Approaching seven years after 9/11, would you have predicted that the Iraqi Prime Minister would be in Tehran pledging closer ties to the mullahcracy, and the Afghan President reporting that Western countries are paying off jihadist warlords?
"'I Wish I Had the Taliban as My Soldiers,'" from Spiegel, June 2 (thanks to Ruth King):
SPIEGEL: Mr. President, much has been written about the failures of the international community in Afghanistan. But a good part of the so-called insurgency in the south and east of your country appears to have more to do with a protest movement against a bad government and corrupt elite. It doesn't seem like much of an exaggeration to talk about a resurgence of the Taliban. Is it not true that many Afghans are only joining the Taliban because they don't consider them to be corrupt?Hamid Karzai: I disagree. That is absolutely wrong.
He doesn't seem to disagree, however, that the Taliban is resurgent -- possibly contradicting the recent claim that they're on the brink of defeat.
SPIEGEL: Some Afghan people say that the president himself, who is appointing high-ranking officials in Kabul and in the provinces, is fueling the insurgency with these personnel decisions. Is that there any truth in that?Karzai: Governance has improved immensely in Afghanistan. For the first time in six years, the Afghan budget has become transparent, there are no longer any secret funds. Before, the governors did whatever they wanted. Now there is a reporting requirement and there are former governors who were criminal or corrupt who are now in prison, like the former governor of Baghdis province. Of course the country needs more time, but the problems we have in the south and east are not because of bad governance.
SPIEGEL: Then what are the reasons for the difficult situation there?
Karzai: There is a lot of interference from abroad. The south part of the country has always been the center of the Taliban activity; they came from there. And there are also traces of the mujahedeen's decades-long battle. These are all factors.
SPIEGEL: Some of your closest aides are suspected of stealing land, drug smuggling and having illegal militias, among them respected governors and police chiefs. Your attorney general, Abdul Jabar Sabet, just named a few of them, including the governor of Nangarhar. Why do you still protect these people?
Karzai: I am not protecting anybody. We are trying to govern Afghanistan and bring peace and stability. I know about the problems with the police. The international community finally agreed after two years of very intense and angry negotiations that the police are a problem and in the middle of 2007 they began to work with us. The checkpoints on the roads, for example, were developed during the years of the Soviet invasion, a time when the country became lawless and each local commander set up his own checkpoint to collect money.
SPIEGEL: During the Taliban times there were no checkpoints at all.
Karzai: That was the best aspect of the Taliban. They did a lot wrong, but they also did a few things right. I wish I had the Taliban as my soldiers. I wish they were serving me and not people in Pakistan or others. When we came back to Afghanistan, the international community brought back all those people who had turned away from the Taliban …
SPIEGEL: … you mean the brutal commanders who fought in the civil war …
Karzai: … who then became partners with the foreign allies and are still paid by them today for their support. It is not always easy for me to find a way that can enable Afghanistan's administration to function.
SPIEGEL: Dirty deals are still necessary for the stability of Afghanistan?
Karzai: Absolutely necessary, because we lack the power to solve these problems in other ways. What do you want? War? Let me give you an example. We wanted to arrest a really terrible warlord, but we couldn't do it because he is being protected by a particular country. We found out that he was being paid $30,000 a month to stay on his good side. They even used his soldiers as guards …
SPIEGEL: That sounds like the story of Commander Nasir Mohammed in Badakhshan, a province where German soldiers are based.
Karzai: I don't want to name the country because it will hurt a close friend and ally. But there are also many other countries who contract the Afghan militias and their leaders. So I can only work where I can act, and I must always calculate what will happen before doing anything....
A previous article on Hamid Karzai:
Fitzgerald: A tribute to Hamid Karzai
Slick, oleagineous, is Hamid Karzai, but not more than one is used to in such regions. Think of Hussein of Jordan, in his celebrated role as plucky little king. Hamid Karzai, when he first appeared on the world scene, in that beautifully-colored robe he wears, seemed okay. He had brothers and a sister running restaurants in Maryland and Massachusetts. He was the son of a civic-minded Afghan. He seemed -- okay. He seemed to be one of those "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims, or as close to it as one might hope for outside of Azar Nafisi and Fouad Ajami. He was not able to fess up to it all himself, but still...or so one thought.
Then came the Speech of Mahathir Mohamed, the sober-toned, yet hysterical and telling speech, at the O.I.C.,[ at the 2003 Putrajaya Islamic Summit] when he made an appeal for the world’s Muslims to use their brains, not in order to investigate the nature of the brain or DNA or of the atom or the origins of the universe, but only -- the only thing he meant by "science" -- to acquire military technology, and to defeat, among others, "the Jews." Smooth Hamid Karzai, oily Hamid Karzai applauded. Interviewed just after, Karzai was enthusiastic about Mahathir’s speech. The oleaginous Karzai said he found the speech deeply impressive. He said he had found the speech wonderful, inspirational, tip-top. Well, that was it as far as Hamid Karzai was concerned.
Never mind that the poppy trade is flourishing and Karzai is weak. Never mind that he is better than the Taliban. His Muslim solidarity, of the kind he expressed after that speech, leaves a permanent impression: he is not to be trusted. Oh, he's more to be trusted than any conceivable Arab leader. He's more to be trusted than any conceivable Pakistani leader. But he's not to be trusted. That's it.
His government is famously corrupt. Oh, not as corrupt as that of the Al-Saud. Not as corrupt as that of Mubarak. Not as corrupt as that of Arafat and his successors and collaborators in the so-called "Palestinian" "Authority." But corrupt. And the American and NATO forces are tearing their hair out.
But he wants, he wants, he wants. A year or two ago he was lamenting all the money spent in Iraq because he thought it should go to Afghanistan. He wants, he wants, he wants.
