Insurgencies Spread in Afghanistan and Pakistan
WASHINGTON — Islamic insurgents are expanding their numbers and reach in Afghanistan and Pakistan, spreading violence and disarray over a vast cross-border zone where al Qaida has rebuilt the sanctuary it lost when the United States invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
There is little in the short term that the Bush administration or its allies can do to halt the bloodshed, which is spreading toward Pakistan’s heartland and threatening to destabilize the U.S.-backed governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO forces are facing “a classic growing insurgency,” Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.
But the U.S. military, stretched thin by the war in Iraq, is hard-pressed to send more than the 3,200 additional Marines the Bush administration is dispatching to Afghanistan. The growing insurgency there is fueling rifts within the NATO alliance as Germany and other nations refuse to allow their troops to participate in offensive operations in Afghanistan. The Afghan army is making progress but still cannot operate independently.
“Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,” warned an Atlantic Council of the United States report last week. The report was directed by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the former top NATO commander. “What is happening in Afghanistan and beyond its borders can have even greater strategic long-term consequences than the struggle in Iraq.”
In Pakistan, the army, trained for conventional warfare against India, has declined to send major forces into battle against the Islamists, fearful that heavy casualties could unhinge the military along ethnic and sectarian lines. The U.S. and its allies can do little more than help train some Pakistani troops because a major U.S. military role in Pakistan would further enrage a population that’s already seething with anti-government and anti-U.S. rage.
The threat of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the West by jihadis indoctrinated and trained in the frontier zone is now higher than ever.
“The Taliban in Afghanistan now control more of the country than at any time since 2001, and their confederates in the tribal areas of Pakistan are expanding their operations almost day by day. While our attention has been diverted by Iraq, we’ve overlooked a potentially far more serious threat to the security of all Americans,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., told McClatchy.
There’s no hard evidence of direct collusion between the Afghan Taliban and a new Pakistani Taliban alliance, both of which are made up mostly of Pashtun tribesmen, who dominate the region of soaring mountains and rugged deserts that span the frontier. Indeed, the Afghan Taliban deny links with the Pakistani insurgents.
But the ties among the Pashtuns are personal, historic, ethnic and ideological, and experts worry that the region faces a growing jihadi movement that’s aided by al Qaida with Arab and Central Asian fighters, coordination, money and motivation.
“You see some indication that there is a blurring of the lines and some associations that are not helpful,” said a senior U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The groups “have become one seamless whole,” said Husain Haqqani, a political scientist and former aide to the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The Pakistani government blamed Bhutto’s Dec. 27 assassination on Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.
The Taliban groups on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border are descendants of the Islamic guerrilla factions that fought the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan with Pakistani coordination and arms supplied by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Britain.
Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence service helped the Taliban come to power in 1996 to ensure a pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul. The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate also encouraged Pakistani extremists to support the Taliban and an insurgency on India’s side of the disputed Kashmir region.
Some U.S. military intelligence officials have argued that ideological and strategic differences between the groups will trigger crippling disputes. Some in the groups are hard-core Islamists, while others are fighting for money.
“It is true that there are degrees of separation developing between them,” said Army Col. John Lynch, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “But when you are in the land of plenty and there are fighters and money to be spread around, these differences are minimal.”
There’s widespread agreement, though, that the Bush administration bears much of the blame for the worsening crisis.
The administration diverted U.S. troops and resources to the 2003 invasion of Iraq without first securing Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. intervention there.
And Washington pressured Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to send tens of thousands of troops for the first time in his country’s history into the tribal region to hunt down al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and his core supporters, who had escaped there from Afghanistan. Little heed was paid to the Taliban.
The Pakistani army’s presence enraged the tribes. Its heavy-handed tactics claimed civilian lives, as did U.S. cross-border strikes on al Qaida targets. Support for militants exploded last summer after Musharraf ordered an assault on a radical Islamabad mosque that killed scores of people.
Since its formation in December, the new Taliban Movement of Pakistan has extended its reach to all seven tribal agencies and into the settled areas of North West Frontier Province.
It has rocketed the provincial capital, Peshawar, captured and killed hundreds of Pakistani security forces, hijacked ammunition trucks and briefly seized control of a major tunnel, cutting off a key city from the rest of the country for the first time.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have expanded the territory they control and where they can move freely despite suffering huge losses last year in battles with U.S. and NATO troops.
“The number of districts in which the Taliban operate exploded last year,” said John McCreary, a former senior intelligence analyst with the Joint Chiefs of Staff who’s now with the private contractor dNovus RDI. “This is the first year they have managed to sustain over 100 attacks per month for the whole year since they started to climb back. One hundred attacks per month used to be surge figure. Now it’s the new norm.”
McClatchy Newspapers 2008
From the NDP website:
NATO in Afghanistan: From Bad to Worse – The wrong role for Canada
http://www.ndp.ca/page/6134
Time to spread some more DU, those people are getting out of hand over there. Maybe a couple of small nukes would wake them up. ___ Vote for McCain if you really want change.
The Soviet’s couldn’t do it with a lot more boots on the ground and lot less human rights worries; so what makes anyone think NATO forces can accomplish more.
Like the quagmire in Iraq, The Whitehouse and Congress seem prepared to waste $Trillions of tax dollars and many lives to further the 21st century ambitions of American Big Oil in and around Afghanistan.
Good luck building oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan and Pakistan so that American oil corporations can gain hegemony over Asian markets.
$Trillions in war costs along with unknown “blowback” is a terribly high price to pay to subsidize $Billions in corporate profit. And thus far there is zero success even if war crimes are accepted as a legitimate tool of business.
But the catch is that the military complex is making money win or lose.
This is public debt for private profit and a lot of death and suffering !
Geographic note: the main areas of trouble in Afghanistan and Pakistan happen to be in Pashtun lands. The Pashtun’s have historically excelled at two things: fighting each other in tribal wars and clan blood feuds, and terrorizing their neighbors (they are particularly nasty to the Hazara). Their ferocity towards each other is only exceeded by their ardor towards invaders: ask the British and Russians about that (they’ve only been conquered by Alexander the Great). They also supply the membership for the Taliban. The only people who can defeat the Pashtuns are other Pashtuns.
btw: McCain has yet to show he knows anything about this area either.
KILGROVE TROUT IS CORRECT….THE SOVIETS COULD NOT WIN EITHER……THAT WAS AFTER 8 YEARS IN AFGHNISTAN….THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DOES NOT WANT TO WIN IN AFGHANISTAN OR IRAQ….LET’S JUST DRAG THIS THING OUT AS LONG AS WE CAN……..FOR THE SAKE OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND BIG OIL
NateW the Pushtun hater is back.
….LET’S JUST DRAG THIS THING OUT AS LONG AS WE CAN……..FOR THE SAKE OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND BIG OIL.
That says it all my friends ; everything else is just beer foam .
The most humane thing to do about any internal power struggle is to let them duke it out and acknowledge the winner. Give them a seat at the UN, send Condi to congratulate them, buy their heroin and send them Superbowl tickets. Over time we stand a remote chance of creating a kinder, gentler Taliban, but we aren’t going to beat them by any means short of all-out genocide. I personally would favor the option that we bankrupt ourselves in the effort to cut a hole out of a blanket in that vast region of the world where blood is thicker than politics and nobody fears death, though probably we will tire of it before that happens. Unless of course NateW is wrong and John McCain’s vast diplomatic and military experience and his knowledge of Pashtun language and culture prove to be our salvation.
dcbeltway - I do not hate the Pashtun’s. In fact, I admire their tenacity and courage in the face of invaders and their determination to rule themselves. It is at the West’s peril that they view them through rose colored glasses though. Local history is full of examples of Pashtuns being bad actors: acting as Pakistan’s storm troops in 1947 Kashmir conflict, the massacre of Hazara civilians in the sack of Mazar-I-Sharif, plus they supplied the membership of the Taliban (Mullah Omar is a Pashtun too). It is also not an leap to describe their tribal code, Puktanwali, as being slightly less barbaric than Saudi Wahhabism. Writing truth about a relevant subject is not hating.
I traveled through a corner of the Pashtun area last summer. We were on a trek led by Balti tribesmen and were headed for Baltistan, a neighboring tribe in Kashmir. We passed through several checkpoints manned by men who were not in uniform carrying AK-47s. Everybody was pretty nice and after our Balti guide went out and talked to them we were waved through every time. We did not travel at night.
I would argue that as long as the U.S. did not send troops or bombers to an area to try and stake out a pipeline route through the Pashtun areas for Chevron (which is what the “search for Bin Laden” is all about) the Pashtun have better things to do than worry about the U.S.
Bush and the NeoCons and the Halliburton/Blackwater crowd are like little boys poking a hornets’ nest with a stick. Eventually they will get stung. Or we will. Leave the hornets alone and they probably won’t bother you.
How soon we forget….
In summer of 2001, Union Oil and its Afghan rep, Karzai. brought the Taliban to Houston trying to ’schmooze’ them into allowing pipeline from Central Asia across Afghanistan.
The Talban spurned all offers. Less than 1 month later 9/11 occurred.
P.S.
Not all Pashtuns have been miliaristic:
Please read the following about a non-violent Pastun partner of Gandhi’s. Pay special attention to the 1930 event described. It took many more years but the non-violence finally overcame. I’m afraid we in this country do not have the intestinal fortitude necessary.
In this time of violence, we need to know that we are not alone.
Ghaffar Khan
Peace Warrior
The seething hatred and violence in South Asia, pitting Hindu and Muslim nationalists makes this a good time to reconsider the life of a great Pashtun warrior who lies buried in the ancient city of Jalalabad. His name was Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
His story is contained in Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan, A Man To Match His Mountains, by Eknath Easwaran (Published by Nilgiri Press). Easwaran is a meditation teacher who founded the California-based Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in 1961. The Nilgiri Press is associated with the center.
Born near the Khyber Pass to a prosperous landowning family, Ghaffar Khan was more than six feet tall and powerfully built. A devout Muslim, he led a trained Islamic army — the Khudai Khidmatgars, or Servants of God. It was a private force, formed to free the Pashtun tribesmen from British imperial rule. The Khudai Khidmatgars were thoroughly professional, with uniforms, officers, regimental flags and even a bagpipe corps. But the soldiers swore the strangest oath that warriors — especially fierce Pashtun warriors — could take:
I promise to refrain from violence and taking revenge.
I promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty.
Ghaffar Khan believed the mortal weakness of his fellow tribesmen was an obsession with honor and revenge killings. They helped perpetuate a cycle of violence that the British were quick to exploit for their own purposes.
In time, this devout Muslim befriended India’s Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of nonviolent protest. Photographs from the 1930s show the diminutive “Gandhiji” sitting next to the immense Pashtun warrior at rallies uniting Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi chanted from the Bhagavad Gita, a work sacred to Hindus, while Khan responded with passages from the Koran, the sacred book of Islam.
The bright-colored uniforms of Ghaffar Khan’s soldiers gave them a sobriquet: Red Shirts. On one April day in 1930, the Red Shirts showed their courage and devotion to the non-violent teachings of their leader when the British Army took one whole day to shoot down innumerable Red Shirts. As a Harvard scholar writes: “The Red Shirts kept standing at the spot facing the British soldiers and were fired at from time to time, until there were heaps of wounded and dying lying about. This state of things continued from eleven till five o’clock in the evening. When the number of corpses became too many the ambulance cars of the government took them away and burned them.”
Ghaffar Khan endured beatings and arrests and continued to lead his Red Shirts on a path of nonviolence until the end of the British Raj.
As communal and sectarian violence racked South Asia following the end of British rule, Ghaffar Khan and Gandhi travelled the Indian subcontinent, demanding that the fighting stop. At prayer meetings, the two read from one another’s sacred scriptures and calmed the crowds.
“A person who has known God will be incapable of harboring anger or fear within him, no matter how overpowering the cause it may be,” Ghandi would say.
Ghaffar Khan also championed women’s rights. “In the Holy Koran you have an equal share with men,” he told them. “You are today oppressed because we men have ignored the commands of God and the Prophet…”
When partition gave Pakistan independence, Ghaffar Khan boycotted the ceremonies — as Gandhi did similar events in New Delhi. And while Gandhi fell to an assassin’s bullet, within a few years, the Pakistani government became the jailer of Ghaffar Khan. His son, Abdul Wali Khan, said that his father spent “every third year of his life in jail.”
In the climate of festering hate that exists today, it is good to remember a gentle Pashtun giant who envisioned a different kind of Jihad — a path of peace and brotherhood.
Oh, but the surge is working! Everyone in Washington DC says so. So we’re winning the “War on Terror”? Aren’t we? Hello? Hello?
Behold George W. Bush, the first American president to lose two wars simultaneously. No wonder he wants to attack Iran; he wants to make it three. What a legacy!
Voxclamantis seems to share my hope and expectation that we will
“bankrupt ourselves” in our determined efforts to impose our will on anyone and everyone that tries to oppose US.
I often think total economic collapse will be the inevitable end to consumer capitalism.
The system is so corrupt it will sink into its own cesspool.
Thanks NateW, I’d like to see more of your comments.
I don’t udnerstand why there aren’t more articles on Pashtun issues.
OK, some of you history buffs list all SUCCESSFUL military occupations. My position is that there have been zero. The only success is for the arms merchants. The soldiers and populations of both countries are decimated.
The entire world, except for two rogue nations, has given up the bombs and bullets business. Making war on one’s neighbors is very expensive. All but two near bankrupt nations learned this lesson 50 years ago. The entire world, except for two rogue nations, has gotten wealthier. Somehow I cannot see the worshipers of that ancient angry tribal god changing from holier than thou into sack cloth and ashes. How expensive is an apology and a nice cup of mint tea? Any human could do it.
NateW I am married to a Tajik Afghan. He’d agree that Pashtunwali is ultra conservative and he’d agree that his Tajik Afghan culture is far more liberal. He grew up with Pashtun friends and speaks very good Pashtu in addition to Dari/Farsi. However, I agree with curmudgeon99 on both those posts and I appreciate him pointing out that not all Pushtuns are militaristic. The problem is Pakistan’s funding and support of the Taliban. See here http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/index.htm . The Taliban do not equal Pushtun culture. We have many Pushtun friends who are sick of the comparison and their culture being boiled down to barbarism and backwardness by Westerners who read old British and Soviet accounts of their culture and then proclaim they are experts on Afghanistan and the Pushtuns.
BBC and others have done surveys on Afghan opinion and majority of Afghans are against the Taliban including the Pushtuns. The Taliban are now targetting Pushtun children on their way to school and these poor kids are getting killed. Afghans blame Pakistan for thier misery.
Manley Manley man - I want to be a Manley man! John Manley says that, unless some NATO country agrees to deploy 1,000 more soldier in Kandahar province, that Canada should get out in 2009. I wonder if the US is ready to step up to the plate - since every other country has refused to do so.
Canadian troops have stopped turning prisoners over to the Americans in Afghanistan for fear of abuse and now they have stopped turning them over to the Afghani government for the same reason.
RE: - OK, some of you history buffs list all SUCCESSFUL military occupations. My position is that there have been zero. The only success is for the arms merchants.
Thyssen was still selling weapons in North America during the Reagaon era for sure - not sure when (or if) they have stopped doing so.
RE: - Ghaffar Khan believed the mortal weakness of his fellow tribesmen was an obsession with honor and revenge killings. They helped perpetuate a cycle of violence that the British were quick to exploit for their own purposes.
Thank you for sharing. Nothing to add but my mantra that history is repetitive.
RE: - Over time we stand a remote chance of creating a kinder, gentler Taliban, but we aren’t going to beat them by any means short of all-out genocide.
NATO is not designed to create a kinder gentler anything, the UN is - which is why no one wants to contribute to the UN.
It may or may not reach the criteria of a genocide in Iraq, but there have been villages wiped out as various groups lobby for power.
Jack Layton says that it’s gotten worse in Afghanistan since we invaded rather than better.
There have been some speculation as to whether Canadian soldiers have been killed by enemy use of their own land mines or enemy use of mines from other friendlies.
There is plenty of our tax money available for war profiteering for the rich, but no help for the tax payers.
Bush Budget Seeks Massive Cuts to Medicare
The Bush administration has announced it plans to seek deep cuts to Medicare and a freeze on new Medicaid spending in its budget request for fiscal 2009. Overall the White House is trying to slash $208 billion dollars from federal health programs over the next five years. More than 80, or $170 billion, would come from Medicare. The proposed reductions are even more extensive than those in the administration’s proposals last year. Other areas will see funding increases. The White House is proposing to boost border funding by 19, including $2 billion for border fencing, barriers and surveillance technology. The U.S. deficit is expected to more than double to $400 billion dollars with the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the administration’s tax cuts.
shakker wrote: OK, some of you history buffs list all SUCCESSFUL military occupations.
All states west of the Mississippi?
I’m not much good at history, so some of you Lewis and Clark fans can help enlighten us.
KEM — “Maybe a couple of small nukes would wake them up.”
So your prescription for this problem is mass genocide. If this same prescription was appplied to israeli jews CD would have yanked this post out in a minute … but hey its open season on Muslims. I can only hope this was in jest …
Curmudgeon … Gaffar Khan was a true hero .. the Frontier Gandhi as he was known was the last of the great Leaders from that era. Ofcourse his legacy was trashed by subsequent Pakistani leaders and no one even refers to him anymore …. what a sad state of affairs.
I would hope that it is possible for the US to ‘bankrupt itself’, but it seems that, intended or not, the increased globalization of finance and business serves to make it in the interests of all national economies to preserve the standing of the US dollar and economy and not act in ways that would result in reduced US consumption. ‘Global investment’ that is (increasingly) taking place in so many countries fuels these smaller, weaker economies and provides employment for their burdgening populations (expanding in part because the jobs create a degree of prosperity and a lot of hope - and one more baby for the family). Countries want foreign investment to increase and there are no ethics concerning sources of capital.
The US gov’t seems to be betting that it can, in a sense, borrow without limit because no one dares to say ‘no more’. It feels to me like its a pyramid whereby if the players can expand - economic growth - the games goes on. And guess who’s at the top of this pyramid.
If a country wishes not to a part of this financial morass, the US defines it as a rogue nation and uses its power to isolate and otherwise hurt it.
It seems that there was nothing to prevent the US from increasing its (deficit) spending by invading and occupying Iraq. Is something different now that the US would worry about further deficit spending that would result from an invasion of yet another country, Iran for instance?
dcbeltway
Just because you are personal friends with the Karzai family does not mean you are right or Karzai is going to win. What Karzai and his Western backers might achieve if they persist, is the wiping out of those Pashtun who won’t ever agree with the Western ways imposed by a Western military occupation.
The Western “reformers” are turning children into the front line. How cowardly to make women and children the vanguard of a new “Western” way backed by their foreign troops. Cultural change cannot come at the point of a foreigners gun. That change will be associated with the invaders. Patriots will oppose it no matter how just it appears to Western values.
the american people are going to have a rude awakening when this explodes (onto the front pages and lead in on newscasts).
Kilgore it is no use pretending that this admin cares two hoots about human rights. There is indiscriminate aerial assault all around Afghanistan.
Jan just because you are a rabid marxist does not mean you are right or that marxist values are Afghan values.
Quit harrassing me you insane woman!
dcbeltwway: You said the Taliban are targeting and killing Pashtun children on their way to school.
Can you tell me where you got that information please, it sounds insane. Antithetical to the logic on the ground there as I understand it.
Thank you for any clarification.
Mikepeters Jan is a troll who harrasses, insults and bullies me everytime I post on Afghanistan. As the article states most of the school closures are happening in the South, Pushtun territory.
Attacks on Afghan students up sharply
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 23, 4:21 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - The number of students and teachers killed in Taliban attacks has tripled in the past year in a campaign to close schools and force teenage boys to join the Islamic militia, Afghanistan’s education minister says.
