Lest we forget, Afghanistan
Afghanistan was where Osama Bin Laden had his headquarters. The Bushies' first "response" to 9/11 was to take over the country with raw military force, tossing out the Taleban regime that had been so hospitable to OBL.
So you might think that today, four years after 9/11 and nearly four years after the collapse of the Taleban regime, Afghanistan might be well on the road to a return to normalcy, with a pro-US government well ensconced there?
Yes, you might think that-- if the whole project of "remaking" Afghanistan along more democratic lines had not been left to the Bush administration... Which, um, decided for the heck of it to launch another nasty little war along the way there.
As it happens, Afghanistan has a parliamentary election on September 18. And in the lead-up to it there have been a lot of (in-)security incidents of some seriousness.
As usual, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting has been doing a good job on the ground there. Kabul-based reported Wahidullah Amani filed this report yesterday:
- Candidates are being targeted, election workers killed, and pro-government mullahs attacked, along with hundreds of police and civilians.
Many analysts and Afghan observers attribute the increase in violence to the Taleban’s desire to derail the poll...
The list of victims is grim. The upsurge can be said to have begun on June 1, when terrorists detonated a bomb in a mosque in Kandahar, killing 20 people. Since then, at least six candidates have been confirmed killed, as well as five election workers and dozens of police.
Ten pro-government mullahs have been attacked, leaving six of them dead. In the last few days of August, Mullah Amir Akhund was beheaded in Helmand province. Self-proclaimed Taleban spokesman Latif Hakimi took responsibility for the assassination, saying, “We killed him because he was a candidate in the elections.”
The mullah was not in fact standing, according to provincial officials, but was a supporter of a prominent candidate in Helmand.
On September 3, five men were kidnapped in Kandahar province, including one provincial council candidate. While the interior ministry will not confirm their deaths, Hakimi claims that the five were summarily tried by a Taleban court and executed.
A British lorry driver was kidnapped on August 31 on the Kandahar-Herat highway, and his body was found three days later, with the Taleban claiming responsibility.
A parliamentary candidate was killed on September 3 by a mine planted outside his home in Helmand. Violent demonstrations erupted in Khost, mullahs were stoned in Kapisa province, and bombs were found in Shahr-e-Naw Park, right in the centre of Kabul.
The JEMB [Joint Electoral Management Body], however, refuses to concede that such incidents have anything to do with the elections.
“The actual incident levels are markedly reduced [compared with last year],” said [Australian JEMB head Jim] Grierson. “No-go areas have mostly been removed… the violence is seemingly not directed at elections. In fact, the only time any of our people were ever put in harm’s way, or actually harmed, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
This upbeat assessment rings somewhat hollow in the face of warnings issued by security experts. The Afghanistan NGO Security Office, ANSO, a non-government organisation that provides security information to the international community, has issued a general warning stating that there have been credible threats of major violence before the polls.
According to press reports, the United Nations is advising its non-essential personnel to take a vacation over the election period.
- Twenty-two hardened Taleban fighters slip down a dirt track in the darkness of this late August night, closely watching the beams from the headlights of two approaching vehicles.
The men move from the track and crouch down in a dry water-channel. Safety catches are released on Kalashnikovs and rocket-launchers made ready to fire. But as the four-wheel-drive vehicles draw near, they are seen to be carrying civilians. The Taleban stop the cars, and the travellers - from a nearby town in Ghazni province - are briefly searched and then allowed to go on their way.
The Taleban squad appears fleetingly disappointed at not having confronted a patrol of United States or Afghan troops. But the young fighters shrug it off and prepare to look for other prey.
"We are absolutely sure we will win the war since we have the greatest support of all -- that is, God. Our enemies put all their trust in material equipment and have no firm morale to win a fight, as they are not motivated by religion," said the group's commander, Mullah Habib Rahman Aziz.
The mullah’s men are aged between 18 and 25 and say they have suffered virtually no losses in their battle to inflict casualties and oust what they term the American-orchestrated regime that has ruled Afghanistan for almost four years.
Only two of the young men are veterans of the fighting that took place between the Taleban and the Northern Alliance before the US bombing campaign finally drove the fundamentalists from power in 2001. The rest are new recruits in what many now call the neo-Taleban, joined in a jihad or holy war against the foreigners.
A lull follows the disappearance of the two vehicles down the now track. Mullah Aziz uses it to explain that, contrary to what the US and Afghan military and the politicians suggest, the Taleban’s aim is not specifically to disrupt the September 18 parliamentary and provincial council elections.
