Thursday 28th of November 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

same old, same old .....

same old, same old .....

One of the few benefits of the Afghan election might be a more realistic understanding in the U.S. and Europe - particularly in Britain - of the mechanics of Afghan politics. These were eloquently summarized in his resignation letter to the U.S. State Department by Matthew Hoh, the senior American civilian representative in Zabul province. He was previously a U.S. Marine officer in Iraq. Mr. Hoh makes the important point that the U.S. has joined one side in what is effectively a 35-year-long civil war in Afghanistan. He sees this as being between the urban, educated, secular, modern Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional Pashtun.

"The U.S. and Nato presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified," concludes Mr. Hoh. "I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul."

Mr. Hoh's observations are confirmed by opinion polls in Afghanistan. The majority of Afghans do not want more foreign troops. They think their arrival will mean more dead Afghans. The areas where the Taliban is most acceptable is where U.S. and allied planes and artillery have killed civilians. The idea that the U.S. Army is going to turn into a glorified Peace Corps is romantic and unrealistic.

Washington and London should really wonder after Afghanistan's farcical election if their political and military investment in the country is worth it. Their policy of propping up and strengthening the central government looks more ludicrous than before. There is something sickening when British troops had their legs blown off securing polling stations where Afghans could vote, when the British-supported government in Kabul was busily fabricating the vote so the presence or absence of polling booths was entirely irrelevant.

http://www.alternet.org/story/143697/in_afghanistan%2C_victory_for_a_crooked%2C_corrupt%2C_and_discredited_government?page=entire

patronising tone and sodomy...

From the Independent

There is a dangerous misunderstanding outside Afghanistan about what "corruption and mismanagement" mean in an Afghan context and a potentially lethal underestimation of how these impact on American and British forces.

The shadow Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, argued in The Independent on Sunday a few days ago that though "corruption and establishing good governance" are not unimportant, "we need to recognise that Afghan governance is likely to look very different from governance as we know it in the West". Leaving aside the patronising tone of the statement, this shows that Mr Fox fundamentally misunderstands what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan. Corruption and mismanagement do not just mean that the police are on the take or that no contract is awarded without a bribe. It is much worse than that. For instance, one reason Afghan villagers prefer to deal with the Taliban rather than the government security forces is that the latter have a habit of seizing their sons at checkpoints and sodomising them.

None of our business is what Mr Fox, who may be British Defence Secretary by this time next year, would presumably say. We are not in Afghanistan for the good government of Afghans: "Our troops are not fighting and dying in Afghanistan for Karzai's Government, nor should they ever be." But the fact that male rape is common practice in the Afghan armed forces has, unfortunately, a great deal to do with the fate of British soldiers.

There was a horrified reaction across Britain last week when a 25-year-old policeman called Gulbuddin working in a police station in the Nad Ali district of Helmand killed five British soldiers when he opened fire with a machine gun on them. But the reason he did so, according to Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times, citing two Afghans who knew Gulbuddin, was that he had been brutally beaten, sodomised and sexually molested by a senior Afghan officer whom he regarded as being protected by the British.