While the overall state of Afghan education shows improvement, Education Ministry numbers point to a sharp decline in security for students, teachers and schools in the south, where the Taliban thrives: The number of students out of classes because of security concerns has hit 300,000 since March 2007, compared with 200,000 in the previous 12 months, while the number of schools closing has risen from 350 to 590.
The Taliban strategy is deliberate: “to close these schools down so that the children and primarily the teenagers that are going to the schools — the boys — have no other option but to join the Taliban,” Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
The Taliban know that educated Afghans won’t join the militants, so a closed school leaves students with two options — to join the Taliban or “to cross the border and go into those hate madrassas,” Atmar said, referring to Islamic seminaries in Pakistan where “they will be professionally trained as terrorists.”
Wakil Ahmad Khan, a top official at Pakistan’s religious affairs ministry, said Pakistani “madrassas are doing a wonderful job by providing education to millions of students” and “if the Afghan officials have any such information, they should share it with Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry.”
Attacks on schools still in operation have actually fallen in the last 10 months — to 98 from 187 in the same period of 2006, Atmar said, attributing the drop to a community defense initiative. But the Taliban have switched to targeting students on their way to and from school or in other places where they congregate.
The U.N. said it couldn’t confirm that Taliban fighters were upping efforts to recruit schoolboys, and no educational aid organizations that could confirm Atmar’s claims are working in provinces such as Helmand in the dangerous south.
Adam Rutland, a spokesman at the British reconstruction team in Helmand province, said the perception in Helmand province was that more schools were open than in the past, although he added that it’s well known that disaffected and poor young men are a recruiting base for the Taliban.
Atmar said 147 students and teachers have been killed in Taliban attacks since mid-March, compared with 46 in the previous year. The 147 include 58 students and teachers killed in a single bombing and gunfire attack in Baghlan province in November.
The number of students and teachers wounded has gone from 46 to 200, he said.
Most of the schools closed for security reasons are in the south. In Helmand, the world’s largest opium poppy growing region, 177 schools are closed, along with 150 in nearby Kandahar province, Atmar said.
He said dozens of students he talked with in Helmand province recently told him the Taliban are pushing them to enlist. Some 1,100 students from outlying areas are traveling to the relative safety of the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah to attend class. Atmar said he hopes soon to provide housing and food for these students.
Of the 13 districts in Helmand, seven have no schools in operation, said Sayed Abrar Agha, the director of education in Helmand. District leaders like Agha provide the figures that Atmar cites.
Agha said he recently visited the town of Musa Qala — which was controlled by the Taliban until last month — and the head education official refused to talk to him.
“He’s still afraid of the Taliban and doesn’t want to meet with government officials,” Agha said.
Atmar predicted attacks on students and teachers would continue to increase unless the international community and the Afghan government delivered protection.
Still, overall there is good news in Afghanistan’s educational comeback since the days of the Taliban, when girls couldn’t attend schools and fewer than 1 million boys did. Some 5.8 million students now attend class, up from 5.4 million a year ago, 35 percent of them female, Atmar said.
The Education Ministry’s goal is that within four years 75 percent of all boys will be in classes — up from roughly 50 percent currently — and 60 percent of all girls — up from less than 30 percent today.
Schools also suffer from a shortage of qualified teachers, particularly female ones, and of infrastructure.
U.S. forces in the eastern province of Kunar are linking Afghan children with schools in the U.S., Italy and Germany that can supply pens, notebooks and chalk, the military said Wednesday.
“Being in the U.S., it is hard to visualize the lack of resources they have here,” Army Capt. Jay S. VanDenbos, 30, from Tahlequah, Okla., was quoted as saying in a military news release.
Teachers are underpaid, and of Afghanistan’s 9,400 schools, only 40 percent have proper facilities, he said. “Ninety percent of the schools are open-air schools, which are sometimes a tarp and a dirt floor. They’ll have a rock that they use as a chalk board, and kids sit underneath the tarp and learn.”
“Most of the kids want to learn. They yearn for knowledge,” said VanDenbos. “Anytime anyone goes on patrols, the kids are screaming to ‘give me pen, give me pen.’”
I know this is probably a dumb statement! But, wouldn’t it have been easier to get some CIA agents to kidnap Osama bin Laden in 2001 bring him back to the US to stand trial instead of plunging this country into an expensive war we couldn’t win. And most of us knew then it wasn’t winnable. Besides never solving the terrorism problem. Terrorism is a ideology not a country. It’s a tactic that’s used by people against superior forces. The same principle defeated Hitler in the second world war. When every country he invaded had a growing partisan army that recked havoc. We can’t change these people’s ideologies, culture, political alliances and etc. This regime change nonsense of Bush’s has almost bankrupt us. It would really be nice if Bush and his cronies were intelligent enough to understand what terrorism actually was. But, we all know that’s not the reason he started this war. Terrorism was only the pretext he used to invade these oil rich countries and grab their wealth.
The first paragraph sums it all up doesn’t it, Muslims in Afgahnistan, fancy that and they’re INSURGENTS, now there’s a thing.
