meanwhile, back in Afghanistan...

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cole, Juan <jrcole@xxxxxxxxx>

Yes, there still is a war in Afghanistan. Seven were killed in it on
Sunday, and over 40 on Saturday. Accusations against the US are
swirling of having killed innocent civilians. Meanwhile, a suicide
bomber wounded 3 British troops.

There has been much less trouble in post-war Afghanistan than in
post-war Iraq. This result comes in large part because most Afghans,
including a lot of Pushtuns, despised the Taliban. It turns out that
the Iraqi Baathist Socialist Party had more grass roots, at least
among Sunni Arabs. In contrast, the large Pushtun Taliban were not
liked by a lot of Pushtuns. A city like Qandahar was relatively
cosmopolitan and chafed under the restrictions of the mostly rural
Taliban fighters, with their almost Monty Python puritanism.

But there were districts, tribes, and regions where the Taliban were
in fact popular, and these have not gone away. Indeed, over time some
of the Taliban (and perhaps other disgruntled local forces) have
regrouped.

This minor revival does not matter in most of the country. The Tajiks
(who speak a form of Persian) were always die hard opposed to
Talibanism, as were the Hazara Shiites for their own reasons. And as
for the 10 percent of the population in the north that is Uzbek, well,
they massacred thousands of Taliban in Mazar when the unwary
seminarians took the city and let their guard down.

So the Taliban revival is a Pushtun, southwestern phenomenon,
affecting places like Hhost and Qandahar, old al-Qaeda stomping
grounds. A US base near Khost gets so much enemy fire that it is
called Rocket City.

The British are doubling their forces in that area and planning to do
search and destroy missions against the Taliban. It seems pretty clear
that they are hoping that this move will allow them to draw down their
forces in southern Iraq, who are in constant danger of being massacred
by millions of angry Shiites. The question is whether they are jumping
from the ffrying pan into the fire. Are the US forces in Afghanistan
hoping to withdraw in favor fo the British and the Canadians (yes)?

Warlordism and a revived poppy trade are intertwined with the problems
in the south. The small Taliban revival is being funded by opium and
heroin. Half of Afghanistan's GDP is probably from the drug trade, and
there is danger of narco-terrorism on a Colombian scale. Some of the
clashes we've heard about may be in reaction to poppy eradication
campaigns, which are deeply unpopular with farmers, who are seldom
properly compensated. Eradication efforts are not going well.

Afghanistan could be an important route for revived overland Asian
trade. You could theoretically drive a truck from New Delhi to Beijing
via Kabul and Tashkent. But India charges that Pakistan is blocking
this development.

If the US had not run off to the Iraq quagmire, and had stayed the
course in Afghanistan and properly rebuilt it, we could have
completely uprooted al-Qaeda and the Taliban, put an end to the poppy
trade, and created an economic efflorescence that linked major Asian
powers in the kind of trade networks that discourage war and
instability. [wishful thinking!]

Instead, Afghanistan is still a mess, and Iraq is ever more of one.
Bush has the opposite of the Midas touch -- everything he touches
turns to rubble.
--
Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence
of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles