The Weekly Screed (#558)

Who the hell is Sirajuddin Haqqani… and who cares?
by David Benjamin

BROOKLYN — According to the latest count, six armies are now involved in George W. Bush’s inauguration gift to Barack Obama, the Afghanistan quagmire. These combatants are the Afghan army, the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, Al Qaeda, an outfit called the “Haqqani network” and, of course, the U.S. armed forces.

Certain experts might add candidates to this number. You’ve got, for example, the army of Pakistan, who’ve reportedly fought the Pakistani Taliban while also interfering with — and occasionally shooting at — U.S. forces in Afghanistan, while collaborating with both Taliban forces, while insisting that they’ve got enough aggravation already, thank you, just dealing with India. So, yeah, the Pakistani army is involved, but more like that eternal heckler behind the visitors’ bench at Madison Square Garden. The same is true of ISI, Pakistan’s Gestapo, who meddle constantly but put nothing in writing and never reveal anything beyond name, rank and their club motto: “Who? Me?”

Also, on “our” side, we’ve (maybe) got this shadow army — which sort of combines the French Foreign Legion, the Boy Scouts, the Oakland branch of Hell’s Angels and Cell Block D at Attica. Trouble is, even if they’re there, they’re not. This is because ever since Blackwater, Inc. strewed dead civilians all over Nisour Square in Baghdad, the Joint Chiefs don’t like to talk about Uncle Sam’s hired guns. You might overhear the odd rumor, or read something in the Times, about how legions of “limited liability contractors” in Afghanistan actually outnumber our GI’s and Marines. But that’s all it is. Rumors and liberal-media slander. Go ahead. Ask any lawyer at the Pentagon.

In an eerie parallel, Al Qaeda doesn’t seem to have anyone in Afghanistan. But how could they not be there? After all, these guys were the enemy that got us into Afghanistan back in 2001, and they’re the official reason why we’re still stuck there in 2011. If the Pentagon had ever admitted, God forbid, that every last Al Qaeda badass was either killed, caught or chased away five years ago, it would be real hard to explain why kids from Fort Walton Beach, Florida and Nampa, Idaho have to stick around Kabul and Kunduz, bleeding and dying and losing their marbles for three more years.

OK, so: You’ve got six teams, just like the original National Hockey League. The new skaters in the league are the “Haqqani network,” which prompts a reasonable question: What? We’re fighting a network — like MSNBC? Can’t we just send in Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Fox News to kick their ass? Answer: No, we can’t because, in this case, “network” is a Pentagon euphemism. The Haqqani (Admiral Mullen’s choice for Meanest Ass-Kickers in the Valley) are 15,000 vicious hillbillies armed with AK-47’s, IED’s and RPG’s. Their boss is a silverback guerrilla named Sirajuddin Haqqani, known jocularly around Paktika, Paktia and Khost as “the beheadin’ mujaheddin.”

Unlike U.S. troops, who sort of hang around in the open inviting sniper fire, the Haqqani tend only to fight when they feel like fighting, which really improves their winning percentage. Like the Minutemen at Lexington and the Viet Cong in all those tunnels, the Haqqani tend to be the snipers rather than the snipees. And, like Minutemen and VC, they turn magically into civilians if you start chasing them.

But… who cares?

Who needs to know all this stuff about the Haqqani, or Sirajuddin Haqqani’s relationship to General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, or even who the hell this Pasha guy is?

Yes, some people have to care. The battered, bloodied, raped and crippled civilians who live all over Afghanistan and in certain defenseless neighborhoods in Pakistan — they have to care.

Iranians, too — they’d better care. This is all happening in their backyard.

And there are a few luckless Americans. Not many. The number is so small that they can be regarded as invisible to the rest of us — which is how we treat them. They’re mostly in little towns or urban slums. They’ve got kids, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They care — every minute, every day.

But they shouldn’t have to. Afghanistan is not their backyard. It’s a million backyards away, for example, from Dana Point, California, hometown of the late Tyler Holtz, age 22, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. It’s also real far from Scio, Ohio, where 21-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Terry Wright’s parents now grieve for him and might just be wondering why their son was needed to burn poppy fields and dodge roadside bombs 11,000 miles away, among people who didn’t know him, couldn’t talk to him, and didn’t want him there.

The Holtz and Wright families are going to care about Afghanistan forever — as will some 1,770 other families who’ve had their loved ones delivered home in a box.

But the boxes can stop. Right now. We don’t have to care anymore. We can leave the Afghan army to fight the Afghan Taliban while the Pakistani army fights — or doesn’t fight (who cares?) — the Pakistani Taliban. And we don’t have to give a flying rat’s ass any longer who the Haqqani are, whether they’re a network or an army or a Shriners chapter, or who they decide to team up with. They can do, or not do, whatever the hell they want. It’s not our business, not any longer. And if the ISI should choose sides, and decide to help the Taliban, or not help the Taliban and instead crawl into bed with Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s sleazebag president, or just decide to overthrow their own toothless chief-of-state, Asif Ali Zardari, I mean, really! Who gives a damn?

Let’s go. Split. Hit the road. Blow this falafel stand. Let’s do it now.

A long time ago, for a few months, Afghanistan was important to us. Now, it’s not. We’ve died for the Afghans and they’ve died for us. That’s enough. They don’t care about the United States of way-the-hell-and-gone America. They have no reason to care. They never did, and every day that passes is a day for them to care even less. The same goes for us. We really, honestly, do not care — nor should we. Nor can we afford to.

Isn’t it time we started taking care of ourselves?