Are we wasting our time trying to change Afghan society?

[NovaKart]

Well that's the same for both genders.

 

[wolfigor]

It's not a matter of wasted time but mission creep and that it likely wouldn't be a simple "fireman rescues kitten" mission.

The main reason to be in Afghanistan is to get Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda, stabilize Afghanistan (which doesn't necessarily mean make it like the USA) so it isn't a hotbed of terrorism, and play nice with Pakistan.

You are right abut what was the mission target, and stabilising the country does not mean to make it a democracy.
If you look at the mission target, trying to change Afghan society is a waste of time, but the humanitarian point of view can be rather different.
My remark was about that: we may not be able to reshape completely Afghan society, but if we improve it at least a little bit in direction of human rights we'll save a lot of sufferance.

Isn't it a funny coincidence that saving afghan women from the Taliban only makes for magazine covers when popular enthusiasm for the war in far-away Afghanistan wanes?

Not a funny coincidence, but a necessary reminder: if there was no talking of getting out of Afghanistan there wouldn't be any risk to local population.

That USA military or CIA may want to "spin the story" is not that out of the boundaries.
Actually, in the recent times, we had very little in terms of "propaganda" in support of the mission in Afghanistan... It's quite the time somebody in CIA marketing division start gaining their salary

 

[innonimatu]

Not a funny coincidence, but a necessary reminder: if there was no talking of getting out of Afghanistan there wouldn't be any risk to local population.

That USA military or CIA may want to "spin the story" is not that out of the boundaries.
Actually, in the recent times, we had very little in terms of "propaganda" in support of the mission in Afghanistan... It's quite the time somebody in CIA marketing division start gaining their salary

Yes, never ,mind the fact that Afghanistan has been in civil war for decades precisely because of the oh-so-well-meaning meddling of several foreign powers (USSR, USA, Pakistan, just to mention the most notorious). Never mind that the radical islamists were armed and trained by the CIA and its pakistani allies. Never mind that wars now, as in the 1980s, are not about helping foreign civilian populations but about exploiting them.

The meddlers of the 1980s are of the same type as the meddlers of the 2000s. It's a war over strategic placement of troops, regional influence and control/denial of access to resources. It uses afghans as cannon fodder. It could at least have the basic decency of not pretending to be helping them.

 

[Formaldehyde]

The propagandists try to paint this as a "Taliban problem" when it is clearly not:

Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and stoned in Kabul

A group of Afghan women who braved an enraged mob yesterday to protest against an “abhorrent” new Afghan law had to be rescued by police from a hail of stones and abuse.

The protest by about 200 women, unprecedented in recent Afghanistan history, was directed at the Shia Family Law passed last month by the Afghan parliament which appears to legalise marital rape and child marriage.

The rally, staged by mostly young women with their faces exposed, was a highly inflammatory act of defiance in a country as conservative as Afghanistan. It provoked a furious reaction from local men and a rapidly expanding mob threatened to swamp the demonstrators as they tried to approach the Afghan parliament.

“Go home if your mothers and fathers are Muslims,” one Shia cleric shouted at the protesters, who were pressed into an ever-tighter huddle as the crowd surrounded them. “These people will beat you if you stay.”

Some of the women appeared cowed by the aggression, staring blankly at the ground, but one shouted back: “If you were Muslims, you wouldn’t pass this law.” As the protesters continued to chant slogans they were often drowned out by counter chants of Allahu akbar (God is greatest). “I am not afraid. Women have always been oppressed throughout history,” Zara, an 18-year-old student, told The Times as men in the crowd lunged forward and screamed abuse.

“This law is against the dignity of women and all the international community opposes it. The US President calls it abhorrent. Don’t you see that actually we are the majority?”

The baying mob tore down banners, spat on demonstrators and hurled stones. As police struggled to maintain order, at one point the women appeared to be in danger of disappearing under a sea of shaking fists.

Women police officers drafted in to help to oversee the march attempted to link arms around the female protesters and riot police eventually succeeded in separating the rival groups sufficiently for the march to continue.

