This war is Afghanistantastic!

Ah, the war in Afghanistan. Piece of piss. We should be able to knock over those no good, Stone Age camel jockeys in a month fla- sorry, what? How many days? 3202 DAYS? OH GOD! HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN ASLEEP FOR?! EIGHT YEARS, NINE MONTHS AND SEVEN DAYS? WHOSE BEEN FEEDING MY HAMSTER, CHICO? HE STARVED TO DEATH?! OH GOD, THE HUMANITY!



Quite. Not entirely an unfair metaphor for the situation in Afghanistan, though. Such high hopes, such hubris, such a large amount of dangerously combustible gas (AKA angry Afghans) contained in such a very flimsy balloon (AKA American military planning).

But now that Afghanistan has managed to eclipse the Vietnam War as the single longest military operation in American history, it seems like a good opportunity to take a look back at Operation: Enduring Freedom. A phrase that, at this point, unfortunately only seems to be about one-third true i.e. the word 'operation' suggests a degree of order and proper planning that this morass perhaps never really possessed, while recent events have shown once again that using elections as an indicator of freedom is much like using my patterns of gastric upset as indicators of solar activity. And boy is the sun angry.

So, how bad is it? Well, if you believe recent reports in The People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's primary media mouthpiece - and who wouldn't - it's gotten so bad that the Taliban have now started training monkeys to use AK-47s against Allied forces. Yes, that's right. As if regular Taliban insurgents weren't bad enough, the Allies now need to deal with heavily armed monkeys too. More specifically, macaques and baboons. Given that a monkey recently hit the news for ripping a woman's face and fingers off, giving them AK-47s could well turn them into the world's Ultimate Weapon.  Don't believe the story? Then check out the pictures:





I'm convinced. What a scoop. But the almost certainly spurious claim that the US pioneered this strategy through the use of "massive monkey soldiers" in the Vietnam War notwithstanding, I think we can probably assume for the time being that armed monkeys are pretty low on the overall threat chart for Allied soldiers in Afghanistan. They have enough going on as is what with endless IEDs (improvised explosive devices), endemic local corruption, a seemingly impossible to destroy, T-1000-esque Taliban, a steadily increasing civilian and military death toll and, of course, Rolling Stone reporters.  In case you missed that last one, earlier this year Rolling Stone despatched a reporter to hang out with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the then head of military operations in Afghanistan, for a couple of months to see what the haps was. Well, the haps turned out to be a delightfully shambolic enterprise headed up by a seemingly cantankerous old man who bore a deep and lasting grudge against almost everybody he had to work with. Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the US included. Unsurprisingly, the General was fired within the week. Making this the most rapid-fire Rolling Stone celebrity assassination since the death of John Lennon... Too soon?

But perhaps the man had a point. Perhaps a world-weary cynicism is deserved right now. Because things aren't going well in Afghanistan. In fact, one would be tempted to say that things are going very badly. The fact that three Australian soldiers have died in the last few weeks really clarifies the issues for a domestic audience, but major problems have been brewing for quite some time now. Potentially since October 8, 2001, the day after the invasion began. And I'd suggest that the fact this occupation has now surpassed the Vietnam War is a potent symbol. Lest we forget, the only reason that war ended was because the US finally realised that it could never win conclusively against the Viet Cong and thus made a tactical decision to sacrifice the country to the Communist regime it had been fighting for much of the previous decade. As such, the ongoing strength of the Taliban in the border areas of the country is duly noted. Not that their endurance is being actively ignored. While militarily the US has been reduced to taking almost certainly illegal and casualty heavy potshots against Taliban commanders using a swarm of pilot-less drones, recent policy debate has  begun to centre on the prospects of diplomatic engagement with the Taliban. Yes, that Taliban. Them of the stonings and the sharia and the Osama bin Laden Friendship Camps. If you can't beat 'em... which, if modern history is anything to go by, you never can.

While Afghanistan has undeniably presented more concrete signs of progress than Vietnam ever did, barely a day goes by without some fresh indication of exactly how flaky the situation over there is. Whether it's widespread electoral fraud, the general failure of the most recent troop surge, the suspicion and hostility of the Afghani Government, the actually increasing number of army and civilian deaths or the aforementioned collapse of the military command, there is little in the current Afghanistan narrative that points to the imminence of a triumphant victory over the forces of "terror". Part of the problem perhaps being that no-one is really sure what victory might look like by this point. And with a year on the clock before the beginning of Obama's much vaunted withdrawal from the country, the question of what might be an acceptable outcome for this almost decade long engagement is taking on an increasing pertinence. As George Packer points out in a recent issue of the New Yorker, the Taliban and Al'Qaeda, once distinct but friendly entities, have spent the length of this conflict moving closer and closer together in vision and drive. Whereas at the time of the September 11 attacks the Taliban could only in the very loosest sense have been classified as a 'terrorist' state, the Taliban of 2010 is undoubtedly a 'terrorist' group. All well and good if they stay in their far distant corner of the desert, but an American withdrawal will almost certainly bring with it a flare-up of the decades long Afghani civil conflict - that fraudulent election was split largely on ethnic grounds and Afghanistan has always been a particularly tribal region - and thus the very real possibility of the 'terrorist', 'monkey-equipped' Taliban reasserting control over significant portions of the country.

And if those monkeys are armed, then may God have mercy on us all.



Maybe diplomatic engagement ain't such a bad idea after all. You bring the ambassadors. I'll bring the bananas.

Yikes. That got a little grim, didn't it? Sorry. Unavoidable sometimes... Oh! I know what will cheer you up: a dehydrated cat spinning on a turntable playing jaunty music.