NATO troops outside Europe and USA and who gives a shit about why NATO was formed, certainly not for collective defence against the Soviet block, not any more, they’re troops are they not and troops can fight our corporate wars and we can brainwash the world into making the resistance fighters the bad guys. What’s a few million muslims lives worth when the world needs Christianity, doesn’t Christianity show the way, the true way, sure it does and millions of children in the world are benefitting from not having to wear shoes since they have no legs, cluster bombs are great, they carry the lords message.
Will it all change when the new resident of the shite house moves in, no chance, Clinton regards the Iranian government as hostile. That’s understandable given that any country with any viable defence against the Christians is a threat, an insurgent.
Here’s a second article on the targetting of schools:
Afghan schools try to make new start
By Soutik Biswas
BBC News, Kabul
More girls are returning to school
A group of girls returning home from school in Afghanistan’s Logar province recently did not for a moment expect what lay ahead.
As they walked down a dirt track, insurgents sprang out of the parched farms and began firing on them.
Some of them fled into the farm, but two girls, one aged 13, the other 10, were killed in the ambush. Three of their friends were wounded.
This kind of attack on schoolchildren, the first incident of its kind in Afghanistan, highlights how the insurgents are trying to disrupt education in the war-ravaged nation.
A surge in violence over the past year threatens to neutralise the gains made by the country in sending its children back to school after the fall of the Taleban.
In the past 13 months, 226 schools, many run from tents, have been burnt down by the insurgents. A total of 110 teachers and students have been killed in incidents of indirect violence and another 52 wounded, officials say.
I am very worried that such incidents will make parents very scared to send their children to school
Afghan Education Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar
The Taleban also shut down 381 schools, the majority of them in provinces like Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan where they have a formidable presence.
This is depressing news when you consider that more than six million Afghan children have returned to schools in the past six years - a sevenfold increase from the 900,000 children, all of them boys, who were going to school during the Taleban rule.
The number of teachers has also leapt from a paltry 21,000 to 143,000 during the same period. The government says it is hiring 10,000 teachers this year alone.
Now the attack on the schoolchildren has sent shock waves through the government.
“I am devastated. I am very worried that such incidents will make parents very scared to send their children to school,” says Afghan Education Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar.
The insurgents have in the past burnt down schools in the night, and fired rockets to destroy some. They have been distributing “night letters” asking the Afghans to stop working for the government and going to schools.
It is not difficult to destroy schools in Afghanistan - only 40% of the 8,500 schools in the country are run out of buildings. The rest operate out of tents or are simply run under trees.
Officials worry that the Taleban may have begun targeting school children because of the “relative success” of a programme to protect schools.
Over the past eight months, the government has spent $500,000 launching what it calls a “special school protection programme” - which works by groups of parents and local villagers keeping a watch on the schools, sometimes keeping licensed guns.
Some 1,000 schools have been covered under the programme, and officials say the protection scheme is yielding results - 35 of the 381 schools shut down by the Taleban have been reopened.
“This has worked quite a bit. When the insurgents see that the local community is protecting the school, they usually don’t challenge,” says Mr Atmar.
But the success of this programme could be the reason why the insurgents have now begun targeting schoolchildren as they find it difficult to attack schools guarded by local people.
Schools in rural areas now need armed protection
The only hope may be the fact that there is finally a high premium on education in Afghanistan - and most parents don’t want to take their children out of the schools because of the violence, yet.
“When I went to the school in Logar to meet parents after the recent attack, the first thing that they told me was: ‘Please do not close the school down. We will give your more ideas for the protection of the school,’” says Mr Atmar.
As it is there are enough problems - 80% of the teachers are untrained, and at $60 a month, an Afghan teacher’s salary is among the lowest in the world. A little over 6% of the government’s non-defence budget is spent on education.
‘Government’s responsibility’
Analysts are critical of how little the government continues to spend on education; neighbouring Tajikistan, for example, spends three times more on teaching its children.
Now faced with insurgent attacks on children, the government reckons it would need a quarter of the country’s existing 60,000-strong policemen to guard the schools alone. That is not possible, say officials.
Ultimately, the government will need to ramp up security and pour money into education to spread learning in the country.
Otherwise, a time may soon arrive when parents begin to pull children out of schools, fearing for their lives.
“How much can villagers do in fighting armed insurgents? It is ultimately the government’s responsibility to secure its children,” says a school teacher.
If insecurity wrecks the dreams of children to get educated, it will be a significant setback for Afghanistan in its efforts to make a new beginning.
http://www.thepresidency.org/pubs/Afghan_Study_Group_final.pdf
Afghan Study Group Report
DC Beltway: I don’t see the purpose of your post except to support the continued occupation of Afghanistan. Karzai represents a small part of the population. The Taliban are the Pashtun. You may not like the way they think, but they have a right to think how they want. They oppress women and children? Yes, indeed. Frankly, war isn’t better, and we shouldn’t be playing God. The Taliban was a US creation and , as usual, these creations become a problem. It is way past time for a non-interventionist policy. We should mind our own business and lead by example and soft power. It works much better and is more satisfying. No killing you know?
Tumbleweed:
The US, and Bush specifically had many chances to have Bin Laden and didn’t take them. At some point you have to ask yourself if they ever really wanted to catch him. I’m not even sure if he is alive or ever existed in the way we see him.
You want to help Afghanistan? It’s very simple. Buy the opium they produce every year, use it to make painkillers of which there is a shortage, supply addicts so criminals are kept out. Then, as the sole buyer, at good prices, use the leverage, not to get the opium cheaper, but to liberalize the society for the benefit of women and children. The increase in wealth will undermine the Taliban anyway. The cost is less than 10 billion a year and you get pain killers. There could well be a profit there, not to mention the benefit to society from a decrease in crime.
Lizard on the opium the Senlis Council has already been promoting that policy for years. http://www.senliscouncil.net/
I know members of the Karzai family as Jan the troll obnoxiouosly pointed out. That doesn’t mean I agree with them on everything. Karzai is Pushtun by the way. The best time for the Afghans was under thier own rule during the time of Zahir Shah, not the Soviets rule, not the rule of the war lords, not the rule of the Taliban, and certainly not under NATO which has done a lousy job with security. I support Afghan independence but until the Pakistani backed Taliban are dealt with this cannot be achieved it will only result in Pakistani Taliban rule of Afghanistan again if we left tomorrow.
Since the Taliban is our monster…. should we not destroy the roots of the beast? The best way we can do that is provide economic opportunities for Afghans and Pakistanis, ensure their children are educated and provide hope. Sorry but targetting Afghan children on their way to school is sick and indefensible and I don’t get how so called progressives support the Taliban.
Bin Laden is probably dead Benazir Bhutto stated this. Many people believe it was the gas pipeline which was probably the reason we invaded.
Interesting thread.
I am relatively new to CD but did visit Afghanistan in 1969 before all the serious trouble began to pick up speed. I was quite impressed with the independent spirit of the
Afghan people and as one place on earth that had kept the imperialists OUT.
And pardon my opinion, but dcbeltway sounds like a internet watchdog gatekeeper apologist rationalizing the American occupation with perhaps a Washington connection or bias ?
If that is not fair or true, someone needs to adjust their spin.
Yet, Afghanistan cannot be understood without considering Pakistan as the other half of a political identity and strategic geography as well as the Pashtun overlap into both countries.
The old expression, “watch your back” comes to mind. India is an enemy of Pakistan and in bed with American corporate fascists. Bushism is their 21st century God. And America is well known for stabbing both friends and enemies and fellow Americans in the back at the drop of a hat.
With a hostile India on their eastern border, Pakistan does not want a deeply entrenched American mini-military empire at their back.
I also would imagine that they would like a piece of the energy devlopment commerce which could include connecting to Iran as well as Central Asia. They will continue to play complex games with the American imperialists with time on their side. And the Afghans will likely resist forever which is their history.
And as they begin to repopulate their supply of young male fighters decimated by past warfare, they will increase the pressure etc.
And another motivating factor not mentioned is simply how much Americans are resented throughout a region that has an eye for an eye system of morality and memory.
“The Great Game” continues.
I think lizard is correct on this.
The only way for this mess which we started is to apologize and agree not to try and occupy any other country but our own from now on.
We can’t afford to fix the mess we made and we can’t afford to fix the mess we made here in the US.
DCbeltway, one of the links to the security archives that you provided shows how even under Clinton one year before 9/11 our policy of intervention and bombing was what kept the Taliban from resolving the hand over of Osama. Neither the US or the Saudis would recognize them (sound familiar?) but we demanded they do what we wanted regardless of the opinion of the people of Afghanistan. check out http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB134/Document%204%20-%20STATE%20220495.pdf
Now you want the US to escalate the mess we made?
it is a shame about School children being targeted, but what do you expect in a country that we invaded? War equals terror and chaos anywhere and the problem is that it is a racket …so recognize all enemies and talk instead of bomb and Kill.
Until we have the wisdom and courage for a new way forward, it will get worse until we very soon destroy ourselves… Maybe that will be the future… it looks like it is from here.
“There is little in the short term that the Bush administration or its allies can do to halt the bloodshed..”
Maybe try not funding and arming these groups anymore?
Oh but silly me, that would interfere with the divide and conquer strategy that Empires have always used to topple their enemies, er colonies.
The Landay article mentions the disputes within NATO over the ever-increasing Afghan (and not only Pashtun) opposition to the occupation. There seems to be a growing, though muted, awareness in some “old Europe” gov’ts that the whole “war on terror” is falling apart. The US’s Gates told the German gov’t to send troops to the south to fight the Taliban, and the German foreign minister just said “no”. More or less that the German soldiers are there to build schools and things.
The Germans know from bitter experience that the opening of new fronts in a losing war only hastens the final defeat. Afghanistan is just one front in Bush’s 100-year war, and every year the native resistance gets stronger. It always has been like this to foreign occupations in Afghanistan as the British and Russians have well learned (though the former seem to have now forgotten). The greater use of bombing by the US warplanes to “compensate” the widening of the insurgency kills ever more civilians, and so generates ever more resistance. The Germans also learned that lesson the hard way; they probably reason that if they can be seen as the “peaceful foreign soldiers”, they will retain some influence with whatever government emerges in the country after this front collapses.
