Sunday, January 4, 2009
A Word About the Afghan "Resistance"
I have a new blogging buddy, Layla Anwar, except that she doesn’t blog to make buddies. She is very good at making enemies. The first time I visited her blog I was reading a post that told everyone to fuck off. Yes, in those words.
Layla is a Sunni Arab Iraqi and a big fan of Saddam Hussein. Most visitors to her site are either sycophants or people who would like to kill her – not many in the middle. Some of her “best” enemies have actually come out and said they plan to kill her.
I'm one of the rare "middle" people. I disagree with much maybe even most of what she says, but I genuinely like her. She is an exceptional person.
Layla's main blog is Arab Woman Blues. If you visit this site you must be prepared for some prose that will likely get your blood boiling either in favor of her, or against her.
She can also be quite funny as her other blog Uncensored Arab Woman Blues shows with all her issues on dating in Iraq.
You have to keep in mind when reading Arab prose that it tends to the extreme in terms of emotion. It's difficult to keep from getting wrapped up in emotion when you read it. I guess that’s the point.
Anyway, in the midst of a particularly emotional post vilifying the Imperialist American, Zionist, Safavid Shiite Iranian cabal that has ruined the Iraqi paradise that once existed under Saint Saddam, she strays into areas about which she perhaps should have remained silent - namely, Afghanistan.
In the post she gives three cheers (sort of) for what we in the West would otherwise call “the bad guys.” Of course she can be forgiven because she gets her news from the news agencies/web sites that are pushing the idea that what we are trying to do is nothing less than destroy Sunnis and usher in the American Zionist Safavid state with forced conversion to that apostate sect. In the Afghanistan detour she says: “…where the Afghan Resistance is making strides.”
At this point I take issue. Which resistance is she talking about? Is it the “resistance” in Kandahar that sprays acid in the faces of schoolgirls? Or is it the “resistance” in Kandahar and Khost and across the border in the “ungovernable provinces” of Pakistan that burns down schools and murders teachers? Perhaps it is the resistance that blew up fourteen elementary schoolchildren in Khost the last week of December?
Perhaps it’s the drug lord “resistance” in Helmand and Herat. But, since a large part of their “crop” is ending up in Iran, which now has the highest rate of heroin addiction in the world, that’s probably OK. Anything that rots the evil Safavid state from within is good.
Or maybe she means the criminal gangs (some of which include the corrupt police) who primarily rob merchants and ordinary Afghans. Maybe she means the kidnapping rings that primarily target Afghan school children (especially the girls, many of whom end up raped) and the occassional Westerner. If she means the occasional Pakistani or ARAB suicide bomber, most of whom target civilians in busy markets, they are not well-received by the local populace.
If by making strides she means terrorizing the civilian populace as opposed to attacking the Imperialist Americans and their allies, well that is primarily what the "bad guys" do here.
In reality, official corruption and ordinary crime are the biggest problems in Afghanistan. If the corruption can be negated, then the crime will dwindle and the situation for ordinary Afghans will drastically improve.
There is no comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq. The circumstances are entirely different. The US and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) do not have a single tank in Afghanistan. I live in a neighborhood in the middle of Kabul and I travel around unarmed, both in Kabul and outside of Kabul. In Kabul I can walk the streets. I am frequently in situations here that I would never have allowed myself in Iraq.
It was Afghan tanks that entered Kabul in 2001, not American. That simple fact changes many things. I will be the first to say that the West squandered precious time and golden opportunities early on. Our stupidity and arrogance made a difficult job harder, just like we did in Iraq, but the situation is far from impossible.
Cutting the Gordian knot of corruption should be the main priority. And one can’t say that these people are “used to it” or it can’t be changed because they’ve always been corrupt. That is simply not true. The ordinary people know that corruption is wrong and that it hurts business, but they are trapped in it and waiting for us to do what we promised.
In an alliance of convenience, we allowed the corrupt warlords to get their hands back into the system. It will be up to us to show them the door, or failing such direct action, provide the support to those Afghans who are trying to fight the corruption so that they can do it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Anyone who refers to Israel as a "malignancy" is hard to take seriously. The Arab world needs to acknowledge that, like it or not, Israel is here to stay.
If Hamas would stop shooting rockets into Israel and instead declare a unilateral cease fire, world opinion would swing overwhelmingly in Palestine's favor. Israel's strong-arm tactics would no longer qualify as defensive. Ironic as it may seem, the most effective way to battle the "malignancy" is to stop attacking it.
Stephen,
The inability of the Arab world to accept Israel is indeed the problem.
If Hamas would stop shooting rockets into Israel and instead declare a unilateral cease fire, world opinion would swing overwhelmingly in Palestine's favor.
And Israel would also stop shooting.
I've seen some interesting things in Arab media lately: mostly about how Hamas needs to go away. One of the main criticisms is that Hamas is "resisting" for resistance sake and that for them, the journey is the goal. That sort of "national" strategy is a recipe for disaster.
Would love to hear any thoughts about how you can limit corruption. Can it possibly be done by an outside agent or do reforms have to come from within Afghanistan. And even if you one person or a small group of people who want reforms, can they reform the system? It's not just a problem in Afghanistan but throughout much of sub-sahara Africa.
Alex,
For starters, we can stop leasing properties owned by the "warlords." We (all of NATO), have been subsidizing these guys from the beginning by leasing their stolen real estate.
We also could have helped taken down the warlords early on...if we had been so bent on fight the war on the cheap. But that might be too late now.
The first check on the possibility of reform are the upcoming elections in Afghanistan. If Karzai gets dumped and steps aside without any trouble, then there is hope.
Afghan corruption is based in opium poppy cultivation. The Taliban made a good faith effort to irradicate opium production in 2001 but that effort was abruptly ended with the US invasion. All attempts to improve any aspect of life in Afghanistan is wasted as long a opium poppy cultivation flourishes. Our military's refusal to attack opium poppy farmers is shameful. Opium and its by-products (heroin) have had a devastating effect on our world for centuries. We have an opportunity to irradicate it. If we lose to the Taliban but irradicate opium our soldiers will not have died for a lost cause.
Afghan corruption is based in opium poppy cultivation. The Taliban made a good faith effort to irradicate opium production in 2001 but that effort was abruptly ended with the US invasion.
The heroin trade, of which opium cultivation is a part, exacerbates corruption. It is not the root or cause. The Taliban first tried to accommodate the trade as long as the product left the country and contaminated other cultures. They soon found that it is something you can’t really “regulate.” But the Taliban recognized that corruption made any attempt at eradication fruitless. Therefore the Taliban’s efforts at opium eradication came after their campaign to root out corruption. The enforcers must have clean hands and be largely “unbuyable” in order to tackle the opium trade.
All attempts to improve any aspect of life in Afghanistan is wasted as long a opium poppy cultivation flourishes. Our military's refusal to attack opium poppy farmers is shameful.
Again you have this backwards. As long as most farmers have no viable economic alternative there will be opium production. This past growing season wheat became more valuable per acre than opium and we saw a sudden drop in opium production.
Second, many farmers are coerced into growing opium. The farmers actually make very little in the way of profit from opium production. The farmers are like low-hanging fruit because they are fixed to their fields, but they are often just as much victims. Like cocaine production in Columbia, the guys further up the food chain make all the money. Of course you can also argue that without demand there would be no opium production either. Therefore attacking the farmers would, in most cases, be counter-productive.
What was shameful was that after having run out the Taliban we, as in all the countries pledged to help rebuild the country, focused on the major cities and highly visible publicity-worthy projects and neglected fundamentals of economic development in the countryside.
Third, contrary to media hype, our military does not make a habit of deliberately attacking civilians or doing other than what the civilian leaders order them to do. If you have a beef with priorities, then blame the civilian leaders. Nor have we ever had enough “boots on the ground” to tackle that problem anyway.
Opium and its by-products (heroin) have had a devastating effect on our world for centuries. We have an opportunity to irradicate it. If we lose to the Taliban but irradicate opium our soldiers will not have died for a lost cause.
I concur with your first sentence. However, without efforts to eradicate demand in “user” countries, anything we do at the point of production will never totally wipe out that production. Iran is currently the largest net consumer of Afghan opium, followed by Russia. You’d think that given the deleterious effects of heroin on their populations, they would be less obstructionist to our efforts in Afghanistan.
You are dead wrong on your last point. Our soldiers will have died in vain because millions of children will never be educated and millions of Afghan women and girls would be returned to the status of livestock if the Taliban happened to regain power. I’m not willing to do that when the root cause of opium production is the demand for opium elsewhere.
Post a Comment