good news in afghanistan?

http://www.msnbc.com/news/995758.asp#BODY

The above article is disheartening... I'm seriously not trying to score some rhetorical points here, but has anyone read any hopeful news from Afghanistan lately? Is anything on a positive trajectory as a result of the war? Based on what everyone has read (witnessed?), do you think the Taliban is on the rise again? or are things more complicated than this?

One guy from my unit came back lately (we dont necessarily send complete units over there...If they need 50 Truck drivers, they will be send by several units, not a single one) pretty fucked up, by what he has seen over there like a local torn apart by a landmine or having some ak47 rounds gone thru his jeep. Just because there are no news about afghanistan on cnn. does not mean that nothing happens over there. In the 3 months he spend over there he saw several coffins being send home, but none of them were reported in the news.

I remember one of the military customers at my old job showed me some pictures she took of Afghanistan. It looks like the universe's butthole. No grass, barely any vegetation, just rock and rock and maybe some dirt. I'd be surprised to hear anything hopeful from there even if the governmental situation was relatively normal.

They should have let the SBS kill the known Taliban (sorry, I mean 'flush them out' of course...) when they fled to the mountains, that'd have solved the problem...bombing is not effective in this environment.

*edited for clarity*

[Edited on Nov 24, 2003 by WaTed]

http://www.counterorder.com/longway_poster.bmp

The Forgotten Wars: Korea and Afganistan

I read an article that said that the majority of Afganistan is out of the control of the current Afgani government and all allied forces in Afganistan. Before the country was secure we ran off to tilt at windmills while a country that is being turned into an environment more hostile than the face of the moon sat there waiting for the hope they were promissed. They will probably sit a while yet... and lawmakers wonder why we are so hated internationally...

Yeah, I agree. However, if we need to bomb 'em a little just to get their attention, I'm all for it.

On the job with a Taliban recruiter

By Massoud Ansari

Asia Times (Hong Kong)

November 26, 2003

KILLA ABDULLA, Pakistan - Abdul Zahir's day starts with morning visits to a number of mosques in the Pakistani border area with Afghanistan, where the faithful gather for the first of their five daily prayer sessions. And once his morning session is over, he goes to some of the many madrassas (religious schools) in the area, or shows up at social gatherings, such as weddings, if there are any taking place.

Abdul is unflagging in his rounds because he has an almost missionary zeal: to find recruits for jihad - or holy war - waged by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Himself blinded in one eye from action in Afghanistan, Abdul tells prospective recruits: "You might fight at the front line, or you might stand guard at night. You can cook for other Islamic warriors, or you can be a male nurse. Or you can give the fighters money or grain - everything is welcome because the jihad has started."

On Abdul's most recent foray into Afghanistan he was accompanied by 14 youths from the remote Pakistani tribal areas in Killa Abdullah district in northern Balochistan province, whom he had rallied to the cause to fight against the "foreign invaders". Since his return he has another six lined up, all of whom are ready to cross the porous border. He took the last batch to a post in Zabul province, but he has no idea where the fresh recruits will go.

"I have already sent a message to Taliban commanders to seek instructions," Abdul says, "We will go wherever our services are needed." In recent months the Taliban have become more brazen and open in their operations, and they are known to be within relatively easy contact by wireless sets or by satellite phones. "The Taliban also have radios and regularly listens to the BBC's Pashtu service to keep themselves abreast of the situation in the Muslim world, especially in Iraq."

Abdul says that he had been itching to join the Afghan jihad ever since the Taliban were driven from power in December 2001. But his Taliban superiors only told him in July that the jihad had resumed. "I had always thought of fighting Americans because they are the real enemies of Islam and when I realized that they were next door, I took up the gauntlet to prepare all Muslims to go and fight them."

As reported in Asia Times Online in recent months, the Taliban have regrouped, rearmed and upped the ante in their battle against US-led forces in the country, as well as against the newly-instituted Afghan Army, forcing international aid organizations to limit their operations and raising doubts about the viability of plans to hold national elections next year.

Afghan leaders have consistently accusing Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of giving direct support to the allies of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and the Taliban, charges that the Pakistani government has denied.

"We are with the [Hamid] Karzai government and we have nothing to do with Taliban," Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said, believing that Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror" is known to everyone. "The world should stop suspecting us and should understand that we simply cannot arrest every black-turbaned person, and it would be ridiculous if someone expected us to do that."

The Pakistan government's claims apart, independent politicians in Balochistan province said that it would be simply impossible for the Taliban to operate freely on Pakistani soil unless they had some guarantees from the powers-that-be. Says Haji Sardar Lashkari, a former provincial minister in Balochistan: "How is it possible for senior Taliban leaders and the likes of Mullah Dadullah and other most-wanted Taliban remnants to come to Pakistan quite often, convince students at the religious schools openly or even to attend social gatherings like weddings, without the knowledge of the ISI and other secret agencies?"

Lashkari said that without finances, the Taliban couldn't fight. "It is quite obvious that there is someone who is not only financing them, but also encouraging them to fight, but I cannot say whether these agencies are operating on their own or have the blessings of [President] General [Pervez] Musharraf."

Indeed, on a visit to the border areas and Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, one witnesses hundreds of Taliban in their unique black robes, black turbans and long beards. They reside in mosques, madrassas and in nearby villages or refugee camps, seemingly with the full support of the ruling provincial party and militant groups. In many of the mosques in the surrounding satellite town of Pashtunabad or Nawakili, the clergy openly incite people through mosque loudspeakers and ask them to sign up for jihad.

"In every madrassa in Balochistan there are one or two Taliban recruiters," says a local politician in Quetta, requesting not to be identified. "If you want to sign on for jihad, the easiest thing is to stay at one of these madrassas and someone will for sure contact you. These recruiters keep a vigil on your activities, and once they realize that you are a genuine fighter, they will certainly talk to you and put you in touch with the Taliban commanders."

So the madrassas, from where the Taliban originally emerged, are once again serving as a means of their revival. Even Karzai recently lashed out at the Pakistani religious clergy for their support of Taliban resurgents. Karzai in particular mentioned the Shaldara madrassa in Quetta, run by the Jamait-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI)-backed member of the National Assembly, Maulana Noor Mohammed, and called it a headquarters of the Taliban.

Sitting cross-legged, with two flags, one used by the Taliban as their "country" flag and the other by the JUI, flying outside his office on Najamuddin Road in Quetta, Noor says that when it comes to sympathies for the Taliban, they are known to everyone. "We are pro-Taliban and totally against the Pakistan government's policy supporting the US war in Afghanistan," says Noor, who believes that bin Laden is an innocent Muslim who is "unnecessarily maligned" by Jews as a pretext to fight against Muslims.

Flanked by a few Taliban, Noor says that people in Afghanistan welcomed the Taliban when they took over in 1996 "and they still welcome them". He points out that the Taliban now have control of 13 districts alone in Zabul province, "while people in other areas are waiting for their call". He believes that "the puppet government of Karzai will soon fall like a house of cards because it has failed to provide peace in Afghanistan".

And peace there certainly is not, as daily reports of clashes illustrate, and the writ of the Karzai government barely extends beyond the capital Kabul. Abul, the Taliban recruiter, says that it is easy to move around the country. "Afghanistan is a second home for people living in these border areas," he says. "They don't have - or need - any passports or other travel documents."

Abdul explains that the last batch of 14 youths that he escorted to Afghanistan claimed that they were Afghan refugees who had been living in Pakistan but were now returning home. "We crossed the border at the regular check posts, but we could have sneaked into Afghanistan through non-formal routes and nobody on earth would have known about these journeys."

This is how the Taliban guerrillas initially operated, by taking sanctuary in Pakistan for forays into Afghanistan, as the border is impossible to monitor. But as they have been more successful, they have been able to establish more permanent bases within the country, and tend now to use Pakistan only for emergencies - or to round up more recruits.

Abdul, a Pakistani Pashtun farmer by profession, recalls that on his last trip he took his recruits to a militant camp near Zabul, where Taliban commanders gave them weapons. "They had huge deposits of weapons, both sakeel [heavy] and safeef [light]," he says. They were then told that whichever weapon they managed to master, they could take. Abdul grabbed an AK-47 rifle for himself, while he also assisted his comrades in carrying bags of bullets and grenades whenever they had to go to a battle.

Abdul says that he spent 40 days with his jihadis in Afghanistan, during which they had at least one major combat with an Afghan army patrol in the mountains of Zabul province. He then returned to Pakistan in mid-October "to regain some energy". "It is not easy to live in the mountains. You are at the verge of death every now and then. You survive only on plain bread, or at the most, yogurt milk," he says. "At the same time, you walk for miles every day on foot, it's very tiring."

Not that Abdul can put his feet up. He has been tasked to round up more youths, for the battle continues until "we completely flush out the Americans and their proteges from Afghanistan. The Americans have robbed us of our right to live and now we are using our right to die."

Alright, some of you people got your heads on wrong or something like that.

Afghanistan was pretty much Iron Age with some working trucks and a lot of guns. If you think we are going to turn things around in 2 years, you are clueless. Afghanistan is going to be a massive pisshole for about the next 10 years, ATLEAST. The central government only runs Kabul and it's building a national army. They have massive warlordism and tribalism which is going to take many many years to be gotten rid of. The Taliban will be simple to defeat, simply give the Afghan's an alterative life than being the Taliban, meaning they have to have other options other being religious fanatics. This will take a long time and a lot of money.
Look at Nazi Germany after World War II. It took about 10 years to deNazify the Germans. There had to be massive amounts of aid pumped into the country and the country had to be rebuilt almost from scratch. The Russians were looming to invading Western Europe, so that helped in that all parties in Germany may have not liked the Americans, British and French as invaders, but they make better guests than the Russians. The Germans knew they had to get on their feet and quickly.

Yeah.. I agree. But it seems as if the country is slowly being ignored already.

I mostly agree. But where will the money come from? I read somewhere that Bush, just one year after the war in Afghanistan, put forth next to nothing in aid to Afghanistan in his budget. Will try to find the article..

Yeah.. but I don't see a new "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan. In the U.S., I see a massive focus on Iraq, with relatively little attention towards Afghanistan.

Does anyone have reason to think that "it's just a matter of time" until things get better in Afghanistan? If so, what reason do you have for hope?

I guess it's all a matter of perspective but according to some of my old junkie friends there is now some really good heroin out there now.

This is my point:

Why should we help them at all. I know this is an awful conclusion to come to.. But do you think we can really make any positive permanent changes over there. I don't believe that the world has the resources to make every country happy in their own little neo-industrialized Disneyland. We simply cannot save them all, especially when no one really wants to lose anything in the process. I know I dont want to feed them MY paycheck... I can barely afford my bills... Where is all this surplus capital coming from??? I think the idea of the U.S. being the savior and prophet of industrialized nations is just a little too utopian.