And he wants the Western powers to prop up his government -- why? -- but to fight exactly as he wishes them to fight, obeying Marquess of Queensberry rules that will only cause more Western casualties, and that make no sense in the Afghani context.
He wants, he wants, he wants.
Afghanistan can be controlled, as much as it can be controlled, from afar. There is no need for such a NATO presence, that will only be a waste, and a cause for intra-NATO tensions, and will be as ineffectual in promoting Infidel aims as is the business in Tarbaby Iraq.
The belief or desire to remake Afghanistan springs from an impulse born of naivete. It is a manifestation of the Yankee-can-do spirit misapplied to things of the spirit rather than to objects one can indeed improve. See the observations on this American polypragmonic impulse. It springs from a reluctance, and even from a fear, to dare to confront the backwardness and social injustice that arises from the application of Islamic principles. In Afghanistan these effects are felt mainly by women. Women there are held in permanent thrall. As for non-Muslims, there are none left in the country -- the Jews and Hindus once described by Robert Byron in The Road to Oxiana all left, some before, some during, the rule of the Taliban.
The British could not hold Afghanistan, and intelligently left. The Russians, with a ruthlessness (and a geographical proximity) that the Western powers could never hope to approach, could not hold Afghanistan, and intelligently left (having self-inflicted great damage on their own economy, and on their own military morale).
Why are we in Afghanistan? Why do we wish to build roads, and other infrastructure, when we have every reason to believe that the poorer, more illiterate and isolated the Muslim villagers are, the less able they are to receive the Jihad-war-whoops and propaganda that greater prosperity would naturally bring? For that is what audiocassettes, and videocassettes, and access to satellite television, and Internet service, mean for Muslims who are pulled out of living (and fighting among themselves) at a subsistence level.
The misapplication of naive Western ideas -- that greater "prosperity" will perforce lessen the hold of Islam in Afghanistan -- has to be held up for public inspection.
J. B. Kelly and many others with some sense of what Afghanistan's history has been suggest it will "all end in tears" for the West. That is exactly the phrase Kelly used several years ago about Iraq, at the very beginning of the conflict, when there was such enormous oorah-excitement and pleasure all over official Washington at the magnificent achievement, at the certain great victory, at the impending "transformation" of the whole Muslim Middle East.
A little reading, a little thought, a little knowledge about Islam and Iraq, or for that matter Islam and Afghanistan, would help. It would help save lives. It would save a trillion dollars. It would save NATO from internecine wrangling. It would save soldiers from going to war wearing karakul kid gloves, and never taking those gloves off, lest Afghani hearts, lest Afghani minds, lest oily Karzai himself, be too much offended to be won, won, won.
[Posted by Hugh at June 27, 2007]
The international community finally agreed after two years of very intense and angry negotiations that the police are a problem and in the middle of 2007 they began to work with us.
Karzai
Meaning what? The police are a problem? The international community is working with Karzai against the police?
Afghans are, to say the least, schizoid.
One minute they want all foreigners out of the country. The next, they want the West to make their country a paradise.
Apparently we disappointed them. They thought the US soldiers who arrived after 9/11 were there to rebuild Afghanistan and to rescue them from the Taliban. Much is made of the "opportunity" that we lost back then. Well, what about them? THEY had the goodwill of most Americans, who were indeed prepared to work with them. THEY blew it.
Next time, just bomb from ther air until they stop causing trouble.
Or moving.
"THEY had the goodwill of most Americans, who were indeed prepared to work with them. THEY blew it."
Except for those Americans who a couple a months after 9/11/2001 followed Sen Chuck Schumer and the gang down the road of sabotaging every effort made to fight Islamic Jihad; because of their bloodthirsty hatred towards Bush and all things Republican we are left with either a nuked Israel or a nuked European city before we ever realize that America and Israel are not the evil in the world.
Sen Chuck Schumer is his peeps are their own worst enemy.
Let's vote Obama he makes AIPAC Shiny Happy People.
The speech given by Mahathir Mohamad to the O.I.C. in 2003 contained, among other telling passages, this one:
"To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand if not on all issues, at least on some major ones, such as on Palestine... We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships...We may want to recreate the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life l.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Surely the 23 years struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do..."
Karzai, who had been put in place by the Americans just the year before, was at the meeting and heard the speech, and he joined in the ecstatic response. He was asked afterwards by a Western reporter for his thoughts on the speech. He replied that he found it splendid, truly inspirational. That should have been, then and there, the sign that all would not be right with Hamid Karzai.
Afghanistan has always been the lynchpin in the War on Terror. It is the axel of freedom, the hub of victory, the pivot of potency. Its crucial strategic importance cannot be overemphasized. With its tremendous economy, it's enormous population, its deep water ports, it's stupendous manufacturing base, it's immense natural resources, easy transport, sophisticated civil society, stabile government, advanced education, medical systems, scientific research, not to mention its stupefyingly creative artists and scholars. Afghanistan must be held at all costs. There is no price too dear for America to pay to hold it, in order to defend ourselves against the tiny minority of fringe bad guys who might otherwise destroy America.
And if we do not hold Afghanistan, imagine what terrors of war its advanced industrial base will produce! Imagine camels on steroids transporting explosives into our cities! Even donkeys! Yes, it's true that the 9/11 killers didn't need camels or donkeys, because we let them fly in. But we had to! -- unless we allow unlimited numbers of Muslims to come to America we will have lost the war! Lost! -- by becoming an evil, fascist, non-liberal country. And that we cannot do. No! -- far better to liberate the poor oppressed Muslims in places like Afghanistan, so they can express their natural liberal nature, and join the family of Liberal nations, as they are yearning to do, once the shackles of oppression are lifted from them. That's the sure path to victory. The Liberal path to victory. There is no other.
Zeno
Hear hear...