and the Jews. Until Osama bin Laden settled in
Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban
regime, the US and the West had taken little inter-
est once the Soviet Union had been driven out
by the mujahideen armed by the West. The
Taliban were in possession of the capital Kabul
and ruled the greater part of the country they
controlled with harshness, adopting an extreme
form of Islamic law which denied women all edu-
cation and human rights. They enjoyed the
support of Pakistan even though most of the
2 million refugees who had fled the country
were housed primitively in tents on the borders
of Pakistan and in Iran. The events of 9/11
changed the American attitude of neglect.
The Bush administration demanded the
Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. Merely
attacking the terrorist bases with missiles was no
longer enough. If the Taliban did not give up
Osama bin Laden and their support of terrorism,
the Americans intended to get him. The Taliban
chose to resist. In the war that the US unleashed
the Bush administration secured broad inter-
national moral support but only substantial mili-
tary assistance from Prime Minister Tony Blair and
Britain. With armchair military experts predicting
a long and bloody involvement in the inhospitable
terrain of the country, the war was soon over.
The Taliban collapsed in mid-November 2001.
Carefully directed bombing and a few hundred
allied troops had achieved the result. The secret
weapon had been the longstanding rivalry and dis-
sent among the Afghan war leaders. The Taliban
had never subdued the whole country. The
‘Northern Alliance’ of a motley of rival warlords
supported by Iran continued to fight a long-
drawn-out civil war. Now, with the foot soldiers of
the ‘Northern Alliance’, supported by American
and British special forces, helped along by dispers-
ing dollars on tribal leaders willing to turn on the
Taliban, the regime was broken.
The problem of reconstructing the country dev-
astated by more than two decades of invasion and
wars now faced the US and the UN peacekeepers.
A transitional government headed by Hamid
Karzai was installed after a UN-sponsored confer-
ence of Afghan leaders, but can hardly venture
beyond Kabul and had to be protected by
American soldiers. The US was happy to work with
the UN as long as it supplemented and did not
cross American policies. Aid came in but was only
sufficient to prevent living conditions worsening;
in the countryside, stricken by drought, the illicit
trade in opium remained a main means of liveli-
hood. Nation building is a long-term process with
major cities and regions under the control of local
commanders. To ensure that the country does not
slide back into civil wars, the build-up of an effec-
tive Afghanistan national army is only in its infancy;
from bases in Kabul and Bagram a UN-mandated
international force of 5,000 peacekeepers operate,
and 9,000 US troops hunting Bin Laden and other
terrorists are stationed in the country. All this
would not be achieved in just a few years.With the Taliban ousted from Kabul and al-Qaeda
driven out of Afghanistan, the Bush administration
turned its attention to Iraq. Saddam Hussein was
defying the United Nations which demanded veri-
fication of the complete destruction of Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological
and nuclear. Until satisfied Iraq was placed under
sanctions and only permitted to export a limited
quantity of oil to pay for food and medication. UN
inspectors from 1991 to 1998 searched for the
weapons and destroyed large quantities of chemi-
cal installing equipment that could no longer be
replaced without UN knowledge. In December
1998 Saddam Hussein expelled the inspectors
declaring sanctions should be ended and that Iraq
did not possess any prohibited weapons. From
1999 to 2003 no one could tell whether he was
lying. Of his ambitions to acquire them and, if pos-
sible, manufacture a nuclear bomb, there was little
doubt in the West. The two ‘no fly zones’ protect-
ing the Kurds in the north and the Shias in the
south were no guarantee that Saddam Hussein
could be contained, in future years, by economic
measures and from the air. In secret contacts
with the help of Arab intermediaries Blair had
attempted to persuade Saddam to comply with the
UN security resolution to allow inspectors back in
return for a suspension of sanctions, and held out
hopes of their complete abolition. But appease-
ment only made Saddam more intransigent relying
on the weakness and divisions of the West.930 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY