Few will associate Joseph E. Schwartzberg with recent invents culminating in Afghanistan. Recognized as a famous & well-respected Minnesotan, few outside academia & public advocacy organizations dedicated to world federalism have heard let alone readily recognize the late academic. From 1964-2000, Schwartzberg was a household name & professor emeritus in the geography department at the University of Minnesota. Although quite extensive, some of his accomplishments include invaluable contributions made to the Historical Atlas of South Asia (1978) in addition to being one of the founding members of the Kashmir Study Group formed in 1997. He vociferously condemned the hawkish unilateral nationalism of the Bush Doctrine equivocating interventionism as the overriding precursor to the downfall of nations.
Ramesh Thakur wrote the foreword for one of Schwartzberg’s magnum opuses, “Transforming the United Nations System, Designs for a Workable World,” (2013) & said: “the West is proving singularly reluctant & obdurate in exporting democratic structures & procedures to international governance institutions, to ceding power in order to share it, to assuming equitable costs to managing the global commons, & in general to supporting a universal rules-based-order in which one law applies to all.” America’s legacy in Afghanistan is best associated with outright complicity to Thakur’s statement. Here is the reality: the inevitable has come to pass in Afghanistan irrespective of the presidential incumbent, yet international observers & members of the wider Afghan Diaspora across America seemed overwhelmingly aghast at the end result. Is the outcome of America’s “occupational tenure” in Afghanistan truly surprising when scrutinizing the wider historical record of the last century? The writing has been on the wall since before October 2001. The basis of which is best defined as a crash course with democracy against the backdrop of a failed state vacuum now filled by the Taliban.
The Invasion of Afghanistan was not motivated by an unwavering commitment to rebuild & democratize Afghanistan into a regional model for the rest of Central Asia to emulate. This fact stands only to be exasperated as America’s legacy in Afghanistan is etched & ultimately internalized by their successors & international observers alike. As recently as 2019, Forbes Magazine slated Afghanistan as one of the most corrupt nations in the world weighing in at 172 out of 180. The Department of Defense estimates between October 2001 & September of 2019, total expenditures for Afghanistan reached 778 billion. From 2021 alone, NATO reported expenditures of $72 million on Afghanistan for supplying & equipping its national military. In an extended 2017 article by Antony H. Cordesman for the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the Afghan National Army was ridden with mass desertion & low morale punctuated by soldiers seeking opportunities abroad as operatives in private military corporations.
Here are some questions people should be asking about costs derived & incurred from Afghanistan: what does it cost to train, house, cloth, feed, deploy, & pay the average infantry soldier in Afghanistan during routine patrols for purposes of supporting national defense & internal security when equivocated to America’s operational budget in Afghanistan? How many times can that figure be replicated to create a critical albeit effective mass of competent soldiers? How many recruits dropped out of training due to habitual drug offenses related to opioids, particularly opium?
Did this attribute to an ongoing recruitment crisis throughout the wider Afghan military? Sayed Hassib of Reuters reported that in 2017, the estimated cost of constructing a potable community water well at a mere $5,200.00. How many wells could that 778 billion fund across Afghanistan if directed to eradicate water inequity & inaccessibility for every Afghan citizen? On USAID’s official website, the agency claims to have provided access to potable water for 650,000 Afghans to date out of a nation of 31,390,200 citizens. Now, is that an acceptable figure 778 billion dollars & 20 years later?
The Diplomat Magazine reported on August 17, 2021 that Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan with bags of physical cash while ExactNetWorth.com estimated Ghani to be valued at 5 million U.S. dollars. Now, what’s wrong with this picture? Is it any wonder let alone surprise why America’s legacy in Afghanistan is best reduced to that of a failed turned forsaken collaborationist government plagued with endemic corruption sitting at the cusp of a tumultuous power vacuum waiting to be filled at any propitious moment by its enemies?
Perhaps these are questions that can be addressed & ideally evolved at the behest of the Afghan Communal Diaspora in America in conjunction with a reform minded Taliban?