La terrible guerre d’Afghanistan

Les échos étant ce qu’ils sont, étouffés pour les chères oreilles des électeurs (essentiellement US), la guerre en Afghanistan nous reste bien lointaine. Certains récits commencent pourtant à en être publiés. Ils montrent l’extraordinaire intensité des combats, qui justifie parfaitement le jugement de certains militaires venus d’Irak selon lesquels la guerre en Afghanistan est bien plus terrible que la guerre en Irak.

The Independent publie aujourd’hui un article reprenant plusieurs récits d’opérations en cours en Afghanistan. Ces récits font évidemment penser qu’une censure extrêmement stricte règne sur les pertes réelles subies dans cette guerre. Et plus que jamais ces questions destinées à nous hanter longtemps : que sont donc aller faire là-bas les Occidentaux, essentiellement les Européens, pour créer ce désordre épouvantable qui est en train de se transformer en un conflit cruel et terrible, du genre dont jamais aucun étranger n’est sorti vainqueur en Afghanistan? Comment définir, sinon en termes extrêmes et furieux, la responsabilité de ces hommes politiques qui ont engagé les armées de leurs pays dans un conflit aussi cruel et incertain?

Quelques extraits :

«“We headed off to what can only be described as the Wild West.” Those are the words, not of a beleaguered British squaddie, but of a Canadian officer in a unit sent to help rescue our troops in the lawless Afghan province of Helmand. His account, emailed to family and friends back in Canada, is the most detailed to emerge from what commanders have called the most desperate fighting British troops have seen since the Korean War.

»“A British company from 3 Para had been isolated and surrounded by Taliban in... Sangin district centre,” the officer relates. “They had lost four soldiers and were being attacked three to five times a day. They were running out of food and were down to boiling river water.” An attempt to air-drop supplies had failed, with the supplies landing in a Taliban stronghold, so the Canadians were ordered to conduct an immediate emergency resupply operation with their light armoured vehicles (LAVs).

»“When we arrived in Sangin, the locals began throwing rocks and anything they could at us; this was not a friendly place,” the officer reports. “We pushed into the district centre, and during the last few hundred metres we began receiving mortar fire.” By the time they reached the British position, the Canadian convoy had to stay overnight. “We were attacked with small arms RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and mortars three times that night. I still can't believe the Brits have spent over a month living there under these conditions.”

»According to Brigadier Ed Butler, whose 16 Air Assault Brigade spearheaded the 2003 invasion of Iraq, nothing his men experienced there came close to what they have undergone in the past few weeks in Helmand. The Ministry of Defence has been accused of seeking to keep the reality from the British public by excluding journalists and television cameras from the front line. But it has learned that in the 21st century it cannot shut down all flows of information, as a stream of mobile phone videos and emails have made clear.»

Mis en ligne le 1er octobre 2006 à 10H14