Noam Chomsky - legendary American historian, political activist, and founder of modern linguistics - believes that the most basic reason for US failure in Afghanistan was America’s intelligence information, which is rarely accurate. One of the most influential public intellectuals in the world with over 100 published books, he shared with Gulf News his views on some of the most pressing current global issues.
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#Taliban #Afghanistan #NoamChomsky
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Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
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#Taliban #Afghanistan #NoamChomsky
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00:00I'm here with Professor Noam Chomsky, historian, political activist,
00:06considered to be the founder of modern linguistics and one of the most influential
00:11public intellectuals in the world. Professor Chomsky, thank you for your time.
00:18Very glad to be with you.
00:20Professor Chomsky, it was only several months ago that you predicted
00:26that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would cause the collapse of the Afghan army
00:35and the government. And that's exactly what's happened, that's what's unfolded in the last
00:42few weeks, as we've seen. And yet we see the Biden administrations and others
00:48express surprise at what's happened, or at least at the speed at which it's all happened.
00:56What are your thoughts on that?
00:57The basic problem is one that is familiar in other circumstances, Vietnam, Iraq.
01:06The executive branch of the government, the top of the government, is burdened
01:13by intelligence information, which is rarely accurate. The people on the ground know what's
01:21happening. But as the information filters up to the top, it gets modified, adapted to what people
01:31want to hear. And they literally don't know what's happening. We saw that over and over again.
01:39If you were not burdened by intelligence, and you were just looking at the fact,
01:46it was pretty plain what was going to happen. I don't say that in retrospect, you can look back
01:53at things I was writing months ago. The government was a morass of corruption, which had virtually no
02:02support. The army was largely on paper, about half of it probably wasn't even there. Ghost soldiers,
02:13others were trained on the American military model, where you rely on very heavy air power,
02:25mechanized support to try to keep soldiers from really entering directly into combat.
02:33You're not going to win a guerrilla war that way. Go back to Vietnam. Take the Tet Offensive
02:40in January 1968. The most astonishing uprising that's ever happened in military history.
02:52The US had almost 600,000 troops in South Vietnam. There was a South Vietnamese army of
03:00700,000, very well armed, trained by the US. They were in every village. Nobody had one word
03:11about the fact that a huge popular uprising took place all over the country, completely
03:19surprising everyone. The US had to turn to massive bombardment to try to put it down.
03:27A couple of weeks before that, the generals were telling Washington,
03:33we've won the war. It's all over. We can start pulling out troops.
03:39We know the mechanisms by which that happens. Same happened when, take Iraq, the Iraqi army
03:49that the US had created had about 350,000 well-armed soldiers, according to the statistics.
04:00800 jihadis, 800 coming in pickup trucks, waving rifles. They disappeared.
04:10It happens over and over and you never learn from it.
04:20There are some small pockets of resistance left, such as in the Panjshir area and the Andhra area.
04:30They have openly, publicly asked for support. They've said, give us, in particular, military
04:37support. Would it be wise for the US or others to extend a hand to them? Or should the policy be,
04:50as Joe Biden has suggested, which is to leave Afghan internal business and possibly civil war
04:58to Afghans? Whatever the policy should be, it should be determined by Afghans.
05:06They are the ones who are going to live with the situation. It's their responsibility.
05:15They should be brought actively into the arrangements. They are the ones who have
05:22to be in the lead in determining policy. That never crossed anyone's mind.
05:28I mean, it wasn't even an option to be considered. The only option is, how do we do this in the best
05:36way for us? Okay, that's going to be a disaster. Even by now, take the policy of withholding funds
05:49from the Taliban. Who does that hurt? The Taliban leadership? They can get the funds from opium
05:58sales to Europe. Europe buys the opium, which funds the heroin, which funds the Taliban.
06:06It'll hurt the population, just as the bombing, the drone attack yesterday hurt the population.
06:14If the World Bank and the IMF withhold funds, same thing. It's the same as sanctions.
06:24Who do sanctions hurt? Suppose you put sanctions on Iran, devastating for the population,
06:33does it hurt the leadership? The sanctions on Saddam Hussein, extreme sanctions,
06:41devastated the population. The administrators of the sanctions,
06:48distinguished international diplomats, they both resigned in protest, one after the other,
07:00because the sanctions, they said, were genocidal. Did they hurt Saddam Hussein? They benefited him.
07:08The population had to shelter under his wings for survival. He had some rationing systems.
07:18It's the same over and over. The idea in powerful states is, we have force, we monopolize violence,
07:30we'll use it. That's what we can do. We can use our force. What happens to the victims?
07:37Not our business. It was true of the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place. 20 years ago,
07:44the US invaded, not knowing who was responsible for 9-11. The people who are at the wrong end
07:54of the bombs, they often know what's happening. So right away, the most respected of the
08:03anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, Abdul Haq, had an interview, which he was asked about
08:15the invasion. He was bitterly opposed. He said, the invasion will just kill a lot of Afghans.
08:21It'll undermine our efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within. The United States is doing
08:29it because they want to show their muscle and want to intimidate everyone. It's pretty accurate.
08:36Now that we are getting finally, 20 years late, a leakage of the internal records from
08:44Donald Rumsfeld and others, we see that's pretty much true. Now it's conceded that 20 years ago,
08:53the Taliban offered to surrender. And the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said,
09:00we don't negotiate surrenders. We're going to destroy you. We're not going to let you
09:07live in dignity somewhere, even though we don't know that you were responsible for 9-11.
09:13Exactly what Abdul Haq said. You want to show your muscle and intimidate everyone.
09:19Okay. It's true then. It wasn't as clear then as it is now, but it was pretty clear.
09:27I was writing pretty much that at the time, as were others. But in a powerful state, you don't
09:34listen. In a well-controlled intellectual community, deeply indoctrinated, following orders,
09:43you don't ask questions. It happens over and over. And nothing is learned from it
09:50for a good reason. Not because people are stupid, but that's the way the institutions
09:56are structured. You move into those institutions, that's the way you behave.
10:01So, two days ago, I mean, by now, the evidence is simply overwhelming. That the American strategy
10:11of bombing villages, or sending in special forces to break open people's doors in the
10:19middle of the night and arrest somebody. All of this was just creating Taliban.
10:25It's very well known. So, what's the first reaction of the military? When there's a
10:32terrorist attack, do the same thing. Today, we get the news, which you could have anticipated.
10:41Family of 10 people killed, seven children, an infant. Consequences. Doesn't take much
10:49imagination. Especially when it's been happening over and over for 20 years.
10:55So, there is a worry that with Taliban taking over the country, forming a new government,
11:02hasn't been formed yet, but that's what the prediction is. That Afghanistan will become
11:08safe haven for the likes of al-Qaeda, Daesh. What are your thoughts on whether, on people who
11:17say that Afghanistan will become a safe haven for these terrorists, what would that mean
11:22for Afghanistan, for the region, and for the world, if that indeed?
11:28Well, first of all, why should we assume that Afghanistan will become a haven for terrorists?
11:36Actually, it's the United States, which is creating the terrorist networks. Not by funding
11:43them, but by its actions. What has happened? Let's go back to 2001. Al-Qaeda and bin Laden were
11:56in a tiny area at the border of the Afghan-Pakistan border, AfPak. That's where it's
12:06the seat of Islamic terrorism. Where is it now? All over the world. We've given bin Laden the
12:15greatest gift he could have imagined. 9-11 was the most successful action in military history.
12:25The United States reacted exactly the way he wanted, by showing our muscle, using force,
12:34spreading radical Islam all over the world. We accelerated it further when we invaded Iraq,
12:43created the Sunni resistance, ISIS finally spreading all over Africa,
12:54Philippines, all over the place. Now let's go back to your question. The Taliban have every reason
13:02to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the country. In 2001, they did keep bin Laden there
13:15as part of the tribal culture. The tribal culture is, yes, you give people protection.
13:24It's a tribal society. They live by the deep-seated tribal culture.
13:29There are specialists on tribal societies, especially Afghanistan and Pakistan.
13:35People like Akbar Ahmed, a highly respected anthropologist, has been trying for 20 years
13:43to get somebody to listen to this wonderful book about it called The Throne of the Thistle.
13:50He's well respected. He's in all the major institutes and people. They can't hear it.
14:00So the Taliban kept bin Laden there as part of the tribal culture. They didn't want him around.
14:10He was a nuisance. They didn't want the US attacking. In fact, they had pretty good
14:14relations with the US in the 1990s. They were working on pipeline arrangements and so on,
14:21but they couldn't just kick him out. Well, when 9-11 happened, they did begin to make offers
14:30to allow him to be moved out of the country somehow, maybe sent to an Islamic state for
14:38trial or something, or maybe just to totally surrender if the Taliban leadership could
14:45live in dignity. Absolutely not. We have to show our muscle, intimidate everyone,
14:53show that we are the boss. We have force. We don't negotiate surrender. We're just going to
14:59use our force to smash everything up and make the world look the way we want it to be. Okay?
15:06Imperial power. Trillions of dollars spent in Afghanistan. Most of that went to military,
15:14but there was some money spent in programs that were supposed to provide Afghans with the tools
15:23needed to build their country. Education programs, cultural programs. Now we're seeing,
15:31we've just seen over 100,000 Afghans evacuated out of the country. The UN Refugee Agency just
15:39a couple of days ago predicted that there could be possibly 500,000 Afghans leaving Afghanistan
15:47in the next few months. Many of the people who are leaving the country are the scholars,
15:55intellectuals, the young professionals, the artists. These are the very people that
16:04were the hopes of the country, the people that were supposed to build it. So with these people
16:11gone, the investment gone, who's going to build the country? Is it effectively going back to zero
16:20to start from scratch? Who's going to help the Taliban build it?
16:26Well, there are a few things to say about that. First of all, the chances that they'll leave are
16:30not very high because the Europeans and the Americans are too sadistic to allow them to
16:37enter. You can see it right now. Okay? They may want to leave, but where are they going to go?
16:44Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Denmark, France. Fat chance. So what will happen now? Well,
16:59the most hopeful part is that China, which has a real stake in Afghanistan,
17:07they don't want Afghanistan to be a base for Islamic terrorists. They'll be the victims.
17:14Western China, Xinjiang, that'll be the victims if Turkic, Uighur, other terrorist forces
17:24have a haven in Afghanistan. So I'd be pretty confident they'll be trying to
17:30help the society develop in some fashion. They'll probably try to bring it into the
17:39China-based Eurasian Central Asian system that they're creating with Russian support,
17:46with by now Iranian support. The whole complex system that grew out of the
17:54Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Belt and Road Initiative. So they'll probably try to bring
18:03Afghanistan into that, maybe with some development aid if possible. And they'll certainly be
18:13desperately trying to keep any terrorist groups from forming there. The US could cooperate on
18:20that. That would, of course, mean cooperating with China. That's not permitted. The yellow
18:27peril is supposed to be the big enemy. So we have to make sure not to cooperate with China,
18:35even though US-China cooperation is the basis for survival of the human species.
18:43If China and the United States do not cooperate on the major issues, like environmental destruction,
18:52pandemics, nuclear war, if we don't cooperate on that, we're done. Human species is finished.
18:59It's as simple as that. But it's not what's happening. We have to be more provocative,
19:05have to show our muscle, new military forces, move the war to space, send an armada into the
19:11South China Sea, show who we are. It's in the bones. None of it's surprising. If the British
19:23were still running the world, they'd be doing the same thing just as they did when they were running
19:28the world. It's the nature of imperial power. China does plenty of horrible things, but that's
19:39not a reason not to cooperate. Any more than the fact that the US does horrible things is a reason
19:46for China not to cooperate. We have to. And Afghanistan's a perfect place. We have the same
19:53interests, making sure that some development takes place, that these hundreds of thousands of people
20:02who probably can't leave have something there that they can use to build and develop some kind
20:10of life. We can help with that to some extent, not by drone attacks, but by development projects,
20:18real ones, not the kinds you do when you occupy a country, run by the people in the country
20:24themselves, their leadership. That'll include the Taliban, of course, the major force,
20:32may include what's left of the warlord system. We don't know exactly. Probably they'll be
20:39arising again. They already are in the Panjshir Valley in the north. So whatever works out in
20:47Afghanistan should be working with it, trying to help them from outside, not from on top.
20:55Jointly with China, maybe Russia. Russia has a major interest there.
21:01Afghanistan is far from the United States, but it's on the border of the Russian Federation.
21:09Russia has every reason not to want radical Islam to develop in Afghanistan and influence
21:18the states to the north, which had been within the Russian sphere.
21:26Every reason not to do that. So there happen to be shared interests. Maybe that's enough to get...
21:34I wouldn't expect leadership elements to do it on their own. That's not their nature.
21:39But popular forces could organize internationally with solidarity to pressure their governments to
21:49act in a humane and sane fashion for once. It would be a break in human history, but it could
21:58happen. What are some of the key points that perhaps can be considered to help Afghanistan
22:05become a success story, to help Afghanistan, or Afghans go back to their country? Because many,
22:12like anyone that I have spoken to, says, I don't want to leave. I want to be in my own country.
22:19I want to help build my country. But they don't feel that they can under the current circumstances.
22:26What can be done, whether it's the US or the neighbors, to help Afghans?
22:33First thing that can be done is willingness to absorb properly the people who are able,
22:44who want to flee and are able to flee. Don't close the doors to them, as Europe and the United States
22:51are now doing. So first thing do is look into the mirror, see who we are, recognize that we have a
22:58responsibility to accept the people who are able to escape. Second, work jointly with others,
23:12with China, with Russia, with Tajikistan, with Middle Eastern countries, to try to help Afghanistan
23:23recover in some fashion, in the way that Afghans will determine. Not that we will determine.
23:31We've demonstrated for centuries how we determine things, leaving the world a smashed up wreck.
23:39So let them do it. They'll make mistakes. We'll do the wrong thing. Okay, we'll try to help.
23:46First, simple things we can do are release funds. They need the funds for reconstruction.
23:52Then jointly, probably mainly with China and Russia, work on some kind of support for
24:02internal development programs. It's a shared interest. All the imperial powers have the
24:09interest in seeing Afghanistan recover somehow, and not fall apart and become a base for
24:19the Islamic State, which is just relishing everything that's happening. They love the drone
24:27attack. It's just what they wanted, and it had exactly the effect they wanted. Okay, so we can
24:35continue to support them, as we've been supporting Al-Qaeda for 20 years, doing exactly what they
24:43want. Or we can turn to a different course, undermine them by supporting the societies
24:51where they are trying to establish roots, relying on our brutality and violence.
24:59It's not a deep secret. It's right in front of our eyes. We've been watching it for 20 years.
25:05Wanchovsky, thank you for your time.