Twelve Years of NATO in Afghanistan: A Historic Failure

No celebrations have occurred on the anniversary of a war that, conveniently, is now "forgotten," despite the fact that Afghanistan remains occupied by 66,000 troops and its people are still dying because of the conflict.

On Oct. 7, 2001, the broadest military coalition in history — made up of 50 countries — bombarded the second-most underdeveloped country on the planet, whose military arsenal did not contain a single aircraft with which to defend itself. In the first three months alone, NATO bomber planes dropped 10,000 tons of bombs on the Afghans, roasting them over a blanket of snow and cold. Thousands were buried under the rubble of their adobe shacks, while millions fled with nowhere to run to — barefoot, terrorized and hungry. Eleven years later, the displacement of civilians in the north of the country was up 40 percent over the previous year. So much silence about war crimes! The allies’ intelligent devices destroyed water deposits, electrical power plants, crops and livestock (even Kabul Zoo!), and caused a muted human catastrophe. Meanwhile, euphoric Euro-MPs waved the “Save women from the burqa” banner — the same MPs who today parade Malala, the Pakistani girl, to prove the barbarous nature of the Taliban, drawing a dense smokescreen over U.S. drone attacks, which frequently snuff out the lives of dozens of children and adults.

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The official reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan — once again living up to its name, Land of Tears — and its subsequent occupation by 300,000 soldiers and foreign mercenaries, were the following: