Retired Colonel Ann Wright Discusses Why the War in Afghanistan is Unwinnable
We’ve spoken with Ret. Col. Ann Wright of Oahu before—about her decision to resign from the State Department on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion, about the follies of the Bush Administration, about Israel, and about the importance of dissent.
Now, recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan, Wright has plenty to say about America’s oft forgotten, decade-old war.
You went to Afghanistan in September 2009, and then again last month. What, if anything, has changed?
The change that I noticed and that was talked about the most by Afghans was the huge increase in U.S. military bases—now over 400. We saw the construction of a huge base just north of Kabul. The high wall on the front side of it stretches over two miles and encloses a large training area. In the shadow of the wall, just across the road in an internal displacement camp, are tens of thousands of Afghans who have fled the fighting in the South and East of the country. They are living in abject misery in small dirt hovels, with no water or sewage and only a few sticks of wood each day to cook a tiny meal. Yet across the road are hundreds of millions—if not billions—of dollars spent on infrastructure for military training and operations. Villas built with the huge profits from the multi-million dollar U.S. logistics contracts to support our military presence are rented back to the international community contractors and non-governmental agencies for $10,000 to $15,000 per month. Yet most Afghans live in poverty.
In travelling outside of Kabul north of the Panjshir Valley, we went past the turn-off to Bagram Air Base, now an American city with over 20,000 U.S. military living and working there, as well as an infamous prison with over 10,000 detainees who are being held without any judicial process, many for years. We observed two new, ‘smaller’ U.S. military bases on the way to the valley—with the standard and expensive bomb-blast protective walls with at least 50 pre-fab buildings in each and an American flag flying above each base.
With its latest $500 million expansion project, the United States Embassy in Afghanistan will be the largest in the world, even bigger than the mammoth U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Over 1,400 U.S. government employees will reside inside the walls of the compound, which is expanding to take over the Afghan Ministry of Health grounds and part of an Afghan Ministry of Defense area. The U.S. is building two consulates, one in Heart and one in Mazir Sharif. Each will cost $50 million.
The United States’ presence in Afghanistan is so large that it has its own air terminal at the Kabul International Airport, plus the two mega air bases at Bagram and Kandahar, and the air base in Kyrgyzstan.
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