The new law, which applies to the 15 per cent of the population who are Shia Muslim, has drawn widespread international condemnation. President Obama called it “abhorrent” after leaked drafts of the law showed it was reintroducing restrictions on women imposed by the Taleban during their harsh reign. Carrying banners proclaiming “We want dignity in the law” and “Islam is justice”, the women’s march was initially matched by a peaceful counter-demonstration of 300 female religious students from Khatam-ul-Nabieen Shia University in Kabul, who were supporting the new law. The university is attached to the city’s largest Shia mosque, which receives Iranian funds and is overseen by Mohammad Asif Mohseni, a leading Shia cleric who has strongly backed the new law. Most of the women protesters were ethnic Hazaras, who make up the vast majority of Shias in Afghanistan and who have historically been a systematically downtrodden minority. Many were students from Kabul University, though there were also older women and a handful of Hindus and Sikhs among the protesters.

Local sources suggested that some of the protesters were members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a secretive women’s rights organisation with Maoist origins founded in the 1970s.

Those in favour of the new law chanted “Down with the Christians. Down with the apostates.” At one stage both sides chanted “We want honour and dignity for women” — reflecting their starkly different interpretations of the new law.

“We think those who oppose this law in fact oppose the Koran,” said Nesa Naseri, a female student of Sharia Studies who took part in the women’s counter-demonstration.

“This law does not approve rape, it is rather about loyalty of wife to husband and husband to wife. Rape is what you can see in the West, where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men.” The Afghan Government has nonetheless announced a review of the legislation, which has yet to come into force.

President Karzai’s political opponents have suggested that he backed the law as a sop to powerful Shia religious parties before presidential elections in August.

Though the Afghan Constitution enshrines sexual equality before the law and Afghanistan is a signatory to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, conservatives argue that the Article 3 of the Constitution, which permits nothing contrary to the“beliefs and provisions of Islam”, takes precedence over all others.

Second-class citizens

57% of Afghan brides are under 16

87% of women are illiterate

5% of girls attend secondary school

1 in 9 dies in childbirth

1 in 3 subjected to violence

The entire country is backwards and hopelessly corrupt. They appear to prefer it to be that way.

 

[GoodGame]

You are right abut what was the mission target, and stabilising the country does not mean to make it a democracy.
If you look at the mission target, trying to change Afghan society is a waste of time, but the humanitarian point of view can be rather different.
My remark was about that: we may not be able to reshape completely Afghan society, but if we improve it at least a little bit in direction of human rights we'll save a lot of sufferance.

The problem is that its more complicated because in a way we are working WITH the taliban via our dealings with the Pakistani intelligence service. And changing Afghanistan ruins our diplo dealings through the Paki-intelligence service-taliban. It's a Catch-22 situation AFAIK. My reading is that finesse not brute force against the mountains is the real US strategy in the region, which means sacrificing gender equality classes.

 

[amadeus]

The entire country is backwards and hopelessly corrupt. They appear to prefer it to be that way.

That's the way it seems.

 

[rollo1066]

Probably not. Only if enough Afgans want to change would such a project be sucessful.

 

[ZeletDude]

I wish we could just fix our own problems before dealing with others.

 

[civ_king]

Second-class citizens

57% of Afghan brides are under 16

87% of women are illiterate

5% of girls attend secondary school

1 in 9 dies in childbirth

1 in 3 subjected to violence

Are we talking about the US 150 years ago?

martial rape? definitely happening in the US 100 years ago

 

[Ajidica]

I don't see how giving women more rights at this moment would change Afghanistan for the better. Currently the Taliban, and many other tribal leaders, take the submission beyond what Mohammad intended. If they see the west giving women more rights and such, they will almost certiantly view that as the 'great Satan of the West trying to turn us to apostaty.' Not what we want to cultivate at this moement. If we tried to force our gender equity on women 150 years ago, it would be viewed as scandalous. I don't even think the Seneca Falls declaration went as far as we have gone.

Gender equity is a basic right, but I don't see it being a useful tool in Afghanistan now. Our intent should be to modernize them, not directly challenge their customs.

 

[The Imp]

The only way to salvage the situation and achieve the goal of a non-Al Qaeda base country is to triple the size of the military in situ, leave, Diem Karzai, and support a military coup behind the scenes lead by secular generals who want to impose order...

Yea, that is a crappy option, but it might very well be the only realistic option.

 

[Formaldehyde]

We could always assassinate him as we did Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu in Vietnam after they outlived their usefulness.

 

[The Imp]

We could always assassinate him as we did Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu in Vietnam after they outlived their usefulness.

... did you not see the word Diem in my post?

 

[mrt144]

Define "wasting our time"... Even if Afghanistan will not become a democracy in the western style, if we save Afghan women from the terror of Taliban regime, then I don't think the efforts are wasted.

Afghans are more important than Americans when it comes to preventing abuse.