The Ming Report

THE TOURNAMENT OF SHADOWS

May 10, 2006 - Before Mission Accomplished; before shock and awe; before Colin Powell was sent to do his cheap imitation of Adlai Stevenson for the Security Council America was engaged in a righteous war in Afghanistan. Our mission there was straight forward and easily defined – bring Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda to justice and destroy the Taliban who provided him sanctuary. It was a mission that was easily understood and in the wake of 911 it was one that the international community could support. It was also a mission that failed. Bin Laden and his henchmen remain at large and the Taliban leadership simply melted into the hills. To be sure America’s surrogate presides over a government sitting in Kabul; a government whose writ runs reliably to the edge of the city; but the Taliban still roams the plains and holds the mountain passes from which they strike with deadly effect. Our America inning in the contest that the British called the Great Game and the Russians styled the Tournament of Shadows is not yet over.

America has left more than 300 dead on Afghanistan’s plain in the four years since the US Marines overwhelmed Kandahar. It has been a low cost war but the blood has dripped steadily. The military successes that installed this Regime in Kabul were accomplished by the same techniques that Imperial Britain and Tsarist Russia employed in the 19th Century. We bought off the local warlords and tribal leaders. We should be mindful as the Taliban renews the kind of low intensity campaign that brought it to power that a man who will turn his coat to earn a Yankee Dollar will not cavil at turning it again for an Iranian Rial, a Saudi’s Dinar or a Pakistani Rupee. It is a case of patriotism for the highest bidder; it is a shadow play dancing on the walls with no substance.

Mullah Omar and Osama the Sheik have passed this way before. When the Soviet’s puppet reigned in Kabul the Taliban and the Mujahidin owned the country side sallying forth from their mountain dens. They bled the Soviets drop by drop as their 19th Century counterparts had bled the British and the Soldiers of the Tsar. The US, its allies, and its clients may own the cities but Afghanistan’s plains belongs to the tribes.

Four years have passed; four years in which America’s effort was diverted to war against phantoms and fantasies in Iraq; four years in which Osama has planned and plotted; four years in which Mullah Omar has refitted and regrouped; four years of American deaths. It is America’s forgotten war. It is America’s entry in the Tournament of Shadows.