The impact of technology on the war in Afghanistan - Research Paper Example

The Taliban has explicitly expressed their support of the Al-Qaeda, a global network of terrorists, and in September 9, 2011, Al-Qaeda operatives executed Ahmad Shah Massoud, a prominent commander of the Northern Alliances. Such killing assured Osama Bin Laden of the Taliban’s support and refuge after the 9/11 Attacks (Council on Foreign Relations). And so, the seed for the biggest and most wide-spread war on terrorism has been sown; the war on Afghanistan was bred, needing only the attacks on US soil to spark the powder keg.

The problem about Afghan stability and counterterrorist efforts is not simple a problem; the Taliban is continually able to hold the Afghan citizens silent about their presence by the effective monopoly of fear, threatening the lives of Afghan should they provide any hint to the US troops concerning the Taliban or the Al-Qaeda operations (Ferguson). Poor governance, ethnic conflict, and administrative mismanagement have crippled the Afghan government system in trying to address the problem of terrorism in the post-Taliban democracy.

Terrorists still plague the Afghan communities, storing ammunitions and high-powered rifles, and in some case, a Taliban flag, in places so close to Afghan homes. Security in the Afghan state and the elimination of terrorist cells is highly important to maintain global peace, and such is the goal of the United States for its involvement in places so far away from the New World. After the 1993 bombing on the World Trade Center and the more famous 9/11 attacks, global security has become US security as these attacks against the US sprang not from the American continents, but from places across the oceans.

In order for the US government to ensure the safety of its people, it must secure the safety of the entire world from threats as eminent as the Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and all other terrorist networks and militant insurgent groups. As part of the study on the war in Afghanistan, there is a need to define counterinsurgency from counterterrorism, and in order to fulfill such, there is still a need to define the root-words that comprises the two military labels. Counterinsurgency is a concatenation of two words: counter and insurgency.

Counterinsurgency is any organized military activity designed to combat insurgencies (Merriam-Webster). These are military activities geared towards combating insurgent groups that are against the central authority not recognized as belligerents. The term counterinsurgency was first used in the 1960s to combat communist-led revolutionists and insurgents, which Nikita Khrushkev termed as the “war of national liberation”, occurring all around the world that are against U.S. interest (Answers Corporation).

The term replaced counterrevolution for public propaganda, since a revolution has a good connotation to the American public. Counterterrorism, on the other hand, is a concatenation of the words counter and terrorism. Counterterrorism refers to the practices, not necessarily military in nature, that acts as a response to terrorist threats and/or acts, be it real or imputed (Zalman). Terrorism is a criminal act that influences and audience beyond the immediate victim (Research-Terrorism). It seeks to achieve goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature by inflicting terror and anxiety through the use of military equipments, usually aimed at civilian targets.