As Afghanistan experts in NGOs which actually work among the people frantically try to tell Obama that he is making a big, big, mistake, the arrival of the first of 17,000 more American troops has already borne fruit. It has managed to unite different factions of Taliban under the banner of Mullah Omar, who a month ago was wondering how to stay alive day-to-day against Predator strikes on one hand and radical young Taliban commanders who would like to take his place on the other. Obama single-handedly solved many of his problems. The UK Guardian:
three rival Pakistani Taliban groups have agreed to fight together against international troops in Afghanistan. The pact occurred after Mullah Omar, the cleric who leads the Afghan Taliban, called for all militants fighting in Pakistan to stop and come to Afghanistan to “liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces.” The united group is calling itself Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen, or Council of United Holy Warriors.
Most of the “Taliban” rank-and-file in Afghanistan currently consists of 19-year-old kids who stash their weapons under rocks until some Americans come around, which gives them the chance to fight and make a few bucks.
The Obama plan is missing the forest for the trees, as do almost all present discussions of the insurgency. The West cannot understand that you cannot have 50% of children stunted through malnutrition, a 40% unemployment rate, no alternative to growing poppies as a means to feed your family, and foreign troops on the ground as a nice big red flag and not have an insurgency.
They don’t need a hundred more civilian engineers looking for places to build bridges. Spend $5 billion on indigenous jobs clearing canals and digging ditches for water pipeline, and your problem goes away, with all due respect to regional “no peace without Pakistan” analysis. The West is throwing away its most potent tool: most Afghans hate the Taliban. But a few months of killing these kids, whose crime is to want to feed their families, along with the inevitable civilian casualties and an atrocity or two, and by God now you’ve got a shooting war with real legs. As in, quagmire.
Film-maker Robert Greenwald, on a recent trip to Afghanistan for his project “Rethink Afghanistan” caught up with about 20 men who were turning in their weapons and leaving the Taliban. He wrote in his blog:
Within a few minutes I was engaged in interviewing, talking, and asking the various Taliban how long they had been fighting (from 2-30 years), why they fought, what they wanted to say to the United States, and what they wanted in general (jobs and to take care of their families).
American forces should decline to chase the “Taliban” across the countryside, and aim their guns outward to protect Afghan work-crews. If I were on a road crew leveling ground with a shovel and laying gravel, I would feel real safe with a company of Marines looking outwards around me. The Pakistan Taliban/Al Qaeda problem? Pakistani Pashtuns will likely start slipping across the border to get in on the jobs action.
Day-labor-for-cash jobs, $5 a day, 500,000 of them. No chasing Taliban. Problem solved, we go home in a year.
Fighting the “Taliban” shadow will only generate the hatred necessary to turn this into a genuinely nationalistic, ideology-driven conflict. With fewer desperate, angry young recruits to wear suicide vests, Taliban commanders and ideologues sit twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the phone to ring. Now NGOs, area experts, and I know how Cassandra felt. Please, Mr. President, there is still time to correct course.
Afghanistan may never have a true central government. They have the Loya Jirga. The political goal should be to negotiate neutrality toward the West among all factions, and an inter-factional peace enforced with 90% carrots and 10% sticks. You may never stop Afghans from fighting each other. That’s what Afghans do. But gradually warlordism will give way to a younger, better educated generation who will leave that behind and discover better ways to live life.
(Cross-posted from MyDD.)
Another good article.
Guys, you are showing progress.
Now, will you take a look in documents that are not that easy to find, and investigate and discuss reasons for US military presence in region of the Middle East?
It is not 9/11, it is just CASUS BELI.
If one could come up with simple solution like work-for-cash-don't-shoot-arround, be certain that military commanders and analysts could do the same.
But, for some reason, they need to go on with war and shooting, they do not want war to end at all.
Their intentions are known, but we are looking for reason for such irationale behaviour.
I mean, YOU should look for reasons for such irational behaviour.
SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA’S POLICY IN AFGHANISTAN
Until this site deletes this, freedom loving “progressives that they are”. . . . There are millions of progressive, liberal Democrats like me that have a differing perspective on Afghanistan. You might say we believe what Barack Obama believes. That Afghanistan is a lawless country where the terrorists that attacked us on 9-11 thrive because of the safe harbor and support they are provided by their ideological brethren the Taliban. You know those guys don't you? the ones that shoot people in the head in soccer stadiums and behead women for going to school. We must never leave Afghanistan in the control of the despots; all they will do if allowed to prosper freely, is continue to train and plot attacks against the West.
So spoke Zaratustra … I mean liberal progressive democrat which advocates for free use of cluster munnitions and white phosphorous bombs against Gaza civilians, and justified such atrocity by simple stating that lives of Palestinians are less valuable from lives of their counterparts in US-made F-16 dropping banned munnitions.
Also, for this progressive democrat (did he mention he is also liberal one?!) all citizens of Afghanistan are terrorists which plotted 9/11. Now, that must be the biggest plot ever since it included over 27 000 000 people, and yet nobody told anything to anybody.
Reason for such efficient Afghan counter intelligence might be in fact that attackers were from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, countries friendly to USA, where one of hijackers was an US marine officer couple of years prior to attack.
But, there is a fact which raises number of questions. FBI received number of warnings regarding possible terrorist attack about three months before attack took place, and russian and german intelligence warned CIA about strong possibility of such event. They also provided some guidelines where to look.
And, what happened? OK, we all know what happened.
US went on a man hunt, but it turned out they failed to catch their man. In deed, it is their man because he was hired by CIA, and maybe he still receive paychecks, but nobody cares to check the address.
Poor old dementive Central LACK Of Intelligence. I mean, is it possible they hired morons only?
And, if US troops leave Afghanistan there will be a massive retaliation against those which aided US occupation, which will bring to total destruction of poppy, opium and heroin production, and USA will lose its regular supplier since 98% of world heroin production comes from Afghanistan.
That's quite nasty, leaving poor old US high and dry, without dope and stuff.
And, there is also a small issue of securing major oil pipeline route to Central Asia.
PLEASE NOTE THAT POSTS LIKE MINE THAT ARE NOT EXTREMIST ARE CENSORED BY BNF AND TAKEN DOWN. THERE IS NO PLACE HERE FOR MODERATE PROGRESSIVES AND LIBERALS LIKE MYSELF HERE. PLEASE DO NOT SUPPORT CENSORSHIP.
SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA’S POLICY IN AFGHANISTAN
Until this site deletes this, freedom loving “progressives that they are”. . . . There are millions of progressive, liberal Democrats like me that have a differing perspective on Afghanistan. You might say we believe what Barack Obama believes. That Afghanistan is a lawless country where the terrorists that attacked us on 9-11 thrive because of the safe harbor and support they are provided by their ideological brethren the Taliban. You know those guys don't you? the ones that shoot people in the head in soccer stadiums and behead women for going to school. We must never leave Afghanistan in the control of the despots; all they will do if allowed to prosper freely, is continue to train and plot attacks against the West.
Go get a life ….
I think news channels like Al Jazeera and press tv (Iranian) are puting a real dent in puplic opinion worldwide. Although they carry a bias all of there own, some of their reporting is first class.
Note, dont trust “Mosiac”, its an internet report that pretends that it is international reporting the news of the arab nation… it is neocon propaganda machine that has no problem with churning out blatent lies in the push for war with Iran.
“Obama wants the Afghans to clamp down on corruption”…. whoooooaaaa??? hahahahahahahaha
A good place to start is here:
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=why+we+…
Al Jazeera is a biased, journalistic pretender. There is no such thing as a free and independent press in the Middle East, excepting Israel. Of course no country comes close to the completely free and independent journalism that one finds in the United States; intellectually and ideologically diverse running the gamut from extremist communist newspapers to extremist right-wing media.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SV_mvc4zKw
US media are completely controlled and censored, while other non-newe channels are used as propaganda tool.
It takes about 10 seconds to determine if something was produced and filmed in USA. Even National Geographic is telling bollocks. like “we never lost an F-117 in combat” or “we never lost an Apache AH-64 in combat”.
They did, and it happened in same theatre. But, they lie to US public, and US public “thinks” nobody ever shot down those crafts. That is illusion which can bring dengerous consequences.
Al-Jazeera, Russia today are just examples. There is a lot of european media which tend to investigate and brong light to events which took place in last 10 years, and find real causes.
Michel Moore's films are often broadcasted by european state owned channels.
US never had free and independent journalism.
Untill Internet came, that is. ;)
Now, big question.
Where are US posters?
11 FEBRUARY –KABUL PROVINCE, KABUL CITY, EIGHT TALIBAN SUICIDE ATTACKERS BURST INTO THE JUSTICE MINISTRY, WHILE OTHERS STRUCK AT THE PRISONS DIRECTORATE AND EDUCATION MINISTRY IN COORDINATED ATTACKS.
•FIVE OF THE ATTACKERS STORMED THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE BUILDING, PROMPTING A THREE-HOUR FIREFIGHT WITH AFGHAN SOLDIERS AND POLICE. A WITNESS SAID ONE BOMBER BLEW HIMSELF UP AT THE ENTRANCE GATE AFTER SHOOTING DEAD A POLICEMAN, AND ANOTHER DETONATED HIS DEVICE AT ONE OF THE BUILDING'S DOORS.
•TWO SUICIDE ATTACKERS DETONATED THEIR EXPLOSIVES AT A PRISON NEAR THE KHAIR KHANA DISTRICT, NORTH OF KABUL.
•AT THE EDUCATION MINISTRY, ABOUT HALF A MILE AWAY, AFGHAN SECURITY OFFICERS KILLED ANOTHER SUICIDE BOMBER. HE DETONATED EXPLOSIVES BUT DID NOT INJURE ANYONE.
•DETAILS OF THE APPROXIMATELY 26 KILLED AND 60 INJURED WERE NOT CLEAR, BUT AFGHAN DEFENSE MINISTRY SPOKESMAN GEN. MOHAMMED ZAHIR AZIMI SAID MOST OF THE CASUALTIES WERE AT THE JUSTICE MINISTRY, INCLUDING CIVILIANS AND GUARDS.
•THE ATTACKS OCCURRED A DAY BEFORE RICHARD HOLBROOKE, THE NEW US SPECIAL ENVOY TO AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN, WAS EXPECTED TO VISIT KABUL
•12 FEBRUARY –PAKTIKA PROVINCE, SHRENA, AN ELDERLY MAN, WHO APPEARED TO HAVE DIFFICULTY WALKING, BLEW HIMSELF UP AND KILLED A POLICEMAN WHO WAS HELPING HIM OUTSIDE THE OFFICES OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR.
•12 FEBRUARY –NIMRUZ PROVINCE, A SUICIDE BOMBER ATTACKED AN AFGHAN CONVOY, KILLING ONE SOLDIER AND WOUNDING TWO MORE.
•23 FEBRUARY –NIMRUZ PROVINCE, ZARANG, TWO SUICIDE BOMBERS BLEW THEMSELVES UP WITHIN MINUTES OF EACH OTHER AT AN ANTI-DRUG POLICE STATION, KILLING ONE OFFICER AND WOUNDING TWO MORE.
THE FIRST SUICIDE ATTACKER, WEARING CIVILIAN CLOTHES, APPROACHED THE STATION AT ABOUT 11 A.M.; WHEN POLICE SHOUTED FOR THE MAN TO STOP, HE BLEW HIMSELF UP, CAUSING NO CASUALTIES. MINUTES LATER, A SECOND ATTACKER WEARING A POLICE UNIFORM APPROACHED THE BUILDING AND BLEW HIMSELF UP, KILLING ONE OFFICER AND WOUNDING TWO MORE
14 JANUARY –KABUL, TALIBAN FORCES ATTACKED THE SERENA HOTEL DURING A NORWEGIAN EMBASSY MEETING, KILLING 7 PEOPLE. TWO OF THE HOTEL'S SECURITY GUARDS, A NORWEGIAN JOURNALIST AND A US CITIZEN WERE AMONG THOSE KILLED AND AT LEAST 6 OTHERS WERE INJURED.
TALIBAN SPOKESMAN ZABIULLAH MUJAHID TOLD THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FOUR MILITANTS ATTACKED THE HOTEL AND THE ATTACK WAS PLANNED TO COINCIDE WITH A VISIT BY NORWEGIAN FOREIGN MINISTER JONAS GAHR STOERE.
THE ATTACKERS STORMED THE SECURITY GATE AND THE BOMBER BLEW HIMSELF UP IN THE ARRIVALS COURT. OTHER ATTACKERS THEN BEGAN FIRING ON ANYONE THEY SAW.
AFGHAN INTELLIGENCE CHIEF AMRULLAH SALAH SAID 4 SUSPECTS WERE ARRESTED, INCLUDING A MAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE CARRIED OUT ONE OF MULTIPLE SUICIDE BOMBINGS, BUT “FOR SOME REASON DID NOT.” THE OTHERS WERE A MAN SAID TO HAVE TRANSPORTED THE ATTACKERS TO THE HOTEL AND TWO SUSPECTED OF ACCOMMODATING THEM IN THE CITY.
JANUARY 2008
An list goes on. Afghans are not interested in foreign military presence in their country.
The biggest reason for my disagrement with US policy in the region of Middle East is that US is causing troubles on much larger scale.
That can not be fought by weapons, but using rationale mind and thought process.
…and remember that new jet that the U.S public is going to pay 1 billion for a peice because they are meant to be radar invisable? The Russians have a tracking system designed to follow this things exhaust, they were showing it of at a British arms convention 5 years ago where they were tracking an f-117 at the same show! It was on the BBC the one day then “poof!”… the story was buried. They have been making sales all over the world — Iran has this system!
Thats what happens when wall street has the military industrial congrasional complex in one pocket, the corporate media in the other and the government securely placed way up their ass.
Were is the profit in rational mind and thought process? Afghanistan is being fought for the same reason America attacks every defensless nation… to make money. So although they have lost every war that they have fought since 1945… the capitalist on Wall Street could argue that for him every war has been one. I mean, its not like the rich privilaged 10 have to fight now is it. Fighting and dieing is the job of the flag waving, god fearing, overweight, lactose intolerant i-phone loving corporate media believing, American idol drooling “baa baa” sheep.
Oh, sorry…. you are fighting for “freedom”… sheeeeeeez :/
The internet is friggin awsome… we need to fight to hold onto this. You can bet there are folks in the States plotting against it right now.
If they try anything then out will come the pitchforks.
Thanks coyote for making my point and the point of millions of other around the work as to why coalition forces must win in Afghanistan. Thanks for the long list of terrorist mass murder and the killing of innocent Afghans who seek only freedom and civility for themselves and their families. And thanks also for showing in my opinion what a despotic supporter of terrorism you really are.
Therer is no corporate US media. I can start a newspaper tomorrow. I can write what I want, print it where I want and sell it or give it a way however I want. The right to freedom of speech is sacrosanct here in America. There are literally hundreds of daily debate shows on every major news network, with representatives from the right and the left — all points of view are discussed and debated. Once again, facts trump bias and gratuitous hatred of America.
Any words that you don't understand, may I recommend dictionary.com
“Therer is no corporate US media”
that says it all about you John… that sums up your mind completely. Do me a favour, dont talk about others drinking cool aid, ok?
I can go out today ad buy the Socialist Workers Daily or the Wall Street Journal. I can watch the extreme left LINK TV or the right wing Fox. There is no controlled media. We have the freest press in the world. Total free speech. Anyone can write or air whatever they want. You are just dumb.
flagged
Too bad someone didn't flag your mother before she dropped you in the toilet.
Censor away!!! LOL
See, thats ok because that was funny. but the venomus stuff is boring and pointless. I dont know what you constantly go after folks. If you are such an “intellectual” then surely you could make your case conclusively… I have a sneek suspicion that quite a lot of the time you know that you are wrong (see arguments on Venezuella democracy and Israeli terrorism) but you have already picked sides so you use ad-hominim attacks to try and bully. With the introduction of the “flag” those days are over… never worked on me anyways, you should have figured that out be now.
Its nice to be polite John, you should try it.
You still don't get it. You deserve venom – because you are reactionary scum and what you preach would result in rampant terrorism and the deaths of millions. You do not deserve even a modicum of decency.
you see now thats just silly
PLEASE NOTE THAT POSTS LIKE MINE THAT ARE NOT EXTREMIST ARE CENSORED BY BNF AND TAKEN DOWN. THERE IS NO PLACE HERE FOR MODERATE PROGRESSIVES AND LIBERALS LIKE MYSELF HERE. PLEASE DO NOT SUPPORT CENSORSHIP.
SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA’S POLICY IN AFGHANISTAN
Until this site deletes this, freedom loving “progressives that they are”. . . . There are millions of progressive, liberal Democrats like me that have a differing perspective on Afghanistan. You might say we believe what Barack Obama believes. That Afghanistan is a lawless country where the terrorists that attacked us on 9-11 thrive because of the safe harbor and support they are provided by their ideological brethren the Taliban. You know those guys don't you? the ones that shoot people in the head in soccer stadiums and behead women for going to school. We must never leave Afghanistan in the control of the despots; all they will do if allowed to prosper freely, is continue to train and plot attacks against the West.
thats 2 I.P addresses down… you are on your last one now. I guess its really time for goodbye now so…
goodbye chump.
You are spamming the blog ….
[...] 17,000 teachers or 17,000 doctors, not 17,000 soldiers. Absent from Brooks’s column was Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis; the rampant malnutrition and unemployment that can’t be solved through military means. As [...]
I'll be here when I wish to be. See? You are reading this now aren't you? I don't care how long it stays up.
thats 2 I.P addresses down… you are on your last one now. I guess its really time for goodbye now so…
goodbye troll
You are spamming the blog ….