Rather, it is part of a long-term strategy – a commitment to topple the government of President Hamed Karzai and expel its foreign supporters, he says. And he warns that the fighting will become "more and more bloody as the American troops get further into our areas and villages".
"Our warfare is a continuing jihad. It will not stop with the elections or other dramas. It will go on as long as necessary, until we bring a pure Islamic government to Afghanistan,” said the mullah.
Since March, when heavy winter snow in the insurgents' hideouts began to melt, the Taleban and its allies have been intensifying their attacks.
At the United Nations in August, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Afghanistan faced a worrying resurgence of violence despite the presence of 10,000 peacekeepers under NATO command and about 20,000 US-led coalition troops.
"Afghanistan today is suffering from a level of insecurity, especially in the south and parts of the east, not seen since the departure of the Taleban," he said. "There have been troubling indications that remnants of the Taleban and other extremist groups are reorganising."
Bombings and landmine explosions in May were up 40 per cent from the same month the previous year in the south and southeast, Annan said.
And 2005 has undoubtedly been the most deadly year for the US military since it ousted the Taleban.
Meanwhile, as this page from Nationmaster will tell you, the people of Afghanistan continue to suffer. On just about all of the health indicators listed there, Afghanistan is very near the bottom indeed. Except for "infant mortality rate", where it is 2nd out of 179 nations; and the probability for a female to die before the age of 5 (3rd out of 191 nations).
Those last two listings are, of course, ones where no-one wants to score "high" figures.
Helena,
Perhaps you can share with me what other kind of “military power” there is; other than “raw military power”? Would it be ‘moderate military power’? Say, as in; ‘we’ll shot at you but only 10 times….and then you can shot back at us ten times’?
I mean you sound like a dirty shirt defense lawyer giving an opening statement in an armed robbery case or something. The qualifying term “raw” is proffer for no other reason that to ‘set the scene’ so to speak.
Look, I HATE Bush. I HATE and oppose the Iraq War and want American troops out now. But I was, and am, glad we went into Afghanistan. I only wish the US military did not screw up (to the extent they did screw up) and miss OBL at Tora Bora. But that noted…..who in the world, however much one opposes Bush AND knowing something about Afghan history, could have thought that the country would be ‘well on the way to the road to normalcy’ after 4 years. Or that the Pakistan inspired Taliban would be completely vanquished in that same time frame given; the haven provided them by PAK intelligence services and the cultural and ethnic ties the Taliban shares with the residents in the Northwest Regions? You give the reader an elaborate straw man and then figuratively tear it to threads.
Jon
One thing is absolutely certain: Afghanistan will not be rebuilt. That's because it was never "built" in the first place.
It's interesting that the Australian security expert, Grierson, agrees with the Taliban commander, Mullah Aziz, that the violence is not directed primarily at the elections but at the democratic government in general.
One of the fascinating things about the internet is that people will offer as evidence quotes that don't support their position. I see this on the left and the right, mostly on blogs. Now Helena, in this blog entry said, regarding the election, "And in the lead-up to it [the election] there have been a lot of (in-)security incidents of some seriousness." Feel free to accuse me of nit-picking.
jonst - what's a "dirty shirt defense lawyer?"
WarrenW - Your statement that Afghanistan was never "built" in the first place displays such apalling ignorance and crass cultural insensitivity that I am nearly - but not quite - speechless. Pretty soon people like you will be saying the same thing about New Orleans. I've never done this before, but I am now going to ask you to apologize for that statement. Are you man enough?
Forgetting and Afghanistan - it's odd that you should put these words together the way you do.
What I mean is that looking back, it's clear that before the USA sent its bombers, its invaders, its bribe money, and its stooge, Karzai, half way round the world to smash a country, people had forgotten a lot.
People had forgotten Imperialism. We knew very well that Imperialism is a phenomenon in itself and not a reaction to socialist revolution. Yet after the "fall" of the Soviet Union people like myself became complacent. We had tacitly come to the conclusion that we had a breathing space.
The US invasion of Afghanistan was the event that woke people up. In other words it is because of Afghanistan that we remembered what we were supposed to be doing. I don't know for sure but I think it was the same all around the world.
We have learnt that we have to stick to our revolutionary job, summer and winter, year in and year out. G W Bush taught us that with this stupid and useless piece of smashing and killing. I regret it. I don't know how I could forget it even if I wanted to.
Let's never forget again. Let's now make it impossible for the imperialists to do these things any more.
OK, I waited 3 days. I must now conclude that WarrenW is not man enough to either apologize or defend his position.
Your site is realy very interesting.