"Is it time to give up on Hamid Karzai?"
Afghanistan is now the second most corrupt nation on earth, just after Somalia, according to Transparency International, a Berlin-based advocacy group.Followed by:
..."This is not a government in the conventional sense, this is simply a collection of fiefdoms," notes David Kilcullen, the Australian advisor to the Pentagon and an influential guru of modern U.S. counter-insurgency warfare.
And the problem with that becomes clear when you consider that the main hope of the NATO offensives underway in the South is to first clear the areas of the Taliban and then to immediately bring in the working institutions of the state — police, judiciary, civil service — a strategy known as "government in a box."
It sounds promising. But, as Kilcullen points out, the problem is that these institutions barely exist while those that do, such as the police, are notoriously corrupt.
So attempts to extend the reach of the mistrusted Karzai government to the provinces may backfire. As few trust it, few want it around.
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Now there's a harsh irony. The international community that went in with its military might to help stabilize Afghanistan bears much of the responsibility for having permitted the growth of an inherently destabilizing power centre in Kabul.
"U.S. report offers damning picture of human rights abuses in Afghanistan"
Afghan prison conditions are horrific, torture is common and police frequently rape female detainees, the U.S. State Department finds in its annual survey of human rights.
The damning report paints a grim picture of scant respect for human rights by the embattled regime headed by President Hamid Karzai. While Taliban treatment of civilians is even worse, the report's assessment of vile prison conditions and routine abuse and torture by Afghan police and security raises new questions about whether Canada and other nations are still transferring prisoners to known torturers. Doing so is a war crime under international law.
None of this will stop the idiots and human filth that cheered this debacle from the beginning from continuing to argue that they were right decades from now. They're unreachable. If I were ever in a position to shape policy in this country a big part of my strategy would be shutting these fools out of the discussion entirely.
2 comments:
Nothing new in this. We "installed" warlordism, a modern form of feudalism, because it suited us in driving out the Taliban. Few bothered to note these guys were as bad, sometimes worse, than the gang we sent packing.
A Senate foreign relations staffer testified a few years ago that there has never been a successful transformation of a Muslim state that didn't first overcome both tribalism and warlordism. In other words, it ain't gonna work, not now, not ever.
Because we chose to accept warlordism as the ruling establishment in Afghanistan, all we've been doing is babysitting an unresolved civil war. That is the net sum of all the efforts and lives we've expended so far and will sacrifice in the future. The warlords know it. The insurgents know it. The Afghan people know it. The Pakistanis know it.
Chatham House, the Royal Institute, labelled Afghanistan a "criminal enterprise" and warned it was doomed so long as it remained a "nexus" of government/druglord/warlord criminality. And we expect what exactly?
We're not even interested in addressing the fatal structural flaws in Afghan governance. That's simply whistling past the graveyard.
Why do you hate the troops?
Thanks for comment. I typed that silly, stupid, revolting question above because at this point you and I both know that the mission was doomed from the start, but we also know that the fools who supported it will never accept reality, but will be forced to reply with insane accusations of treason.
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