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British envoy says mission in Afghanistan is doomed
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ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:24 pm Post subject:

Quote:

I agree with the sentiment that we ought bring these people into Court. Absolutely. But how do we get them there in the first place? Are we to sit on our hands as the Taliban delivers them to us?

And so? this is how the world works and you don't go hunting down and around, hither and anon and stepping on toes, even chopping off toes. Even state troopers don't cross state lines. disRESPECT of territorial integrity/sovereignty is what the U.S. has done and with dramatic consequences throughout the world. Somehow the U.S. has just followed/stolen a script from some Hollywood B movie starring Steven Seigel ......go in, get the bad guy and who's counting all those houses blown up etc....

If I would like to get George Bush for killing my family or torturing my son -- how do I get him here to "X' in the first place? I'll just have to wait or work with local governments and the court system. That's how the world works

I reject your charge that the U.S. has done this. They have troops and special forces all over the place. Even in the case of Pakistan which you mentioned - the U.S. regularly has been violating their territorial integrity and doing whatever it wishes.... Let's not even mention all those unmarked prisons where men still waste away...

DD

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:36 pm Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

Big_Bird wrote:

mises wrote:

Better, make the case and take em' to court.

And this is how it should have been dealt with. It should have been treated as a horrific crime, with those individuals responsible or connected brought to justice and pursued through legal channels. Instead we just punished thousands (if you include Iraq - hundreds of thousands) of innocents in a very unjust and horrific way - and have done very little at all to eradicate terrorism.

I agree with the sentiment that we ought bring these people into Court. Absolutely. But how do we get them there in the first place? Are we to sit on our hands as the Taliban delivers them to us?

And before I get any smart riposites, America HAS adopted this policy. Look at Pakistan. They've been entrusted with grabbing Osama Bin Laden. And they're much 'friendlier' than the Taliban.

America was handed a bunch of shit options, and bungled one of the better of them. BB's suggestion makes it sound so easy. Just set a court date and allow Al Qaeda to arrive. Sure. Except that hasn't happened in Pakistan.

Sometimes you just can't get the bad guy. You don't go killing thousands of innocents to get one bad guy, or even a few hundred bad guys. You do everything to hamper him, and work behind the scenes to bring him in. But if you can not do that, you can not justify taking even one innocent life to get at this criminal, no matter how evil or wicked he is. You might know that a serial killer lives in a certain neighbourhood. You don't go blowing up houses in his neighbourhood to find him, do you? It's horrible that he's on the loose, and everyone is anxious that he is found, but you don't kill or harm other innocent people in your attempt to capture him. You just accept that you have to follow the law, and that we have certain limitations, but you plod along in a civilised fashion - because in the end, that's what's best for the world we want to live in.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:40 pm Post subject:

I 100% agree with big bird. Odd, that.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject:

Big_Bird wrote:

You do not need to mention serial killers - that takes us off point in a world affairs discussion. How about Osama bin Laden, though? Clearly, he essentializes and sees "America" as "the bad guy" and "evil." Why not hold him accountable to these same standards?

How about even the most recent attack in Pakistan, to say nothing of earlier attacks in Britain and Spain?

Note that I will studiously avoid bringing up Hezbollah and its style, Big_Bird.

I wish you were not so one-sided, so against the United States just because it is the United States, in your thinking on such matters as this.

Last edited by Gopher on Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:00 pm; edited 4 times in total

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

Big_Bird wrote:

You do not need to mention serial killers, that is off point in a world affairs discussion. How about Osama bin Laden, though? Clearly, he essentializes and sees "America" as "the bad guy" and "evil." Why not hold him accountable to these same standards?

Sure, hold him accountable.

But why hold the innocent people of Afghanistan accountable? Why punish them?

Here is a snippet from an article written a short time into the war. I want to comment more, but I see it's nearly time for me to leave, so I'll leave you with this for now:

The innocent dead in a coward's war

Quote:

The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war against terror is only now starting to become clear. Not by Britain or the US, nor even so far by the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders held responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. It has instead been paid by ordinary Afghans, who had nothing whatever to do with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over them and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his friends.
The Pentagon has been characteristically coy about how many people it believes have died under the missiles it has showered on Afghanistan. Acutely sensitive to the impact on international support for the war, spokespeople have usually batted away reports of civilian casualties with a casual "these cannot be independently confirmed", or sometimes simply denied the deaths occurred at all. The US media have been particularly helpful. Seven weeks into the bombing campaign, the Los Angeles Times only felt able to hazard the guess that "at least dozens of civilians" had been killed.

Now, for the first time, a systematic independent study has been carried out into civilian casualties in Afghanistan by Marc Herold, a US economics professor at the University of New Hampshire. Based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10. That is an average of 62 innocent deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 3,234 now thought to have been killed in New York and Washington on September 11.

Of course, Herold's total is only an estimate. But what is impressive about his work is not only the meticulous cross-checking, but the conservative assumptions he applies to each reported incident. The figure does not include those who died later of bomb injuries; nor those killed in the past 10 days; nor those who have died from cold and hunger because of the interruption of aid supplies or because they were forced to become refugees by the bombardment. It does not include military deaths (estimated by some analysts, partly on the basis of previous experience of the effects of carpet-bombing, to be upwards of 10,000), or those prisoners who were slaughtered in Mazar-i-Sharif, Qala-i-Janghi, Kandahar airport and elsewhere.

Champions of the war insist that such casualties are an unfortunate, but necessary, byproduct of a just campaign to root out global terror networks. They are a world apart, they argue, from the civilian victims of the attacks on the World Trade Centre because, in the case of the Afghan civilians, the US did not intend to kill them.

In fact, the moral distinction is far fuzzier, to put it at its most generous. As Herold argues, the high Afghan civilian death rate flows directly from US (and British) tactics and targeting. The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians. Thousands of innocents have died over the past two months, not mainly as an accidental byproduct of the decision to overthrow the Taliban regime, but because of the low value put on Afghan civilian lives by US military planners.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:25 pm Post subject:

Big_Bird wrote:

Kuros wrote:

Big_Bird wrote:

mises wrote:

Better, make the case and take em' to court.

Hrmmm. That's a good point. But what law is the United States subject to, exactly, in this scenario?

ddeubel wrote:

Even state troopers don't cross state lines.

Atrocious analogy. There're other state troopers to pick up the pursuit the next state over. Afghanistan is not Alabama.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:45 pm Post subject:

Big_Bird wrote:

But why hold the innocent people of Afghanistan accountable? Why punish them...?

Indeed. Why hold the innocent people in New York City, Washington, D.C., London, Madrid, and Islamabad -- and to return to Hezbollah, whom I will not mention, the innocent people inside various Israeli civilian targets -- accountable for American foreign policies one may construct for one's own purposes and then disagree with to one degree or another? Why punish them?

Because we live in a conflict-ridden, violent, irrational world, that is why.

Your appeal to settle everything at conference tables and courtrooms failed badly in the First World War's aftermath. Miserably. Even leftists attacked it as ridiculously naive. Check out E.H. Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) if you need confirmation.

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:38 pm Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

How about even the most recent attack in Pakistan, to say nothing of earlier attacks in Britain and Spain?

How about them? What are you asking me about here, specifically? Are you asking me if it is OK to bomb Morocco because of the Madrid bombings? You'll have to be more specific.

A very patriotic little Gopher wrote:

I wish you were not so one-sided, so against the United States just because it is the United States in your thinking on such matters as this.

I don't even understand this, Mr G. It's not Hezbollah or the Madrid bombers who have been maiming, killing and sometimes torturing innocent Afghani peasants in my name. It's your government, and mine. The thread is about what some British top brass fellow has to say about our involvement in Afghanistan. He made no mention of Hezbollah. But since you seem so eager to talk about them, let me sat this: At least Hezbollah mostly conduct their fighting in their own country, defending themselves on their own land. They are not presently engaged in zooming over faraway lands dropping cluster bombs and what have you on a defenceless population. And yet we are supposed to think we are better than them? What criteria are we using then?

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:48 pm Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

Big_Bird wrote:

But why hold the innocent people of Afghanistan accountable? Why punish them...?

Yes, the killing of innocent people in New York was heineous. Absolutely sickening. Why do you wish to emulate such attrocity then?

An innocent person is an innocent person - no matter what passport he holds. I really don't understand your reasoning. According to what I can fathom of it, if some crazy American terrorist murdered my two precious children, I would then have every right to go to America, and randomly gun down a couple of innocent American babies? Because the deaths of innocents justifies the deaths of more innocents? I really do not understand where you are coming from.

I thought you were fond of Gandhi? He certainly did not approve of such reasoning. "An eye for an eye and we all go blind" is a famous quote of his.

Quote:

Your appeal to settle everything at conference tables and courtrooms failed badly in the First World War's aftermath. Miserably. Even leftists attacked it as ridiculously naive. Check out E.H. Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) if you need confirmation.

Sometimes war is necessary. I completely understand why the Lebanese Shiite population resorted to violence to repell their occupiers. I mention that example, as you seem so keen to bring up Hezbollah. But I do not believe for one moment our violence in Afghanistan was necessary. Afghanistan was not invading Poland. Nor was there one Afghan among the terrorists who attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. A war has to be a very last resort.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:07 pm Post subject:

Afghanistan's Taliban govt knowingly provided aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden launched unprovoked terrorist attacks against the United States. Afghanistan's Taliban govt refused to comply with the American govt's ultimatum to surrender bin Laden after 9/11. The 9/11 attacks called for a violent, punative response in Afghanistan. More attacks would likely have followed (as they in fact did in Britain, Spain, and recently, Pakistan). The Afghanistan War -- and indeed the widened war into the Afghani-Pakistani border that we currently see unfolding -- is therefore a just war.

End of story.

Big_Bird wrote:

At least Hezbollah mostly conduct their fighting in their own country, defending themselves on their own land. They are not presently engaged in zooming over faraway lands dropping cluster bombs and what have you on a defenceless population.

Is that so? I note, in any case, that you have saved yourself from the criticism that this statement will expose you to via "presently." Nicely played.

And who is emulating anyone?

All are morally the same, remember? War is the terrorism of the rich (and therefore evil); terrorism is the weapon of the weak (and therefore heroic), etc., etc.

We are thus engaged in amoral conflict (unless one reads the subtext). And that is that. Let us leave the moral judging to self-righteous propagandists and also to the ignorant who know no better, then. Two sides have fallen into war: the United States and Islamic extremists in the form of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Where do you stand?

Finally, the American forces are not engaged in the wanton cruelty you seem so eager to assign them: hunting down and killing innocents, etc. It remains a low-level counterinsurgency campaign that the American govt wants to avoid looking like an occupation. So I also reject your fundamental construction of "what is going on" in Afghanistan.

Big_Bird: I have always agreed with those who have alleged that the Iraqi War is an unjust and wasteful one. The difference between us here is that I accept C. Powell's "we broke it, we bought it" admonition, and believe that, rather than pointing fingers in bitter accusation about what we should or should not have done, we ought to focus on what we can and must do now. But as far as Afghanistan goes, I would have hit that entire country one thousand times harder than did the W. Bush Administration, including employing tactical nukes in all of those caves in fact, starting as soon as I had confirmed my information just after the 9/11 attacks, had I been president. I would likely have instructed my theater commander to deplete and exhaust our entire arsenal of tac-nukes and ship-to-shore missiles in this campaign. I would have made it very, very clear to all Islamic fundamentalists that their temper-tantrum terrorist nonsense will bring about their and their families' and their villages' immediate destruction if they do not cease and desist. Short, sweet, massive response. Done and over with in ten days or less.

I would have responded to them, in short, the way Scipio Aemilianus responded to the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War. No more caves and no more fundamentalist population, either. Then I would have reformed CIA's covert ops division into a new terrorist-tracking, paramilitary and assassination agency. Call it an army-sized Delta Force. I would have told everyone about it. And I would have unleashed it in the Middle East -- especially in what remained of Afghanistan -- until each and every Al Qaeda and Taliban member's head were accounted for. My attitude reduced to two words: *beep* them. So I guess you would have got your wanton -- and unapologetically so -- cruelty after all. I would give you reason, in fact, to look back on the Israeli-Hezbollah War nostalgically.

In any case, how is that for a well-defined mission, Jandar? "Reduce them to a smouldering nonthreat. Then salt the earth where they lived."

yawarakaijin

Joined: 08 Aug 2006

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:04 am Post subject:

Ask the Russians how well the scorched earth strategy worked for them Gopher.

While I appreciate the sentiment, the retaliation you proposed would simply be unfeasible. Are you actually suggesting you would nuke and kill tens/hundreds of thousands of taliban and innocents alike to acheive your "victory"?

I'm pretty sure the end result would be terrorism/revenge of the likes Americans couldn't even imagine. Alliances would be severly strained. I doubt any European, North American or Japanese alliance could be maintained under such military action. Look how the world, including some of America's closest allies, has reacted to things like Guantanamo or Abu-Ghraib.

Let us take a look at some historical precedents.

Quote:

March of 1979 in Herat, Afghan rebels led by Ismail Khan massacred approximately 10 Afghan soldiers. The Afghan Air Force retaliated by a bombing campaign that killed 24,000 inhabitants of the city.[17] Despite these drastic measures, by the end of 1980, the 360,000 soldiers strong Afghan Army were greatly outnumbered by the rebels.[18]

So in order to "acheive victory" you want to propose actions of a much greater magnitude than the bombing of Herat and that will solve the problem? Sorry, but it doesn't seem that the Afghanis take very well to being bombed.

Quote:

"No more fundamentalist population"

That plan you outlined would immediately turn 90% of the Arab population into fundamentalists/terrorists,not only the population of Afghanistan. Then you wouldn't have any more tactical nukes to use on them Wink

So then what? Use your strategic nukes to take out Tehran, Bagdhad, Riyahd, Cairo, Istanbul?

While Al-Qaeda obviously needs to be dealt with, I strenuously object to what he have been led to believe we must become in order to defeat them.

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:52 am Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

Afghanistan's Taliban govt knowingly provided aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden.

As had the US previously, while Osama ran a campaign of terror against non-Americans. Perhaps the Russians would have been in their rights to nuke Washington, given all the aid and comfort the US provided Osama in the 80s and 90s. Perhaps the families of those unfortunate teachers and pupils, blown up by Osama just for attending the mixed schools set up by the Russians, while the US funded him and turned a blind eye to his attrocities, ought to visit your town and blow up a few of the schools there? An eye for an eye and all that?

Quote:

Osama bin Laden launched unprovoked terrorist attacks against the United States. Afghanistan's Taliban govt refused to comply with the American govt's ultimatum to surrender bin Laden after 9/11. The 9/11 attacks called for a violent, punative response in Afghanistan.

Yeah, but who were they punishing? A democratic electorate that knowingly elected a government that gave refuge to Osama? Er, no. 99.99% of Afghans had no choice in the matter. In fact, in the run up to the war, I saw/read a few interviews with ordinary Afghans which went along the lines of "But the bloody Americans put Osama here! It was they who funded him and the foreign fighters and brought them to our country. And now they are going to punish us?!"

Quote:

More attacks would likely have followed (as they in fact did in Britain, Spain, and recently, Pakistan).

The attacks weren't orchestrated from Afghanistan. From what I understand, the terrorists who masterminded 911 were based in Europe. Perhaps you should have blown up half of Germany too? And the perpetrators were not from Afghanistan. You should have blown up Egypt and Saudi Arabia then. Especially Saudi Arabia which probably paid for much of it. And then you might have blown up Washington state, to punish the idiots there who thought it was a good idea to nurture Islamic fundie fighters in the first place.

Quote:

The Afghanistan War -- and indeed the widened war into the Afghani-Pakistani border that we currently see unfolding -- is therefore a just war.

A just war. That's a hell of a claim. You haven't substantiated your claim in anyway that I can see.

quote wrote:

Big_Bird wrote:

Is that so? I note, in any case, that you have saved yourself from the criticism that this statement will expose you to via "presently." Nicely played.

Oh I see, they did this in the past? Hahaha Gopher.

Gopher wrote:

And who is emulating anyone?

You are emulating Ghengis Khan. Without the fancy attire and the galloping horse.

Quote:

All are morally the same, remember? War is the terrorism of the rich (and therefore evil); terrorism is the weapon of the weak (and therefore heroic), etc., etc.

Actually, I wouldn't say they are morally equivalent. I would say that a an invader or occupier is in a far more tenuous position morally, than a resistance fighter. No, I never said terrorism is heroic. But I do think that bombing women and children from your F11 is utterly cowardly.

Gopher wrote:

We are thus engaged in amoral conflict (unless one reads the subtext). And that is that. Let us leave the moral judging to self-righteous propagandists and also to the ignorant who know no better, then. Two sides have fallen into war: the United States and Islamic extremists in the form of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Where do you stand?

I would like to see Islamic extremism eradicated. All I see is people like you fanning its flames, invigorating it.

Quote:

Finally, the American forces are not engaged in the wanton cruelty you seem so eager to assign them: hunting down and killing innocents, etc.

Evidence would suggest that some are. But even if its not the general policy, blowing up wedding parties and villages, and torturing taxi drivers to death is making you hated and despised, where no such ill-feeling once existed. And whether you like to believe it or not, thousands of innocents did die in your invasion of Afghanistan. Some directly from your violence (some immediately and some slowly) while others starved to death needlessly. Aid organisations had anticipated famine earlier that year, and were deliberately prevented from delivering aid by the Bush administation. Imagine those you love starving slowly and painfully to death, Gopher, and tell me this would be worth the capture of any terrorist.

Quote:

But as far as Afghanistan goes, I would have hit that entire country one thousand times harder than did the W. Bush Administration, including employing tactical nukes in all of those caves in fact, starting as soon as I had confirmed my information just after the 9/11 attacks, had I been president. I would likely have instructed my theater commander to deplete and exhaust our entire arsenal of tac-nukes and ship-to-shore missiles in this campaign.

Do you fantasise about going down in history as an infamous war criminal? That's nice. Parents telling their children, "You'd better not stay out after dark, or the evil Gopher will get you and gobble you up!"

Quote:

I would have made it very, very clear to all Islamic fundamentalists that their temper-tantrum terrorist nonsense will bring about their and their families' and their villages' immediate destruction if they do not cease and desist. Short, sweet, massive response. Done and over with in ten days or less.

Hahaha. And how would that work? Do you think the type of person who blows himself up in a plane or crowded market place would suddenly stop that kind of activity because you blew up thousands of innocent people in a faraway land? Do you really think those consequences are playing on his mind?

Probably you would have done every Islamic fundamentalist a fantastic favour. Their cause would become hugely popular under your administration, and millions of muslims across the planet would become radicalised.

Quote:

I would have responded to them, in short, the way Scipio Aemilianus responded to the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War. No more caves and no more fundamentalist population, either.

No more fundamentalist population? You'll have to carpet bomb most of the globe then.

Quote:

Then I would have reformed CIA's covert ops division into a new terrorist-tracking, paramilitary and assassination agency. Call it an army-sized Delta Force. I would have told everyone about it. And I would have unleashed it in the Middle East -- especially in what remained of Afghanistan -- until each and every Al Qaeda and Taliban member's head were accounted for.

Haha. And how well has this worked for the Israelis?

Quote:

My attitude reduced to two words: *beep* them. So I guess you would have got your wanton -- and unapologetically so -- cruelty after all. I would give you reason, in fact, to look back on the Israeli-Hezbollah War nostalgically.

Yeah *beep* those taxi drivers, out working, trying to feed and clothe their young families. *beep* those young goatherds, or young brides at their wedding parties. *beep* all those poor buggers who'd probably never in their lives even heard of the Twin Towers, even long after half their families had been blown to pieces by American bombs.

Quote:

In any case, how is that for a well-defined mission, Jandar? "Reduce them to a smouldering nonthreat. Then salt the earth where they lived."

Then you'll have to salt most of the planet by the time you're done. The whole world will revile you.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:01 am Post subject:

yawarakaijin wrote:

Ask the Russians how well the scorched earth strategy worked for them...

The Russians held back too much. Neither were they fighting a just war.

In any case, I recognize my punishment/containment/"Fine. It is 'terrorism,' then" strategy is not likely to be adopted in Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:24 am Post subject:

Just had a quick google to see if I could find some articles interviewing Afghanis jsut before the invasion. No success this time. But I did find this:

Forgotten victims

Quote:

The full human cost of US air strikes will never be known, but many more died than those killed directly by bombs

Quote:

Who killed Asaq Mohammed? His uncle watched him die. Soon after the United States started bombing Afghanistan last autumn the small boy, just under two years old, fled his home on the back of a donkey with his parents and other family members.

For four days they travelled across mountains on snow-covered tracks. At night their only protection against the cold was a handful of blankets. They had no tents.

After three years of drought everyone was already weak with hunger before they set off from the village of Ghorambay in western Afghanistan. The long trek was too much for the most vulnerable. When they reached the town of Owbeh exhausted, Asaq and his six-month-old brother, Abdul Rahman, did not have the strength to recover. Their short lives slipped away.

Seyd Mohammed believes his two nephews would still be alive if they had not been forced to flee. "We were hopeful they wouldn't have died if we had stayed here", he says sadly as he stands outside his home.

I'm glad the two dead toddlers featured in this article have learnt their lesson. Those little bastards were punished good and proper.

Quote:

Before September 11 Afghanistan was already on a lifeline, and for three months we cut the line. Or to put it more starkly: Before September 11, Afghanistan had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and one of the lowest rates of overall life expectancy. "Interrupting most of the country's international aid programs for three months only made matters worse," as one western human rights analyst puts it.

"From mid-September to mid-December", he adds "it is possible to say that in areas with already high levels of death from malnutrition and exposure there were likely increases in mortality rates." Such places included central, northern, and western Afghanistan.

"What these increases amount to, no one can say but the fact there were increases is not really in dispute."

The third effect of the bombing was to heighten instability by provoking the Taliban. Until September 11 the Afghan civil war had been stalemated for almost three years. Except in parts of the central region near Bamiyan, the front lines had not moved significantly.

Drought aid moved in to Taliban areas or those controlled by the opposition Northern Alliance with relatively little difficulty. There were shortages but this was because western governments failed to respond to UN appeals for aid to Afghanistan. The aid that was given managed to get through.

For rural Afghans the fact that most cities were controlled by the Taliban was of marginal relevance. They barely saw the Pashtun fundamentalists. In the Tajik village of Kondolan in drought-affected Badghis, for example, rural women did not wear the burka. It was not part of local custom and the Taliban never came to enforce it.

The Taliban ban on girls' education also did not have an effect. "We have had no school of any kind for 25 years", Mirza Behbut, a local farmer, said.

The US intervention ended a military and political stalemate. Deprived of food as American planes targeted their own supply convoys, the Taliban began to steal aid meant for drought victims.

"Before September, the Taliban never looted. They were helped by Pakistan and some Arab countries. After September they faced difficulties in getting their own food," said Faisal Danesh of World Vision. "It made a big difference when the expats left. We would not have had such a big crisis if they had stayed."

ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:41 am Post subject:

Quote:

The Russians held back too much. Neither were they fighting a just war.

OMG! I just ralphed my spaghetti carbonnara all over my computer!!! Good one Gopher. You should get a job as an historian for Reader's Digest....time to clean up!

DD

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