The Reasons Why the US Dropped ’Bombs’ on Afghanistan
Nedal Hmede
The US strike on Afghanistan on April 13, using a bomb that weighs over 10 tons - referred to by the Americans as the mother of all bombs - under the pretext of targeting a "Daesh" camp in Nagarha province in eastern Afghanistan, conveyed Washington's many goals at this particular point-in-time.
The US bombing coincided with a regional meeting on Afghanistan held in Moscow. Washington has refused to attend the conference. So the bombing and the weapons which were not previously used in Afghanistan as well as the propaganda campaign that accompanied it, indicate that the US wanted to show the Russians and all the states of the region that Washington has no intention of ending the war in Afghanistan and therefore no intention to end its occupation of this country.
The second American goal was to support US President Donald Trump's decision that he announced on Wednesday April 11 - one day before the bombing. The decision involves the evaluation of the state of US forces in Afghanistan where Trump intends to strengthen the US military presence.
In a statement to the Al Ahed news website, French sources pointed to a US decision to send thousands of American troops to Afghanistan. This comes in line with a plan put forward by the commander of the US forces in Kabul, Gen. John Nicholson, designed to end the American impasse in the war with the Taliban. Therefore, Trump's decision to drop the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan and the dispatch of thousands of troops to this Muslim country echoed the wishes of the Pentagon.
The French sources explain that "the use of destructive bombs makes no sense in confronting an armed insurgency that uses guerilla warfare as is the case in Afghanistan, especially since the harsh and difficult nature of the country's terrain does not make these bombs effective and decisive in the war. These types of deadly bombs have been widely and previously used by the United States in Vietnam and failed to change the final outcome of the war. Like Vietnam, the massive use of force by the US will lead to a significant increase in the number of civilian casualties, and thus will strengthen the Taliban's position and restore local popular support."
The irony here is that the previous US position denied that the presence of "Daesh" is threatening the balance in Afghanistan. This denial came in response to Russian assertions that the terrorist organization is strengthening its influence in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan. Thus, this is a threat to the Central Asian region.
The April 14 issue of Britain's Times newspaper talked about a US approach to the presence of "Daesh" in Afghanistan, which was similar to a puzzle. This angered the countries of the region that believe that the United States is using "Daesh" as a pretext to reach strategic goals similar to what happened in Iraq and Syria. That is why many analysts regard the use of the mother of all bombs as a way of boosting the ambiguity of the US strategy.
If there is no explanation beyond the analysis of the US decision in using the mother of all bombs, observers argue that the size of the bomb will not change the positions of the Afghan and regional parties, especially after the report of the Russian agency Sputnik, which said that Moscow has a bomb that can be called the father of all bombs that outweighs the strength of the US bomb in destroying the size of the area and the power of the storm caused by the explosion.
In the end, Washington's decision to publicly escalate the situation and the Russian decision to confront it without entering the media bazaars show that the region is in for a heated couple of years. Everyone knows that American wars over the past three decades have all started in Afghanistan.
Al-Ahed News
