Back in February Dubhaltach posted on the situation in Afghanistan here
Now comes this:
"The fact is, except in a training capacity, Al Qaeda hardly has any presence here. This is logical: Why would Al Qaeda send Arab or Chechen operatives to notoriously chauvinistic southern Afghanistan, which hated the domineering Arabs when they were guests of the Taliban, and where foreigners stick out like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? For ideological combat against the West, Iraq is a far more convenient and penetrable battleground, which is one reason why countless more Americans die there than in Afghanistan.
Even the "suicide bombings" in Afghanistan that have garnered mentions in the Western press of late are often something else. In one case I investigated carefully--the target, an Afghan official, was a friend of mine--much evidence contradicted the notion that the attack was a suicide bombing, as it was immediately labeled: the condition of my friend's body, the type and location of the survivors' wounds, and eyewitness descriptions. Everything pointed to a remote-controlled mine planted ahead of time. But no Afghan or U.S. official bothered to collect this evidence or to examine it seriously when it was presented to them.
Why such sloppiness? Because the terrorist suicide bombing explanation suits everyone. Americans are comfortable spending their resources searching for the Al Qaeda bogeyman; the real perpetrators take cover behind the Al Qaeda label; and Afghan officials are absolved of complicity or incompetence and the responsibility to properly investigate.
The steadily worsening situation in southern Afghanistan is not the work of some ineffable Al Qaeda nebula. It is the result of the real depredations of the corrupt and predatory government officials whom the United States ushered into power in 2001, supposedly to help fight Al Qaeda, and has assiduously maintained in power since, along with an "insurgency" manufactured whole cloth across the border in Pakistan--a U.S. ally. The evidence of this connection is abundant: Taliban leaders strut openly around Quetta, Pakistan, where they are provided with offices and government-issued weapons authorization cards; Pakistani army officers are detailed to Taliban training camps; and Pakistani border guards constantly wave self-proclaimed Taliban through checkpoints into Afghanistan.
[snip]
This state of affairs is so bewildering that Kandaharis have reached an astonishing conclusion: The United States must be in league with the Taliban. They reason that America, with its power and riches, could bring an end to the "insurgency" in a month, if it so chose. They figure that America remains a close and munificent ally of Pakistan, the country that is sponsoring the "insurgency," and so the continuing violence must be a deliberate element of U.S. policy. The point is not whether there is any factual basis for this notion, it's that everyone here believes it. In other words, in a stunning irony, much of this city, the Taliban's former stronghold, is disgusted with the Americans not because of their Western culture, but because of their apparent complicity with Islamist extremists.
A closed circuit of shortsighted policies has brought the United States to this pass: All other goals, such as democracy and reconstruction, have been consistently subordinated to the obsession with Al Qaeda, despite lip service to the contrary. Until U.S. decision makers change course and take responsibility for the situation they have created; until they demand accountability from the provincial officials they ushered into power; until they provide material support to those Afghans brave enough to assist them; until they react as strongly to the death of a respected Afghan official as to a grenade lobbed at a military convoy, the ring of fear will continue to close in on Kandahar, until, as residents are now predicting, the city is at war again.
Sarah Chayes runs Arghand, a cooperative business in Kandahar, where she has lived since late 2001. She was a Paris-based reporter for National Public Radio from 1997-2001."
[Emphasis mine - mfi]
You can read the whole thing here.
markfromireland |