Jim what you are saying about Bin Laden is true and everyone knows this. Where your wrong is the fact that the Taliban do not represent the opinion of the Afghan people especially the female population of that country. The Taliban only represent themselves.
This link is to the Afghan run Bayat Foundation. http://bayatfoundation.org/press/main.php I am posting this because the founder is a hero amongst the Afghans.
One thing for sure; they all need guns!
GUNS ARE U.S.!
Apologies? Sure it would fix things and make the ME people feel more secure so less money would be funneled for guns.
Like I said; GUNS ARE U.S.!
http://www.asiafoundation.org/pdf/AG-survey06.pdf
Survey of the Afghan people by the Asia Foundation. Afghans remain strongly anti-Taliban see Taliban insurgency a result of Pakistani interference.
From a BBC survey on Afghan Public Opinion:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/07_12_06AfghanistanWhereThingsStand.pdf
“Positives remain. Most Afghans say the government and local police alike have a strong presence in their area – few say so of the Taliban – and trust the current authorities, at least somewhat, to provide security. Again likely reflecting the Taliban’s broad unpopularity, big majorities continue to call the U.S.-led invasion a good thing for their country (88 percent), to express a favorable opinion of the United States (74 percent) and to prefer the current Afghan government to Taliban rule (88 percent”.
dcbeltway,
Great! if the majority in your favorite place like the US supported government then we should get out now before they change their minds and let the majority take care of the Taliban..
The best way for that to happen is to talk peace with them… I am skeptical of the people wanting to be told what to do by American forces though…if Karzai has popular support he should move to resolve the conflict now because according to the World revolution our occupations and interventions are losing here there and everywhere. The old policy of US dominance is losing and it can’t win.
The only way to win war is to end War….In the new age of global warming and over population, ending this madness of our direction of solving everybody’s problems to get the ruling elite stronger … is losing. What about the future of citizens here? Does all that have to wait until we lose all these wars of intervention? Does making peace have to wait for more and more War?
I want the US to concentrate on our problems here… You seem to just care about your allies in Afghanistan… kind of like the Old Miami Cubans always want us to take over Cuba.
Look at the title of this article …Does it tell you anything about what you want and the way to get it?
Last time I checked what happens in Afghanistan doesn’t stay in Afghanistan Jim Glover so we should all give a damn. As for my Afghan mother in law yeah I worry everyday about her fate in Kabul what am I supposed to do turn off my emotions and abandon an old woman to the Taliban? Should the rest of the Afghan Americans do the same with their families? Should my husband? You don’t think I am disgusted with what Amerika has become in the last 8 years? Obviously you haven’t seen my other outraged posts on CD and yes there is a hell of a lot to fix at home on that I agree.
JConrad — ” India is an enemy of Pakistan and in bed with American corporate fascists.”
“With a hostile India on their eastern border, Pakistan does not want a deeply entrenched American mini-military empire at their back”
If you take some time off to read the recent history of the Indian sub-continent you will realize its Pakistan that has been ‘Empire’s’ cabana boy for the last 60 years. India in recent times has warmed up to the U.S. due to its ‘liberalized’ economy (thats another story) but has always maintained a deep distrust of all things American.
Pakistan in fact has created these troubles and currently is reaping the ‘rewards’ of its failed policies. Pakistan created the Taliban and Lashkar and HUM and a host of other vile terrorist groups to gain leverage over Afghanistan and India. If the Pakistani people actually had a choice they would have focussed on building their own country first like all the other neighbours in the sub-continent. Instead a succession of ‘generalissimos’ have raped the country and shred it to bits.
Thank you Gyptian. At least someone else on this board has the guts to tell it like it is.
“We can’t afford to fix the mess we made and we can’t afford to fix the mess we made here in the US.”
This is the easy way out. Commit murder and slink away in the middle of the night. We broke it so we darned well stay and fix it whatever it friggin takes. American soldiers die for halliburton on a daily basis, maybe its time to die for a real cause.
Having said that, a continued American presence in Afghanistan (everyone agrees) is antithetical to Afghan interests in the long run. We need to stay there or help an international force to DEFEAT the Taliban. The Taliban are a small fraction of Afghan society and do not have mass support and they were created by Pakistan.
We need to keep American corporate, geo-political and strategic interests at bay and take the help of all the neighbouring countries Russia, India, Iran, Pakistan, China etc and help settle the differences with the Pashtuns so as to create an environment where a true democracy can flourish in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. thats OUR friggin responsibility. Bombing civilians and keeping American and NATO forces and sending some stupid friggin ‘brittish’ emissary aint gonna help shit.
Why doesn’t Harper’s government realise that Canada enjoys a good name in the world unlike its marauding neighbor, the US. Why doesn’t the Canadian government think of withdrawing its 2500 troops from Afghanistan? UK and US have an objective there, which is to pillage (oil & gas from CAS), what are the Canadians doing there other than getting themselves slaughtered.
The US is only the latest misguided entrant in Afghanistan, which has been a hell hole for anyone who tried to subdue it.
The Soviets tried and failed miserably. Even the British at the height of their power could not contain the place.
This quote by Rudyard Kipling tells the story - “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”