US May Undermine Karzai with PM;
8 Police Killed by Taliban;
The Obama administration is so discouraged by the poor performance of the government of Afghan president Hamid Karzai that it is contemplating appointing a prime minister who would do the serious work that Karzai appears to avoid. The plan raises questions of constitutionality in Afghan law, and has a "great man theory" that what is wrong with Afghanistan is personalistic and could be fixed with a new executive officer.
Taliban ambushed Afghan police near Spin Boldak south of Qandahar late on Monday, killing at least 8 of them. Some observers wonder if the attack came in revenge for the killing of 10 militants, including Mawlavi Hasan, a senior figure in a NATO air strike earlier the same day.
Elsewhere, in Afghanistan, militants bombed a mosque. NATO troops shot an Afghan driver for approaching a checkpoint too fast and seeming to disregard orders to halt.
The sting of the killing of 4 Canadian troops over the weekend in Afghanistan was increased by mean-spirited comments at Fox Cable News calling Canadian soldiers "effeminate." Rightwing American bigotry toward Canadians and French, and jokes branding both as cowardly, is always despicable, but never moreso than when our NATO allies are fighting and dying alongside American troops in perhaps the most challenging terrain in the world. I don't think Faux CN should be let off with a mere mumbled apology.
Jean McKenzie interviews former Taliban officials and a researcher in Qandahar who stress that the groups that NATO calls "Taliban" are not al-Qaeda and are different from one another. The "Old Taliban" of Mulla Omar, it is alleged, are pragmatic and a deal could be made with them. Taliban are said to control 10% of Afghanistan, and violence between them and the Kabul government left 2000 civilians dead last year, a 40% increase over 2007.
The results of the policy review on Afghanistan ordered by President Barack Obama will be released on Friday.
The Obama administration agrees with European allies that an exit strategy needs to be found from Afghanistan. By this phrase they seem to mean that they are determined to train and pay for more Afghan police and soldiers, who can provide security in NATO's stead, and that they will depend on on regional allies like Pakistan. (Cole: It just should be pointed out that the training of Afghan security forces has gone much more slowly than NATO had hoped, and Pakistan is unable to deal with its own northwest, much less with Afghanistan.)
Aid organizations are warning that drought in Afghanistan is threatening thousands, perhaps millions of Afghans. Taliban attacks on aid convoys are exacerbating the problem:
' Based on UN estimates, some 2.2 million tons of cereal grains need to be imported into the Afghanistan this year just to meet basic needs. Commercial imports were expected to supply 1.5 million tons. But, in the current situation--marked by high prices and the smallest wheat harvest in years--any meaningful commercial imports of food and agricultural inputs are unlikely. The bulk of the nearly one-million-ton shortfall will need to be met by the international donor community. '
Controversy continues to rage about 5 men killed in a US/Afghan raid in Kunduz. Afghans say the men were innocent civilians, while the US and NATO maintain that the dead had been militants.
Aljazeera English has video about continuing Afghan protests over the US and NATO air strikes that often kill innocents.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/25/2009 12:15:00 AM
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7 Comments:
The American new logic is flawed. Having accepted that there is no military solution, they then say that the military is needed to stabilize the country before exit.
The only solution is to leave swiftly. The Afghnis see an occupation and they will fight until it ends.
Stability will come from development. The Europeans have had great success with their projects, while the US have "done an Iraq" and wasted the funds through corruption and ineptitude. The solution is to give more funds (still a fraction of the military occupation cost) to the groups who have been successful.
The US Think Tanks and Washington geniuses don't get it, but are addicted to idiotic cunning plans which are then put into practice.
I really am getting so old. The way they're discouraged with the Hamid Karzai puppet does jog my memory of an earlier generation of the best and the brightest getting discouraged with the Ngo Dinh Diem puppet and getting rid of him. That didn't work out so well.
The revolting thing is how many millions of people minding their own business around the world have to succumb to mass murder at the hands of these earnest imperial do-gooders, before they're finally driven out. When you can't keep track of how many round millions, as in Vietnam, or even how many hundreds of thousands, as in Iraq, you must be killing way too many innocent people - and the world is entitled to long for some relief from such people.
And the thing is, Obama has made it quite clear that he means to continue in the same path - enabling the mass murderers abroad just as he enables the looters at home like AIG and Goldman Sachs.
Thanks as always for the news round up, Dr. Cole.
Why did the Taliban attack that mosque? It seems to me that the article you linked omitted the most important information.
"The Obama administration agrees with European allies that an exit strategy needs to be found from Afghanistan."
May I suggest that Henry Kissinger would be the best advisor with regard to an exit strategy. The key concepts will be "Afghanization" and "Peace vit honor."
Of course, these concepts may have to be re-branded slightly to avoid negative associations with past exit strategies.
Karzai could be the Ngo Dinh Diem of Afghanistan--the local leader who begins to fail, and is ousted, to be followed by a series of increasingly inept puppets.
I think foreigners are clueless about the Pashtuns (which means that I am as well).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/world/asia/25sharif.html?ref=world
March 25, 2009
U.S. Weighs Sharif as Partner in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ
The Obama administration must decide whether Nawaz Sharif is likely to be a reliable ally or an obstructionist force.
[Here is the terrifyingly imperialist way in which Americans think.]
There's a major, major component of the Afghanistan war that seems to be routinely ignored, though Holbrook mentioned it recently: India. India is heavily involved in Afghanistan. The problem with this should be obvious to ANYONE, even if one is unaware of the decades long tug of war between Pakistan and India over Afghanistan. For one thing, this shows how Afghanistan is yet another part of the already-started resource wars; both India and the US want it as a stronghold in Central Asia (presumably we are in cahoots on this). At the same time, Pakistan feels like Russia, feels like a surrounding action is taking place. It's not hard to see why that would make it hard to impossible for Pakistan to tamp down the Taliban wholeheartedly.
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