S. population's passive reaction to Wikileaks' release of 400,000 documents documenting war crimes and genocide in Iraq adds additional plausibility to this prediction.  Today, with no draft and economic trouble at home, Americans could generally care less about civilian deaths anywhere outside of America.  America's corporations would be happy to turn a profit as a result of them and so we should prepare for one of the great tragedies of our time unless of course conscious citizens are suddenly compelled to act.

As the mainstream CBS News reported in an article that garnered no public reaction entitled U.S. Trying to Kill its way out of the Afghan War,

Air strikes in Afghanistan are up 50 per cent and now Defense Secretary Gates has ordered a second aircraft carrier, the USS Lincoln, into the fight. 

Two carriers operating off the coast of Pakistan means about 120 aircraft available for missions over Afghanistan. And that's not counting U.S. Air Force missions flown out of Bagram and Kandahar. 

Although American commanders frequently say "we cannot kill our way out of this war," that appears to be exactly what the U.S. is doing - unleashing air strikes and special operations raids against the Taliban in an effort to force them to the bargaining table. 

 Shaharani touts this as progress. Still, the Financial Times reported this past week on the complications of investment, admitting that most of the immediate foreign interest would be from nearby China and India. The bastion of the City of London wrote, "Beijing and New Delhi are both deepening commercial ties with Kabul as part of a broader rivalry. 'If you want to see long-term geopolitical considerations, watch these deals,' said Robert Kaplan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security." An interview at the end of the article reveals the only obstacle to the plan, 

Security at the site is better than in many places, though not assured. "We will fully back the project," said Mohammad Sadiq, a wheat farmer. "But I can't speak for any insurgents in other parts of the country."

However, the "insurgents" have indeed spoken for themselves. In reaction to collaborative propaganda that implies talks are under way between the Taliban and the Karzai regime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) issued its own declaration documenting an awareness of the connection between promoting the idea that security is on the horizon and the future imperialist plunder of their country. The Taliban report,

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan refutes outright these false claims neither has it sent any delegations for talks and neither does it intend to negotiate at a time when the country is under occupation.

In this regard, we must say to Burhanuddin Rabbani and the other degraded faces not to revive old enmities by promoting these false allegations nor should they run the propaganda campaigns to please America. As Afghans, they should not aid General Petreaus’s strategy (bullets and negotiations) developed by the Pentagon because the General wants to have this strategy worked through your hands in such a wicked way that Afghanistan may permanently become a colony of America. 

From our point of view, another reason for this intense fabricated propaganda by Karzai and General Petreaus is also likely to win the confidence of the people by making it seem as if Kabul administration (the crooked and corrupt regime) could bring forth a solution to the problems of Afghanistan. 

The Islamic Emirate irrefutably believes that in the presence of foreign invaders, peace talks and any kinds of negotiation deals will be futile as they will not yield a positive outcome for the believing people and nation. For this reason, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan once again calls on the invaders to stop wasting their time on failed propaganda and military campaigns instead leave Afghanistan so it can enjoy a few years in peace and independence.

Members of the Haqqani network, allies with the Taliban, acknowledged that the Karzai regime had put forth proposals for communication but that the regime was asking for preconditions including an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of support for foreign fighters amongst their ranks. To this later conditon a senior commander responded,

“How can we break our long association with these mujahedeen who left their families and came from all over the world to join us in jihad against the U.S. and its allies?” he told The Daily Beast. “If the U.S. can bring together all major world powers to overthrow [the Taliban,] then we, too, have the right to collect our likeminded people for the liberation of our homeland.”

While many enlightened liberals denounce both the occupation of Afghanistan and so-called Islamic extremism, it is high time that an international community of conscious citizens all over the world reconsider this popular neutrality. Status quo liberals like Rachel Maddow at MSNBC cement the moral imperativeness of the mission, and in so doing have convinced many of those that claim to reject American imperialism to give the U.S. establishment the benefit of the doubt. This attitude, representing a "death of the liberal class," helped to vote in the failing Obama administration, derail protest over the multiple bailouts for banks and corporations, and sustained support for war in Iraq previously on the grounds that "we were there to prevent a civil war"... "we" actually created. The only populist, progressive, liberal, or just solution in Afghanistan is with the Taliban heading the way in creating a unified government. It is time citizens with truly moral principles accepted this notion, pronounced and defended it. Advocation for the defeat of US empire would then actually mean something. Taliban victory there is the best, ideal solution and then people could truly help build a nation in Afghanistan. 

It is obvious that the Taliban represent a government that truly cares about the future of the nation and its people. This is a fact that most on the left do not have the guts to claim. Say what you want about liberal values, the prerequisite for any type of social development in Afghanistan should be the removal of foreign troops and all the ideologies that have helped dismantle other developing nations in years prior. Any other position is simply a false proposition of peace. Karzai and his cronies are all corrupt, the country is being prepared for looting and as long as the dead continue to be men, women and children in Islamic garb, few possess the courage to call it genocide. 

The resources of Afghanistan should be used to benefit the Afghan people. Proper policy formation would include not only capital flight restrictions but plans on how to use the rich resources of Afghanistan to develop the country, its natural, social, and human resources. As the western press comments on "peace talks" for negotiations to end the war, we hear nothing of the fact that the Taliban have denied altogether the existence of such communications, it should be obvious who we should believe. This was expressed by former CIA head of 'the Bin Laden Unit' Michael Sheuer last month in an interview with German press outlet Dier Spiegal. In the interview Scheuer was asked, "Is Washington being energetic enough in trying to fight corruption?" To which he replied, 

"We're really not in a position to push these people. Who's going to replace them? There isn't anyone less corrupt. Probably the only incorrupt people in Afghanistan are the Taliban. If you want no corruption, give the government back to the Taliban."

The productive dimension of the Taliban's vision for a post war Afghanistan is in their rejection of the international, economic consensus. Having learned from past and present experience, the Taliban would most probably work in conjunction with development agencies and sincere institutions to craft policies that create feasible opportunities for national development. As Washington prepares to bombard Southern Afghanistan and then tactically pull out over the next few years, concerned and conscious human beings everywhere should pay attention to the imperialist processes destined to be at work trying to guarantee that Afghanistan follows the typical norm (see Vietnam post withdrawal as one example). 


Economic warfare causes at least as much strife as war. The real battle for hearts and minds is being waged in Afghanistan. As the ground is laid for resource plunder, it is high time progressives, liberals and all those opposed to empire support the insurgency and end this war.