I thought this article rather interesting. It is an account of the recent riots in Afghanistan but from the POV of a British reporter who was actually caught up in the riots. He describes how the recent riots feel very different from the previous ones in Afghanistan and believes that this could mark a turning point (not a good one) in the country:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2201946,00.html
On the spot: 'Crowd wanted to skin us alive'
Tim Albone, correspondent for The Times in Kabul, was caught in today's riots which he believes could mark a turning point in the Afghan's relations with coalition forces
"We tried to get out to where the accident happened on the outskirts of the city. I went in an Afghan car with a translator and photographer.
"We managed to get to within about a half-hour drive of where the accident happened and could hear gunfire. We stopped to ask what was going on.
"The mob crowded around the car and people were shouting: 'Let's get them - let's skin them alive'. We got out of there pretty quickly and as we were leaving we noticed a car was following behind.
"As we came onto a roundabout we ducked behind another car, pulled up onto the pavement and managed to lose him, thanks to the skill of our driver.
"I've been in Kabul for nine months and there has never been anything like this before. There is a real feeling in the air that today Kabul changed. There has been a lot of fighting in the south but this has mainly been between the militias and the American forces.
"Today it was angry teenagers - kids who have got nothing else to do. They are angry because they see all of the money being pumped into Afghanistan but still have no jobs.
"They are angry at the Americans who they see driving around as if they own the place and who appear to have caused this accident and then tried to drive away.
"I've spoken to friends who work in Iraq and they say that there was one day when it all changed. That could be the case here. They have realised that they can take on the police and take on the Americans - they could easily do it again.
"When the cartoons of Muhammad were published we saw maybe 300 people on the streets protesting. Today they were there in their thousands. There was gunfire outside the door of the Times office for about an hour, we could hear machine guns crackling.
"It was quite frightening. We're only two streets away from the Care International offices which were set alight. We could see the flames.
"By evening, the security forces appeared to have restored order. It's now very quiet and there are lots of police around, although interestingly there were no American troops or ISAF [the NATO-led international peacekeeping force] forces.
"The Americans are saying that this was just one day of unrest, but I was speaking to one guy and he was shouting: 'Death to America - death to Karzai...' There is a growing mood that the locals want the Americans to leave but that is simply not possible at the moment."
This article describes the rerise of the Taliban. American troops are starting to pull out of the country being replaced by NATO troops. However most of the NATO countries only have a mandate from their countries for reconstruction. Basically they are not allowed to fight except in self-defense. The aim of the Taliban is to force them to withdraw which shouldn't be too difficult. Already, an extension of the Canadian mandate for action in Afghanistan has passed only by a very tiny majority. I'm willing to bet the Taliban has a lot more staying power than NATO, especially if as it seems fighting is going to heat up.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301769.html
THE HEAVY fighting in Afghanistan during the past week, in which more than 300 people have died, may seem like a sudden eruption to many Americans -- who tend to assume the war there ended, more or less, years ago. In fact, the conflict has been building for some time. Casualties in Afghanistan increased by about 20 percent in 2005, driven by new insurgent tactics such as suicide bombings. As winter waned this year, Taliban fighters were reported to be moving in large numbers into southern Afghan provinces. That movement coincided with the deployment to the region of a new NATO force of 6,000 troops with a mandate to extend government control and take over counterinsurgency operations conducted until now by U.S. forces.
The result is a crucial battle for control of the south -- crucial for both Afghanistan and NATO. A decisive defeat of the Taliban offensive could help consolidate a still-fragile democratic government, and it could validate NATO as a military alliance capable of tackling the security challenges of the 21st century. The Taliban, however, is betting it can prove the reverse: that the new Afghan political order is unworkable and that NATO is a paper tiger that cannot substitute for the U.S. troops being withdrawn.
The first results have been encouraging. Canadian and British troops have fought to clear a Taliban-infested area just 15 miles from the southern city of Kandahar; with U.S. air support, scores of enemy fighters have been killed and several senior commanders captured. A Canadian and two French soldiers have been among those killed in recent fighting, along with one American, who was the 37th to die in Afghanistan this year. Though the appearance of relatively large Taliban formations is itself an alarming sign of the movement's revival, any expectation by its commanders that they could roll over the new NATO units has been shattered.
The Afghan fighting season, however, is only beginning, and many reports suggest that much of the rural south is now infiltrated by the Taliban. While Canadian and British units have performed well, others have yet to be tested -- including some from countries that intend to limit their mission to peacekeeping and reconstruction. Given the scale of the military challenge, the planned withdrawal of 3,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan this summer looks increasingly risky.
If the Taliban offensive is to be turned back, the Afghan government and its NATO allies will need some success beyond the battlefield. As Afghan President Hamid Karzai bluntly pointed out last week, the Taliban high command continues to use Pakistan as its main base. The movement cannot be defeated unless it is deprived of that sanctuary -- but Pakistan's ruling military, a former Taliban sponsor, has failed to act decisively against it. The Taliban is also supported by Afghanistan's booming trade in poppies, the raw material of opium, which means more aggressive action is needed against this billion-dollar industry. Finally, the Bush administration needs to press for more economic reconstruction in the south, which has had little improvement since the entry of Western forces nearly five years ago. The U.S.-led effort to transform this onetime base of al-Qaeda is far from over; in fact, it is still just beginning.
You can't blame the Americans for all this though. Any description of the European NATO forces in Afghanistan is the epitome of warfare by committee. United we stand, divided we fall could be used to describe NATO. Each country has its own caveats of things it refuses to do. And most refuse to fight. The NATO commander is tearing his hair out trying to just manage the many disparate troops each with their own rules. International, especially European military assistance is not all that it's cracked up to be.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4526150.stm
Every single deployment of Nato troops or aircraft since 2003 has led to months of wrangling between European capitals and Nato's high command, played out very publicly in the press.
Even in their peace-keeping role, each Nato country's forces have a list of what they will do and not do - national caveats - that has paralysed Nato commanders in Kabul.
Spanish troops based in the west will rarely leave their compound.
German troops in the north will allow no other Nato troops to fly in their helicopters.
Every nation has a different concept of running a PRT which makes any kind of unified reconstruction programme in the provinces next to impossible.
Moreover Nato troops seem far more concerned about their own security than the security of the Afghans they are supposed to be protecting.
This article describes how corruption, and the Afghanistan and American government's inability to provide basic services has led to rising support for the Taliban:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...a_afp/afghanistanattackspolitics_060528114224
The fundamentalist Taliban, toppled from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001, want to overthrow the new administration led by Karzai, the first popularly elected government in three decades.
They also aim to drive out the 10,000
NATO peacekeeping troops and 20,000 US-led anti-insurgent soldiers whom they say have invaded Afghanistan.
The insurgency has intensified each year since 2001. Many analysts and even some officials agree widespread government corruption is a root cause, causing disillusion among local people and hamstringing development.
"Corrupted people holding on to government posts have caused the ordinary population to distance themselves from the central government," said local politician and regional expert Mohammad Akbar Khakrizwal.
Many demand bribes from destitute villagers while the area has seen little benefit from the billions of dollars of international aid poured into Afghanistan since the Taliban were forced out.
Dissatisfaction and Taliban calls for jihad against the "invading infidels" have won the militia some hearts and minds amongst poverty-stricken and illiterate but proud Afghan villagers who have a long and bloody history of struggle against foreign invasions, Khakrizwal said.
"The Taliban have got a case," Khakrizwal said.
"The government also has a case but there is no one in government who is explaining this to the people, to tell them that these troops are not invading troops, theyre here to help maintain security and rebuild."
Provincial education chief and regional expert Hayatullah Rafiqi said the government was losing popular support because of several factors, including poverty, lack of reconstruction and the weakness of its security forces.
But, "no doubt the corruption is the main reason for the current situation," Rafiqi said. "At the same time people have lost trust in the government...inevitably the people help the Taliban."
The situation is worsened by the government's failure to improve livelihoods as it promised before taking power, said social affairs analyst Shamsuddin Tanwir.
"The government has basically failed to fulfill its promises. Look at the jobless rate -- obviously it helps people to slide to the other side, the opposition," he told AFP.
Khakrizwal warned that if the problem were not addressed immediately, the government would lose the battle.
"The Taliban already have control over some districts and this will reach the cities," he predicted, shaking his head sadly. "The battle will be lost."
This BBC article expands on the mistakes made in Afghanistan:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5029190.stm
# Washington's refusal to take state building in Afghanistan seriously after 2001 and instead waging a fruitless war in Iraq, created a major international distraction which the Taleban took advantage of to slowly rebuild their forces.
# US-led coalition forces were never deployed in southern Afghanistan in sufficient numbers, even though this was the Taleban heartland and needed to be secured. Apart from a US base for 3,000 troops in Kandahar and a couple of fire bases, for four years there was virtually no military presence in three of the four provinces. US forces failed to secure even the major cities and highways in the south. The growing security vacuum in the south was steadily filled by the Taleban.
British troops in Afghanistan
The rise in attacks come as Nato boosts its troops in the country
# Afghanistan has received far less funds for reconstruction than almost all recent nation building efforts such as the former Yugoslavia, Haiti or East Timor. The lack of security in the south meant that UN development agencies and western and Afghan aid organisations could not provide sufficient aid and reconstruction. Nor was there ever adequate funding by western donors, especially for rebuilding the vital agricultural sector. The West's refusal to invest in agriculture on which 70% of the population depend, led to a massive return to poppy production by destitute farmers in the south, which quickly spread to the rest of the country.
# Drug smugglers and cartels now offer much greater incentives to Pashtun farmers than aid agencies. The best functioning extension programmes for farmers are operated by opium traffickers who provide improved varieties of poppy seeds, fertilizer, improved methods of cultivation, banking and loan facilities and organised large scale employment during the poppy harvest. Compared to 2001 when poppy cultivation was at a minimum, southern Afghanistan now needs to develop an entire alternative economy costing billions of dollars in order to replace the drugs economy.
# The drugs economy has fuelled massive corruption among government officials, undermined the authority of the government and funded the Taleban. The failure to reconstruct the south has led to widespread public disillusionment, increasing sympathy for the Taleban and anger at the Afghan government. Drugs money has allowed the Taleban to acquire new weapons, provide salaries to fighters and larger sums to suicide bombers.
Corruption
# For the past five years President Hamid Karzai has tolerated Pashtun warlords as governors, police chiefs and administrators in the south. Most of these warlords were discredited and defeated by the Taleban in the 1990s, but were resuscitated by US forces to help defeat the Taleban in 2001. Unlike Northern Alliance warlords who tended to defy President Karzai's authority, these Pashtun warlords were friends of the government and helped secure the Pashtun vote for Karzai in two Loya Jirgas and two elections in 2004 and 2005. Despite pledging loyalty to President Karzai these warlord-governors became visibly corrupt, by their open involvement in the drugs trade, cutting deals with criminal gangs and the Taleban and showing supreme incompetence in dealing with development issues. For the majority of southern Pashtuns, the corruption of these warlord-governors unfortunately symbolised the intentions of the Kabul government.
There have been a spate of suicide car attacks
# Kabul refused to change these warlord-governors, until forced to do so by Nato countries, who refused to deploy their troops until they were removed. Thus Canada, Britain and the Netherlands played a major role in forcing the resignation of the governors of Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan - the provinces in which their troops are now being deployed.
# Kabul's offer of an amnesty and safe passage home in 2003 to non-belligerent Taleban living in Pakistan was a sensible attempt at reconciliation, but it was badly handled. The Northern Alliance leaders refused to accept any reconciliation with the Taleban. Overtures to the Taleban were handled secretly by the American and Afghan intelligence, instead of being done openly with international support and guarantees of protection for returning Taleban and a separate aid programme to rehabilitate them. Pakistan refused to help persuade the Taleban to return home, while Washington refused to put any pressure on Islamabad to do so. The reconciliation drive has been a failure.
# After being routed in 2001 the Taleban found a safe sanctuary in Balochistan and the North West Frontier province of Pakistan. They have been able to set up a major logistics hub, training camps, carry out fund raising and have been free to recruit fighters from madrassas and refugee camps. The Taleban have received help from Pakistan's two provincial governments, the MMA, Islamic extremist groups, the drugs mafia and criminal gangs - while the military regime has looked the other way. Al-Qaeda has helped the Taleban reorganise and forge alliances with other Afghan and Central Asian rebel groups.
Thus the current Taleban resurgence is a reflection of the failure of policies by all the major players in Afghanistan - the US, Nato, the UN, the international community, the Afghan government and neighbours such as Pakistan.
All these problems will have to be addressed honestly and frankly, before Nato and Afghan security forces will be able to defeat the Taleban.
And just to add to the bright news, here is an article about the former British attempts to control Afghanistan, their initial success and their eventual ouster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Afghan_War
The 1st Anglo-Afghan war
From the British point of view, the First Anglo-Afghan War (183842) (often called "Auckland's Folly") was an unmitigated disaster, despite the ease with which Dost Mohammad was deposed and Shuja enthroned. An army of British and Indian troops under the command of General William Elphinstone set out from the Punjab in December 1838. With them was McNaghten, the former chief secretary of the Calcutta government who had been selected as Britain's chief representative to Kabul. They reached Quetta by late March 1839 and a month later took Kandahar without a battle. In July, after a two-month delay in Kandahar, the British attacked the fortress of Ghazni, overlooking a plain leading to India, and achieved a decisive victory over Dost Mohammad's troops led by one of his sons. Dost Mohammad fled with his loyal followers across the passes to Bamian, and ultimately to Bukhara. In August 1839, after almost thirty years, Shuja was again enthroned in Kabul. Some British troops returned to India, but it soon became clear that Shuja's rule could only be maintained with the presence of British forces. The Afghans resented the British presence and Shah Shuja. As the occupation dragged on, Macnaghten allowed his soldiers to bring in their families to improve morale; this further infuriated the Afgans, as it appeared the British were settling into a permanent occupation. After he unsuccessfully attacked the British and their Afghan protégé, Dost Mohammad surrendered to them and was exiled in India in late 1840.
By October 1841, however, disaffected Afghan tribes were flocking to support Dost Mohammad's son, Mohammad Akbar Khan, in Bamian. In November 1841 a senior British officer, Sir Alexander 'Sekundar' Burnes, and his aides were killed by a mob in Kabul. The substantial remaining British forces in their cantonment just outside Kabul did nothing immediately. In the following weeks the British commanders tried to negotiate with Mohammad Akbar. In a secret meeting, Macnaghten offered to make Akbar Afghanistan's vizier in exchange for allowing the British to stay. Rather than betray his countrymen, Ackbar ordered Macnaghten thrown in prison. Along the way to prison, an angry mob killed Macnaghten and his dismembered corpse was paraded through Kabul. On January 1, 1842 following some unusual thinking by Elphinstone an agreement was reached that provided for the safe exodus of the British garrison and its dependents from Afghanistan. Five days later, the retreat began, and as they struggled through the snowbound passes, the British were attacked by Ghilzai warriors. The British column of more than 16,000-strong (consisting of about 4,500 military personnel, both British and Indian, along with as many as 12,000 camp followers) was massacred in the 30 miles of treacherous gorges and passes lying between Kabul and Gandomak.
Lady Butler's famous painting of Dr William Brydon, reportedly the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad, helped make Afghanistan's reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies and became one of the great epics of Empire. His British protectors gone, Shuja remained in power only a few months before being assassinated in April 1842.
The complete destruction of the garrison prompted brutal retaliation by the British against the Afghans and touched off yet another power struggle for dominance of Afghanistan. In the fall of 1842, British forces from Kandahar and Peshawar entered Kabul just long enough to rescue the few British prisoners and burn the Great Bazaar. Although the foreign invasion provided the Afghan tribes with a temporary sense of unity they had previously lacked, the loss of life and property was followed by a bitter resentment of foreign influence.
The 2nd Anglo-Afghan war:
With British forces occupying much of the country, Sher Ali's son and successor, Yaqub Khan, signed the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879 to prevent a British invasion of the rest of the country. According to this agreement and in return for an annual subsidy and vague assurances of assistance in case of foreign aggression, Yaqub relinquished control of Afghan foreign affairs to the British. British representatives were installed in Kabul and other locations, British control was extended to the Khyber and Michni passes, and Afghanistan ceded various frontier areas to Britain. An Afghan uprising opposed to the Treaty of Gandamak was foiled in October (Charasia) and December (Kabul) 1879. A noted historian, W. Kerr Fraser-Tytler, suggests that Yaqub abdicated because he did not wish to suffer the same fate that befell Shah Shuja following the first war.
In a replay of 1841 the British managed to have their Kabul garrison annihilated. By 1881 the British had had enough, and despite a deciding victory at the Battle of Kandahar in September 1880 they left. The British gained some territory and retained a little influence but in a clever stroke they placed Abdur Rahman Khan on the throne. A man of such supple loyalties that he was acceptable to the British, the Russians and the Afghan people.
As for the Ghilzai tribesmen who brought the downfall of the
initially successful British invasions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghilzai
During the period of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan many of the Muhajadeen were also Ghilzai Pashtuns including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The Taliban leadership and rank and file were largely composed of Ghilzai Pashtuns and other related tribes and this has placed the Ghilzai at odds with their Pashtun cousins, the Durrani tribe who are currently represented by the administration of Hamid Karzai and the central Afghan government. Most Ghilzai are however not particularly political and are generally concerned with surviving during Afghanistan's current rebuilding period. The Ghilzai remain one of the largest and most prominent ethnic groups in Afghanistan and continue to enjoy considerable autonomy as they have for millennia.
Basically the Taliban consists of the descendents of the same people who drove the British out - twice.
Personally I believe what we are seeing here is a case of imperial overreach. America had the resources to do
either Afghanistan or Iraq properly. By electing to trying to catch both birds at the same time (and on the cheap too!) it may end up losing both. Seriously speaking though, I can't believe that less aid has gone to Afghanistan than
East Timor one of the smallest nations in the world and one in which only two countries really care about - Indonesia and Australia. Hardly important on the world stage. Yet it gets more money than Afghanistan. Wow. Pretty unbelievable. There was a lot of crowing about how Afghanistan was so easy to win and how America beat the motto of never start a land war in mainland Asia. However, it seems to me that Britain and Russia
won the initial battles easily enough. It was the later insurgency (led by the same people leading the insurgency against the Americans now) that forced them out of the country.
The same guy who wrote the BBC article also describes the growing Iranian influence in the country:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/05/30/ixopinion.html
Al-Qa'eda, now under the operational leadership of the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri, has helped reorganise the Taliban, create unlimited sources of funding from the sale of Afghan-grown opium and forged a new alliance linking the Taliban with extremist groups in Pakistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Iraq. Al-Qa'eda has facilitated a major exchange of fighters and training between the Taliban and the extremist groups in Iraq.
Iran is spending large sums out of its windfall oil income in buying support among disaffected and disillusioned Afghan warlords. The day America or Israel attacks Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, these Afghans will be unleashed on American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, opening a new front quite separate from the Taliban insurgency.
In Central Asia, the Western alliance is floundering. America lost its major military base in Central Asia after Uzbekistan kicked American forces out last year. Emboldened, tiny Kyrgyzstan is now demanding that Washington pay it 100 times more for the base it provides for American forces. Russia and China are working on making sure that America and Nato surrender all their remaining toeholds in Central Asia.
All this is a result of America, Britain and others taking their eye off the ball and circumventing the indisputable truth of 9/11: that the centre of global jihadism and the threat it poses the world still lies in this region, not in Iraq.
Yet in the past five years there has been no Western military presence in three of the four provinces in southern Afghanistan that constituted the Taliban heartland and today are the battleground for its revival. The promises of Western funding and reconstruction were never fulfilled; Pashtuns have seen barely any change in their lives and have reverted to cultivating opium as a means to survive. The vacuum in the south has been steadily filled by the Taliban.
Warlords, nominated as governors and police chiefs in the south by Kabul, indulged in drugs trafficking and abuses of the worst kind and went unchallenged for too long by the international community and Kabul. Meanwhile, Karzai's sensible offer of an amnesty to the Taliban in 2003 was never backed coherently by Western funding and support.
The Western alliance can still win in Afghanistan and root out terrorism, but only by means of a serious, aggressive and sustained commitment by its member countries. So far at least, that commitment is still not apparent.
BTW, Iran has offered to help train Afghani police:
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=43328&NewsKind=Current Affairs
Afghani President Karzai thanked Iran for its assistance and went to pay his respects at the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, saying he was a strong ally during the fight against the Soviets.
http://www.payvand.com/news/06/may/1270.html
"During the very difficult times for the Afghan people he was a friend and supporter of the Afghan people. He was participant of the Afghan jihad; he helped the Afghan people, accepted Afghan refugees, and he prayed for the people of Afghanistan. We will not forget that. His memory will be alive eternally in the minds of Afghan people."
Personally I'm not surprised. Besides the whole both being Muslim countries thing, Iran helped Afghanistan by accepting millions of refugees for decades and helping to fight against the Soviets there is the whole thing about Iran being the big neighbour on the doorstep and already has large influence in the country. It's far better to be friends with your potentially nasty neighbours than enemies. Long after the West has left, Iran is still going to be Afghanistan's neighbour.
