The following article by Syed Hamad Ali was first published in the GulfNews Weekend Review, and then at: http://www.malalaijoya/com/dcmj/joya-in-media/523-fearless-campaigner.html.
The article is based on highlights of Malalai Joya's activism as a Afghan citizen who has worked tirelessly and courageously for peace and justice in her country, openly criticized the Karzai government for its corruption, the Taliban, the warlords, and the US-led occupation.
The article also includes a long interview with Malalai that gives the reader an idea of her devotion to justice and peace, her values and goals and world view. She has an unyielding belief in the actual or potential fairness and rationality of ordinary Afghan people and especially in the women of Afganistan. Bear in mind that Malalai was once elected by those in her home district to the Afghan Parliament in 2005. She was later banned from the Parliament because of her outspoken criticisms of the warlords in the Parliament.
On this blog, we have been impressed by Malalai Joya's courage and ideas since we first came upon them in her book, A Woman Among Warlords.
Fearless campaigner
Defying threats to her life, Malalai Joya singlehandedly fights for Afghanistan
Syed Hamad Ali, GulfNews Weekend Review, July 2, 2010
Malalai Joya is an Afghan politician who has publicly railed against the presence of warlords in the country's parliament and is a vociferous critic of the Taliban and the government of President Hamid Karzai. "The warlords and the Taliban — they are cancer for my country," she says.
Her outspoken nature has drawn the ire of her detractors, resulting in threats to her life. "My life in Afghanistan is not quite normal and I keep changing houses," she says.
Joya believes the United States is occupying her country and committing war crimes. "Democracy never comes with occupation," she says.
She brands George W. Bush "criminal" and says Barack Obama should first change his foreign policy if he wants to be any different from his predecessor. "His supporters are losing hope because of his wrong policies." She demands withdrawal of all the troops as soon as possible from Afghanistan. "We don't need this kind of so-called helping hand," she tells Weekend Review. "My people are so fed up they don't expect anything good from them. Just stop the wrongdoing. This is a war crime. They are bombing and killing civilians."
Joya holds Pakistan and the CIA responsible for the rise of the Taliban. "By supporting the warlords, who destroyed our unity, and the Taliban, they [the US] are hindering the growth of national unity in my country," she says.
Describing the Karzai government as a "puppet, corrupt mafia regime", she alleges that the Afghan president has joined hands with dubious elements to stay in power.
Joya has immense faith in the women of Afghanistan, who she says can play a crucial role in the development of the country. "This is the part of the population of my country which I believe has power."
Excerpts from an interview:
Question: You have repeatedly called on President Obama to apologise to the Afghan people. Why?
Malalai's response: When Barack Obama took office, his first news for my people was more war and conflict. His foreign policy is quite similar to criminal [George W.] Bush, even worse because he sent more troops to Afghanistan. And now, adding a soft tag to the Taliban, these terrorists, [he says] we are ready to negotiate with moderate Talib, when we have no moderate Talib. They are terrorist Talib.
These eight years they supported the Taliban directly and indirectly. Now [President Hamid] Karzai has been calling on Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to join the government but Obama is silent. If he [Obama] is honest to my people, he must first apologise to my people, criticise the wrong policy of the criminal Bush, and at least make powerless the minister of war, this Robert Gates, who was in the Bush administration. And apologise to the democratic nation of America in whose name they are committing these crimes.
After the war crimes they apologise to the Hamid Karzai regime. And Karzai's administration says thank you. That's it!
[It is] the blood of my people, not water, that they shed. It's worth as much as the blood of a Westerner.
My message to democratic people around the world, especially those from the countries with troops in my country, is that democracy never comes by cluster bombs, by white phosphorous. The troops themselves are the victims of the wrong policy of their governments, who send them for a bad cause. They are not children of Obama or Michelle that they will be sad if the soldiers get killed. It is the ordinary Afghans they are killing, not their family. This is just a war crime. They must end it.
Malalai Joya being welcomed in Kabul. 'Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed,' she says [must go to source for photo].
Question: Many still insist on calling Iraq the ‘bad war' and Afghanistan the ‘good war'. How would you respond?
Malalai's response: They are wrong politicians who say good war and bad war. There are many similarities between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the main being both these countries have been occupied. My country [has been occupied] under the banner of woman's rights, human rights and democracy — but they betray these values. In Iraq as well, they destroyed a Fascist regime when they made powerless a dictator such as Sad-dam Hussain. But now they have their own puppet regime there. The civilians are the victims. Ditto in my country, where they destroyed the Taliban — terrorist, fascist people — but they got into power a photocopy of the Taliban.
The US occupied Iraq because of oil. They occupied Afghanistan mainly because of the geopolitical location of Afghanistan. When they have their military base in Afghanistan, they can easily control Iran, China, Russia, Uzbekistan, etc. They will have easy access to the gas and oil of Central Asian republics.
The third reason is that they turned Afghanistan into a centre of drugs. Ninety-three per cent of the world's opium is produced from Afghanistan and billions of dollars are received for its distribution. This is not only a so-called war on terror in my country. This is a war of propaganda as well. Look at history of the US since the Second World War. In several countries, they have destroyed democrat regimes and supported dictators instead.
Question: What do you make of President Karzai's statement when he said that he might join the Taliban if he continues to be put under foreign pressure and also his accusations about fraud in the elections?
Malalai's response: For eight years he [Karzai] has deceived my people and now wants to deceive them again. But he cannot do that because now they understand him very well.
He supported compromise with dirty-minded elements such as Khallili, Fahim, Dostum and Esmail Khan. Hadi Arghandiwali, who is Karzai's minister of economy, is the key person in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party. Gulbuddin is not in power but his photocopy is. While Arghandiwali publicly says he belongs to this terrorist party, the US says Gulbuddin is on its blacklist. It makes no sense to my people. Now Karzai is inviting the terrorist Mullah Omar to join the corrupt, puppet regime. Karzai only wants to complete the circle of druglordism, warlordism and terrorism.
Question: When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Professor Noam Chomsky suggested your name as someone who should have been picked instead. What was your reaction when Obama won this prize?
Malalai's response: The support of Noam Chomsky, who I respect as an anti-war activist, and many others put extra responsibility on my shoulders. Because when you are involved in a struggle against occupation, against enemies of my people, warlords, the Taliban and their foreign master, their support gives me more courage, determination and hope.
But regarding the award that Obama got, I think it is a question for himself as well — in nine months what did I [Obama] do to receive the Nobel Peace Prize? There are thousands in the world who are risking their lives. They are the real heroes and heroines who do a lot for peace. But nobody even knows their names. In my country, around the world, they are the ones who must be winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. So this [award] is just making fun of peace.
What is going on in Palestine today? He is silent on the wrong policy of the Israeli regime. But he follows on in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen and then receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
Question: You have spoken out against some of the NGOs and aid agencies in Afghanistan, calling them NGO-lords, similar to the terms warlords and druglords.
Malalai's response: Unfortunately most Afghan and foreign NGOs are corrupt as the system is corrupt. Eighteen parties have been registered but we know what their backgrounds are. They belong to these warlords. And they have beautiful names. Same is the case with NGOs.
My life itself should be an example. Many attempts have been made to assassinate me and I am now receiving more death threats. I have been banned from meeting the media and going abroad. They took my diplomatic passport. I have gone underground and going from one country to another with great difficulty.
Unfortunately the NGOs — and heads of some of the NGOs are women — are getting into a compromise with warlords. For example, they are building schools with cheap material and most of the money goes into their pockets. After a year, if you see the school, you cannot believe it is the same building.
Question: In your book you mention how Benazir Bhutto helped in giving rise to the Taliban in the Nineties. Do people in Afghanistan blame her for it?
Malalai's response: She herself said that in an interview. Anyway she is not alive anymore and was even talking about secularism before she got killed. I condemn those who killed her. Of course they are terrorists but her policy when she was in power unfortunately supported the Taliban.
My people say Pakistan supported the Taliban and now the Taliban have become a problem for the Pakistanis themselves. Caught between all this, the ordinary people are the victims. Ordinary Pakistani people such as taxi drivers call the madrassas Talib-making factories because that is where they do the brainwashing.
The CIA created the Taliban.
Question: You are also critical of another figure, Ahmad Shah Masoud, looked upon almost as a legend in certain quarters in the West. Is he a misunderstood character?
Malalai's response: A terrorist of yesterday, he is a hero today. So the terrorist of today will be a hero of tomorrow. Ahmad Shah Masoud was imposed on my people as a hero by the CIA and the French government.
They even compare him with Che Guevara. His first act of treason was he signed a ceasefire with Russia. In Panjshir he killed at least 85 anti-Russia intellectuals. When he was in power from 1992-1996, he was the defence minister of warlords. This point says enough about this so-called hero of Afghanistan.
When you come to Kabul you go to Afshar, populated by the Hazara people. There was a massacre there during the civil war. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was shooting from one side and Ahmad Shah Masoud from the other. My people, caught in between, were the victims. People of
Afshar call him the butcher of Afshar.
After 9/11, when Masoud was killed by his brothers in creed, the Taliban, the US tried to present him as a hero. The brothers of Masoud came to power. And this puppet, non-democratic, regime has named a street in Kabul after him.
Still today people do not call the street by Masoud's name because they hate him. A hero is always made by the people, not by a foreign country. Masoud has been imposed on my people.
Whether a person is alive or not, we have this famous saying in Afghanistan, if you want to know a person well, ask who his or her close friends are. As long as Masoud was in power, his close friends were Rabanni, Qanooni, Abdullah Abdullah, Sayyaf, Fahim. You can look up the Human Rights Watch website. These dirty-minded elements were close friends of Masoud. So this is enough to know who Masoud was.
Malalai Joya in a girls' school in Afghanistan (go to source for photo).
She believes if women are educated and play their role, many positive changes will take place
You grew up being inspired by Palestinian children who throw stones at those who have occupied their country.
Question: Do you draw strength from the Palestinians' struggle for the freedom of your own country?
Malalai's response: Every day that I spend, I realise the meaning of a sentence which my father told me: Try to be a ‘Palestinian of your own country'. When you compare my country with Palestine, there are many differences, but also similarities. The main similarity is that in both countries, ordinary people are the victims. For example, there the Israeli regime is killing ordinary people by the gun; in my country America plus 40 other countries who have occupied Afghanistan, are bombing and killing people. But the difference is: In Afghanistan, the regime in power is 100 per cent under the control of the US; but in Palestine, Israel is still trying to establish such a regime.
In Palestine, the people are part of a movement against Israel, even with stones, to defend their country. But in my country it is a prolonged struggle. Why? Because Palestine is a country where most people are educated. In my country most people are uneducated, so it takes more time.
Question: Given your fierce criticism of President Obama's Afghan policy, have you ever thought about arranging a meeting with Obama in the White House to explain your viewpoint?
Malalai's response: If I were to meet Obama in the White House or outside, I will tell him to stop this war crime and end this tragic drama of a war on terror which is a war on innocent civilians. I will tell him to stop the occupation. No nation can donate liberation to another nation. These eight years have been enough for my people to know about the wrong policy of the US government.
I love what Patrick Tyler says. He says there are two superpowers in the world. One is the US government and other is public opinion. I will tell him you are hiding the truth. You are betraying the truth through the mainstream media. But you cannot deceive the people forever. One day world public opinion will stand up [for our cause]. I trust the power of my people and the world. If the truth is told, I am sure they will never sit silent.
Similarly, in the parliament I exposed the warlords. That is why they couldn't tolerate me, they expelled me and even wanted to eliminate me.
Question: You are incredibly outspoken. Don't you feel scared?
Malalai's response: I don't fear death. I fear political silence against injustice. One day everyone will die. But I hope to be alive. As I always say, I am young, I have lots of energy and want to do a lot for my people — especially for women. If they get education and play their role, a lot of positive changes will take place. I compare my country, every society, to a bird. One wing is the woman, the other is the man. If one wing is injured, it will be impossible for the bird to fly.
Same is the case with society.
I always quote Samad Behrangi. He says death can come easily but I should not be the one to seek it. If it is my turn to go, it should not matter. What matters is whether my living or dying has a ramification on the lives of others. This is the only point I am always thinking about. I am sure if something happened to me, my people will not remain silent.
Question: During Obama's surprise trip to Afghanistan, he said: ‘The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. You don't quit, the American armed services do not quit. We keep at it, we persevere, and together with our partners, we will prevail. I am absolutely confident of that.' What gives you hope in light of Obama's determination to continue this war?
Malalai's response: The resistance of my people is a big hope for Afghanistan. We are proud to have a history that we never accept occupation. The British wanted to occupy Afghanistan on three occasions but faced the resistance of my people. Russia, a superpower, wanted to occupy Afghanistan and faced the resistance of my people. Still the US government plays the role that the British did in the past — which was to divide and rule.
In front of every audience, I say no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Regarding Obama's comment, [I can say] as a democratic intellectual of my country, as a freedom-loving fighter, only this sentence is enough. In an interview before he came to power, Obama had said the war in Iraq was bad but the one in Afghanistan was a good war. Someone should ask him what is the difference between these two? He just deceives himself with such comments. He is a pro-war person, unfortunately no different from Bush.
[Because he was black,] some people even compared Obama with Martin Luther King. If King were alive today, he would have said, ‘Don't insult me.' King believed our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.
Blacks already had power in Bush's regime. Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell are examples. Black and white solve nothing. What matters is their policy. Unfortunately the foreign policy of Obama is quite similar to that of the criminal Bush, even worse. Why? Compare the number civilians killed in the short time that Obama has been power with the figures during Bush's presidentship.
It's a big question for my people. How does Obama recognise which terrorist is moderate and which one is not? Moreover, they have never apologised to my people. By making such comments, Obama is only deceiving himself, and maybe for a while, the people of the world.
He is the first president who in a short time — in one year — has lost lot of support. Do you know this extraordinary man John Pilger? In one of his speeches, he spoke about how Obama as a senator had voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pilger also exposed Obama with many other examples.
Syed Hamad Ali is a writer based in London.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Taliban want to renew or reinforce the subjugation of girls and women
Patrick Cockburn, well-known for his excellent first-hand reporting in the Middle East, writes in the article below that the Taliban are bent on limiting the education of girls and restricting women to their homes and the close supervision of male relatives or husbands. Cockburn's most revealing evidence is from a Human Rights Watch report based on interviews "with 90 women in districts largely held by insurgents [Taliban] in four different districts." The report indicates that women in insurgent/Taliban districts "are being deprived of all rights."
Cockburn notes that the HRW report conflicts with the notion that most Taliban rank-and-file participants are local men who are joining insurgencies/Taliban for practical reasons rather than ideological reasons.
The article leaves us with questions. Would the results of the HRW report be confirmed by additional research? For example, have Afghan women been gaining rights to continue their education and to work outside the home in districts not dominated by the Taliban? Is the Taliban a single movement that is unified on the question of women's status in life? What about the position of girls and women in districts and villages that are dominated by warlords, drug-lords, or village elders?
The article and the question have important policy implications for whether the Karzai government's proposal to negotiate with some Taliban leaders is potentially harmful to or horrific for Afghan women.
We on this blog have taken the position that US military forces should be withdrawn from Afghanistan, beginning in a substanital way by next summer. We had hoped a withdrawal would commence sooner than this. Malalai Joya, Greg Mortenson, Andrew Bacevich, and others have influenced our view. They maintain the US-led military occupation does little to advance the interests of most Afghanis, is very costly in lives and resources for all involved, and therefore should be brought to an end. Malalai Joya and the Revolutionary Afghanistan Women's Alliance, among others, oppose the US-led occupation and war as the worst of all situations.
'Leave your job or we will cut your head off your body...'
With violence on the rise, Afghan women are terrified at the prospect of a deal between President Karzai and the Taliban
By Patrick Cockburn
Saturday, 17 July 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/leave-your-job-or-we-will-cut-your-head-off-your-body-2028706 (The article was also printed at antiwar.com on July 18, 2010.)
A report by Human Rights Watch shows that Afghan women are again being deprived of their rights.
Women in Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan say they are once again being threatened, attacked and forced out of jobs and education as fears rise that their rights will be sacrificed as part of any deal with insurgents to end the war in Afghanistan.
Women have reported attacks and received letters warning of violence if they continue to work or even contact radio stations to request songs.
One female teacher at a girls' school in a southern Afghan province received a letter saying: "We warn you to leave your job as a teacher as soon as possible otherwise we will cut off the heads of your children and will set fire to your daughter."
Another woman, Jamila, was threatened in August 2009, in a letter bearing the Taliban's insignia when she was working for a local electoral commission. It said: "You work in the election office together with the enemies of religion and infidels. You should leave your job otherwise we will cut your head off your body."
Jamila ignored the letter, but days later her father was murdered. She left her job and moved house.
Activists are fearful that their rights will be sold out in a deal between the Taliban or other insurgent groups and the US-backed Afghan government. They believe that if the Taliban is given a share in power, women will again be reduced to a condition close to slavery, as when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan in 1996-2001. Then, women could not leave their house without a close male relative and had to cover their faces and bodies with an all-enveloping burka or chadori.
Women, who had made up 70 per cent of teachers and 50 per cent of civil servants, were banned from working except in healthcare. Even as medical workers, there were severe restrictions and many women died either in childbirth or from disease because of lack of medical attention. The UN estimated that only 3 per cent of girls received primary education under Taliban rule.
With the war reaching a stalemate over the last year, Afghan and foreign leaders have prepared the ground for talks with insurgents by claiming they are more moderate and pragmatic than the Taliban government overthrown in 2001. The head of the International Security Assistance Forces' reintegration unit, Lt-General Graeme Lamb, said: "Who are these Taliban? They are local people. The vast majority are guns for hire; not fighting for some ideological reason."
The idea that the present day Taliban is less hostile to women than the old is contradicted by the experiences of women in Taliban-held districts. A report by Human Rights Watch – based on interviews with 90 women in districts largely held by insurgents in four different provinces – shows that women are being deprived of all rights.
The report, entitled The 'Ten Dollar Talib' and Women's Rights: Afghan Women and the Risks of Reintegration and Reconciliation, is released this week. It says the belief that new Taliban has emerged influenced by money rather than ideology is wrong.
It criticises the idea of the "Ten Dollar Talib" who fights for money, as an attempt by US and Nato forces to make power-sharing with them more palatable to western audiences who had previously been told they were an enemy to be defeated. Hostility to women is shared by other insurgent leaders as well as the Taliban. The strongest rebel force in the provinces south of Kabul is the Hezb-i-Islami, which Western and Afghan leaders have spoken of as a group that might be tempted to join the government.
The movement's leader is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose first political act was reportedly to throw acid in the faces of unveiled female students at Kabul University in the early 1970s.
The HRW report is the first time that repression of women in Taliban- controlled areas in Afghanistan has been systematically studied. All the women interviewed – who are referred to by pseudonyms for safety reasons – said they had lost freedoms. In some cases, women have been killed.
On 13 April this year a female aid worker, Hossai, 22, was shot as she left the office of an American development organisation and died the next day. She had been threatened by the Taliban the previous week. Many of the threats are contained in letters delivered to the door at night – known as "night letters" – or left at the local mosque. Soon after Hossai was killed, Nadia – who worked for an international NGO – got a letter telling her to stop working for infidels and "in the same way that yesterday we have killed Hossai, whose name was on our list, your name and other women's names are on our list". Sometimes the same letter is sent to a number of women. In late 2009, in Kapisa province east of Kabul, women were warned not to ring up radio stations and request songs. They were told if they did they would be beheaded or acid thrown in their faces.
Many women have been forced to give up their jobs and stay at home, even though half the population earns less than $2 a day and there is a chronic lack of employment.
Girls' schools, which sprang up again after 2001, are once more being ordered to close. In Kunduz province in the north, the shadow Taliban governor sent out orders that no girls were to be educated past puberty. One threatening letter delivered to a school read: "You were already informed by us to close the school and not mislead the pure and innocent girls under this non-Muslim government."
In Kunduz these threats were reinforced by arson, rocket and bomb attacks. There have also been outbreaks of unexplained sickness at several schools, which could be the result of mass poisoning. One Taliban spiritual leader explained the targeting of girls' schools: "We are opposed to un-Islamic education for women. We close those schools that teach adultery, nudity and un-Islamic behaviour."
Women active in politics have been targeted and a number of the most prominent assassinated. The failure to catch the killers discourages other women from playing an active role. The Afghan government has also been ambivalent in its attitude to the issue.
The report says that women should be involved and able to protect their interests in any negotiations about reintegration or reconciliation with the Taliban. One female member of parliament doubts this is possible because "the Taliban would rather see a woman die in the streets than go to a restaurant to get food if men were there. These are the kind of people we're talking about".
Letter of the law
"You are working with the government. We Taliban warn you to stop working for the government otherwise we will take your life away. We will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner. This will be a good lesson for those women like you who are working. The money you receive is haram [forbidden under Islam] and coming from the infidels. The choice is now with you."
Cockburn notes that the HRW report conflicts with the notion that most Taliban rank-and-file participants are local men who are joining insurgencies/Taliban for practical reasons rather than ideological reasons.
The article leaves us with questions. Would the results of the HRW report be confirmed by additional research? For example, have Afghan women been gaining rights to continue their education and to work outside the home in districts not dominated by the Taliban? Is the Taliban a single movement that is unified on the question of women's status in life? What about the position of girls and women in districts and villages that are dominated by warlords, drug-lords, or village elders?
The article and the question have important policy implications for whether the Karzai government's proposal to negotiate with some Taliban leaders is potentially harmful to or horrific for Afghan women.
We on this blog have taken the position that US military forces should be withdrawn from Afghanistan, beginning in a substanital way by next summer. We had hoped a withdrawal would commence sooner than this. Malalai Joya, Greg Mortenson, Andrew Bacevich, and others have influenced our view. They maintain the US-led military occupation does little to advance the interests of most Afghanis, is very costly in lives and resources for all involved, and therefore should be brought to an end. Malalai Joya and the Revolutionary Afghanistan Women's Alliance, among others, oppose the US-led occupation and war as the worst of all situations.
'Leave your job or we will cut your head off your body...'
With violence on the rise, Afghan women are terrified at the prospect of a deal between President Karzai and the Taliban
By Patrick Cockburn
Saturday, 17 July 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/leave-your-job-or-we-will-cut-your-head-off-your-body-2028706 (The article was also printed at antiwar.com on July 18, 2010.)
A report by Human Rights Watch shows that Afghan women are again being deprived of their rights.
Women in Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan say they are once again being threatened, attacked and forced out of jobs and education as fears rise that their rights will be sacrificed as part of any deal with insurgents to end the war in Afghanistan.
Women have reported attacks and received letters warning of violence if they continue to work or even contact radio stations to request songs.
One female teacher at a girls' school in a southern Afghan province received a letter saying: "We warn you to leave your job as a teacher as soon as possible otherwise we will cut off the heads of your children and will set fire to your daughter."
Another woman, Jamila, was threatened in August 2009, in a letter bearing the Taliban's insignia when she was working for a local electoral commission. It said: "You work in the election office together with the enemies of religion and infidels. You should leave your job otherwise we will cut your head off your body."
Jamila ignored the letter, but days later her father was murdered. She left her job and moved house.
Activists are fearful that their rights will be sold out in a deal between the Taliban or other insurgent groups and the US-backed Afghan government. They believe that if the Taliban is given a share in power, women will again be reduced to a condition close to slavery, as when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan in 1996-2001. Then, women could not leave their house without a close male relative and had to cover their faces and bodies with an all-enveloping burka or chadori.
Women, who had made up 70 per cent of teachers and 50 per cent of civil servants, were banned from working except in healthcare. Even as medical workers, there were severe restrictions and many women died either in childbirth or from disease because of lack of medical attention. The UN estimated that only 3 per cent of girls received primary education under Taliban rule.
With the war reaching a stalemate over the last year, Afghan and foreign leaders have prepared the ground for talks with insurgents by claiming they are more moderate and pragmatic than the Taliban government overthrown in 2001. The head of the International Security Assistance Forces' reintegration unit, Lt-General Graeme Lamb, said: "Who are these Taliban? They are local people. The vast majority are guns for hire; not fighting for some ideological reason."
The idea that the present day Taliban is less hostile to women than the old is contradicted by the experiences of women in Taliban-held districts. A report by Human Rights Watch – based on interviews with 90 women in districts largely held by insurgents in four different provinces – shows that women are being deprived of all rights.
The report, entitled The 'Ten Dollar Talib' and Women's Rights: Afghan Women and the Risks of Reintegration and Reconciliation, is released this week. It says the belief that new Taliban has emerged influenced by money rather than ideology is wrong.
It criticises the idea of the "Ten Dollar Talib" who fights for money, as an attempt by US and Nato forces to make power-sharing with them more palatable to western audiences who had previously been told they were an enemy to be defeated. Hostility to women is shared by other insurgent leaders as well as the Taliban. The strongest rebel force in the provinces south of Kabul is the Hezb-i-Islami, which Western and Afghan leaders have spoken of as a group that might be tempted to join the government.
The movement's leader is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose first political act was reportedly to throw acid in the faces of unveiled female students at Kabul University in the early 1970s.
The HRW report is the first time that repression of women in Taliban- controlled areas in Afghanistan has been systematically studied. All the women interviewed – who are referred to by pseudonyms for safety reasons – said they had lost freedoms. In some cases, women have been killed.
On 13 April this year a female aid worker, Hossai, 22, was shot as she left the office of an American development organisation and died the next day. She had been threatened by the Taliban the previous week. Many of the threats are contained in letters delivered to the door at night – known as "night letters" – or left at the local mosque. Soon after Hossai was killed, Nadia – who worked for an international NGO – got a letter telling her to stop working for infidels and "in the same way that yesterday we have killed Hossai, whose name was on our list, your name and other women's names are on our list". Sometimes the same letter is sent to a number of women. In late 2009, in Kapisa province east of Kabul, women were warned not to ring up radio stations and request songs. They were told if they did they would be beheaded or acid thrown in their faces.
Many women have been forced to give up their jobs and stay at home, even though half the population earns less than $2 a day and there is a chronic lack of employment.
Girls' schools, which sprang up again after 2001, are once more being ordered to close. In Kunduz province in the north, the shadow Taliban governor sent out orders that no girls were to be educated past puberty. One threatening letter delivered to a school read: "You were already informed by us to close the school and not mislead the pure and innocent girls under this non-Muslim government."
In Kunduz these threats were reinforced by arson, rocket and bomb attacks. There have also been outbreaks of unexplained sickness at several schools, which could be the result of mass poisoning. One Taliban spiritual leader explained the targeting of girls' schools: "We are opposed to un-Islamic education for women. We close those schools that teach adultery, nudity and un-Islamic behaviour."
Women active in politics have been targeted and a number of the most prominent assassinated. The failure to catch the killers discourages other women from playing an active role. The Afghan government has also been ambivalent in its attitude to the issue.
The report says that women should be involved and able to protect their interests in any negotiations about reintegration or reconciliation with the Taliban. One female member of parliament doubts this is possible because "the Taliban would rather see a woman die in the streets than go to a restaurant to get food if men were there. These are the kind of people we're talking about".
Letter of the law
"You are working with the government. We Taliban warn you to stop working for the government otherwise we will take your life away. We will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner. This will be a good lesson for those women like you who are working. The money you receive is haram [forbidden under Islam] and coming from the infidels. The choice is now with you."
Government corruption flourishing in Kandahar
Jennie Green, the author of the article below is the director of North American operations for the Arghand Cooperative in Kandahar. The title of the article is "The Curse of Kandahar. I found the article at: http://outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Opinion.html#02, July 18, 2010. Her principal points are that Aghan citizens in Kandahar and NGOs attempting to offer genuine assistance are caught between an illegitimate central government, corrupt local government officials and police, Taliban insurgents, and a US-led occupation that has offered them little security or improvement in their conditions. Further, US money continues to flow to this same government. As one consequence, the Taliban insurgency is replenished as Afghanis become disillusioned with the government and the unfulfilled promises of President Obama and the realities of an ineffective US-led occupation.
The Curse of Kandahar
By Jennie Green
No wonder ordinary Afghans don't trust the U.S.: American leaders have backed a corrupt government. Even before the jet lag had worn off after a visit to Kandahar earlier this year, I received a disturbing e-mail from a colleague there. An improvised explosive device had detonated outside the home of one of the members of the cooperative I help run. It had apparently been placed to target a convoy in which the district chief of police was traveling.
Unharmed but outraged, the police chief ordered his subordinates to find out who owned the house. When my Afghan co-worker and his brother opened their gate, they were beaten and sworn at repeatedly, then hauled to police headquarters, where they spent the night. There was no evidence to suggest that the men had buried the IED, and every reason to think they hadn't. Between them, the brothers have many small children who might have been hurt in the explosion, and neither has ties to violent groups. Fortunately, my friend and his brother were released the following day, but only because of personal connections. Afterward, they cleared their house of anything that could be construed as a weapon, fearing that anyone who had it in for either of them could peg them as insurgents. They were taking a gamble.
Weapons are common in Afghan homes, in part because they are needed for protection against Taliban insurgents who regularly threaten ordinary citizens, particularly those who work for the Afghan government, NATO's International Security Assistance Force or foreigner-initiated organizations like our cooperative. For this reason, all members of our cooperative, which manufactures skin care products from locally grown fruits and flowers, are potential targets.
In the months after President Obama was sworn in and before the Afghan election of August 2009, many of the Afghans with whom I communicate regularly dared to hope that the new U.S. president would help bring about change in Hamid Karzai's administration. They applauded the way in which Obama immediately distanced himself from the Afghan president and condemned the rampant corruption that plagues the country. Finally, they thought, the international community might be able to compel Karzai to deliver the kind of responsible governance and rule of law that people craved.
But when those same officials wilted in the heat of an Afghan election so fraudulent that more than a million votes had to be disqualified, my friends became despondent. "Afghanistan is going in the river," one of them declared. "We are swimming now." Next came the Marja offensive, followed by a troop buildup for the much-publicized Kandahar operation. If ever there was a moment when it would seem as if Kandaharis would want to distance themselves from the loathsome Taliban and rally around their government and the formidable NATO forces that were ramping up to support it, this would be the time. Instead, more people than ever before seem to be joining the insurgency. Why? Because for all the talk about tackling corruption, including the "governments in a box" the U.S. promised to deliver, Kandaharis have yet to experience any noticeable improvements.
The infamous Ahmed Wali Karzai — the president's half brother, who has been publicly accused of all kinds of corruption, including opium trafficking, land confiscation and employing insurgents for his own advantage — is still running the province and much of the region as if they were his personal fiefdom. He still largely controls the appointment of officials, who then preside over an appalling system of patronage, protections and punishments. Worse still is the fact that ordinary citizens have to watch Wali Karzai and others of his ilk get showered with American dollars to provide private security, logistics, construction materials and intelligence.
People in the West tend to view corruption as something of an abstraction. But after six trips to Kandahar in the last three years, I've seen how favors are doled out as a form of patronage or in response to bribes. These are not victimless crimes. Every day, citizens face annoyance, expense and sometimes genuine trauma at the hands of corrupt officials. They are refused passports until they cough up half a month's salary in bribe money, or are forced at ruinous expense to produce documentation that proves they own their land to prevent it from being confiscated or avoid being hauled off to jail for no good reason. Everybody I have met in Kandahar has an impressive portfolio of such stories, and they are all exhausted from navigating an endless stream of humiliating abuses.
The people of Kandahar are caught between abusive governance and a lethal insurgency, and they are waiting for some indication that the Americans will do something more helpful than play warrior and build enormous, air-conditioned mansions with bulletproof windows for greedy Afghan officials.
In April, when I last visited, nobody even wanted to talk politics — that was too depressing. Now, when we talk over a bad Skype connection, my friends first rattle off a list of the most recent bombings and assassinations and then tell me that daily life in Kandahar is continuing on as usual.
To the Afghans I work with, it makes no difference which general runs the war, or how many of our troops get deposited on their soil, or even how many bad guys we kill. They won't trust the United States as long as it continues to cast its lot with corrupt politicians who profit shamelessly from the abusive governance that is driving so many of their countrymen into the Taliban's winning arms. Hearts and minds? I don't suspect we'll win too many of those until we take the lead in stepping out of the patronage game by refusing to play nice with gangsters.
(Courtesy LA Times)
The Curse of Kandahar
By Jennie Green
No wonder ordinary Afghans don't trust the U.S.: American leaders have backed a corrupt government. Even before the jet lag had worn off after a visit to Kandahar earlier this year, I received a disturbing e-mail from a colleague there. An improvised explosive device had detonated outside the home of one of the members of the cooperative I help run. It had apparently been placed to target a convoy in which the district chief of police was traveling.
Unharmed but outraged, the police chief ordered his subordinates to find out who owned the house. When my Afghan co-worker and his brother opened their gate, they were beaten and sworn at repeatedly, then hauled to police headquarters, where they spent the night. There was no evidence to suggest that the men had buried the IED, and every reason to think they hadn't. Between them, the brothers have many small children who might have been hurt in the explosion, and neither has ties to violent groups. Fortunately, my friend and his brother were released the following day, but only because of personal connections. Afterward, they cleared their house of anything that could be construed as a weapon, fearing that anyone who had it in for either of them could peg them as insurgents. They were taking a gamble.
Weapons are common in Afghan homes, in part because they are needed for protection against Taliban insurgents who regularly threaten ordinary citizens, particularly those who work for the Afghan government, NATO's International Security Assistance Force or foreigner-initiated organizations like our cooperative. For this reason, all members of our cooperative, which manufactures skin care products from locally grown fruits and flowers, are potential targets.
In the months after President Obama was sworn in and before the Afghan election of August 2009, many of the Afghans with whom I communicate regularly dared to hope that the new U.S. president would help bring about change in Hamid Karzai's administration. They applauded the way in which Obama immediately distanced himself from the Afghan president and condemned the rampant corruption that plagues the country. Finally, they thought, the international community might be able to compel Karzai to deliver the kind of responsible governance and rule of law that people craved.
But when those same officials wilted in the heat of an Afghan election so fraudulent that more than a million votes had to be disqualified, my friends became despondent. "Afghanistan is going in the river," one of them declared. "We are swimming now." Next came the Marja offensive, followed by a troop buildup for the much-publicized Kandahar operation. If ever there was a moment when it would seem as if Kandaharis would want to distance themselves from the loathsome Taliban and rally around their government and the formidable NATO forces that were ramping up to support it, this would be the time. Instead, more people than ever before seem to be joining the insurgency. Why? Because for all the talk about tackling corruption, including the "governments in a box" the U.S. promised to deliver, Kandaharis have yet to experience any noticeable improvements.
The infamous Ahmed Wali Karzai — the president's half brother, who has been publicly accused of all kinds of corruption, including opium trafficking, land confiscation and employing insurgents for his own advantage — is still running the province and much of the region as if they were his personal fiefdom. He still largely controls the appointment of officials, who then preside over an appalling system of patronage, protections and punishments. Worse still is the fact that ordinary citizens have to watch Wali Karzai and others of his ilk get showered with American dollars to provide private security, logistics, construction materials and intelligence.
People in the West tend to view corruption as something of an abstraction. But after six trips to Kandahar in the last three years, I've seen how favors are doled out as a form of patronage or in response to bribes. These are not victimless crimes. Every day, citizens face annoyance, expense and sometimes genuine trauma at the hands of corrupt officials. They are refused passports until they cough up half a month's salary in bribe money, or are forced at ruinous expense to produce documentation that proves they own their land to prevent it from being confiscated or avoid being hauled off to jail for no good reason. Everybody I have met in Kandahar has an impressive portfolio of such stories, and they are all exhausted from navigating an endless stream of humiliating abuses.
The people of Kandahar are caught between abusive governance and a lethal insurgency, and they are waiting for some indication that the Americans will do something more helpful than play warrior and build enormous, air-conditioned mansions with bulletproof windows for greedy Afghan officials.
In April, when I last visited, nobody even wanted to talk politics — that was too depressing. Now, when we talk over a bad Skype connection, my friends first rattle off a list of the most recent bombings and assassinations and then tell me that daily life in Kandahar is continuing on as usual.
To the Afghans I work with, it makes no difference which general runs the war, or how many of our troops get deposited on their soil, or even how many bad guys we kill. They won't trust the United States as long as it continues to cast its lot with corrupt politicians who profit shamelessly from the abusive governance that is driving so many of their countrymen into the Taliban's winning arms. Hearts and minds? I don't suspect we'll win too many of those until we take the lead in stepping out of the patronage game by refusing to play nice with gangsters.
(Courtesy LA Times)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Afghanistan - Holbrooke's ambiguous pipe-dream
Medea Benjamin identifies some of the highlights of Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke's testimony before and exchanges with members of the Foreign Relations Comittee. Her observations are incisive.
Holbrooke paints a rosy portrait of developments in Afghanistan, though he doesn't identify a timetable for the withdrawal of troops. He also doesn't give up the notion that the US would like to have access to some of Afghanistan's considerable mineral wealth. Sen. Kerry and others on the committe see parallels in Afghanistan with our terrible and failed war on Vietnam. If true, and it seems true, the US-led occupation of Afghanistan means more loss of Afghanistan and American lives and an enormous squandering of resources before it ends in defeat.
Afghan Envoy Holbrooke and Senate in La La Land
by Medea Benjamin, July 15, 2010
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/15/afghan-envoy-holbrooke-and-senate-in-la-la-land/
“Man, those dudes are in La La Land,” a young intern said to me on the way out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan on June 14, his eyes rolling. “You can’t win in Afghanistan. Don’t they read history?”
It had been hard to sit through hours of Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s storytelling about some far-off land he called Afghanistan. In his Afghanistan, there were new gains in agriculture and a reduction on poppy production for opium. We were empowering women and rebuilding everything from the rule of law to the electrical grid. President Karzai was really intent on tackling corruption. There was an exciting soon-to-be-unveiled program to integrate the lower-level Taliban. We were making significant gains in training the Afghan security forces, and we had real commitments from the Pakistani government to crush Al Qaeda.
We’ve heard this tall tale for the past eight years, which made some of the Senators a bit skeptical—although not skeptical enough to stop funding the war.
The most skeptical were the Republicans, who also happen to be the most anxious to keep fighting there, indefinitely. Senator Bob Corker said that despite more than an hour of testimony by Holbrooke, “I have heard nothing, nothing” about how progress will be measured. “I have no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front.”
Ranking Republican Richard Lugar was also confused about our objectives. Sometimes, he said, it seems that we are trying to “remake Afghan economic, political and security culture”, which is “beyond our resources and powers.” Other times it seems the goal is simply to prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorists. Either way, Lugar didn’t think we could accomplish the President’s desire to begin withdrawal by July 2011.
Holbrooke, while trying to support the President, admitted that he was leery of setting a date certain for leaving. This is, after all, “not where you would choose to defend the American homeland…It’s the most remote and logistically difficult place the U.S. has ever fought in our history,” Holbrooke said, adding that “Fate and destiny have put us there.”
Senator John Kerry, the Committee chair, showed his imperial stripes when he complained that the Afghans weren’t stepping up to the plate. “The problem is that the key element of this strategy is the one over which we have the least control, and that is the willingness and ability of Afghans to assume ownership of the efforts,” Kerry lamented. All the billions and our best efforts are irrelevant, he said, if the Afghans continue to be bystanders in what they perceive as a fight between the West and Al Qaeda.
Holbrooke chided his predecessors who had trained Afghan security forces for years, at enormous costs, without realizing that we had to also teach them to read and write. Literacy, he assured the senators, is now part of our training. No one asked why the Taliban fighters, who are also illiterate, were outmaneuvering both the Afghan security forces and U.S. military.
Referring to the pending U.S. offensive in Kandahar, Kerry admitted that the presence of the U.S. military whips up the insurgency. “Prior to American troops announcing they were going to go in (to Kandahar), there were not assassinations. There was not a level of violence,” Kerry said. “The mere announcement has now brought on the process of assassination and intimidation, and I doubt that we are going to have enough troops to be able to pacify the city.”
Several times during the hearing Holbrooke insisted that Afghanistan was not the unwinnable war of Vietnam, and that we had real security issues in Afghanistan. Ironically, on the very same day of the hearing, Senator Kerry released—for the first time ever—some 1,200 pages of transcripts from private meetings 40 years ago of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Vietnam War. They showed the Senators expressing the same concerns about not having a reliable partner, getting overly-rosy reports from the administration, wondering how much the war would cost in lives and dollars, and having hard time picturing what victory might look like.
“Some of the parallels are almost eerie,” Kerry said, insisting the lawmakers should learn from the past. But that learning has escaped Kerry himself, who continues to support what has now become Obama’s Vietnam and America’s longest war.
The most concrete rationale for staying in Afghanistan emerged when the senators asked about recent reports of enormous mineral wealth such as copper and lithium. Holbrooke said the mineral wealth not a new discovery, but there were now modern techniques that now allowed the minerals to be more easily mined. Holbrooke assured the senators that we are helping Afghans develop their resources and strengthen their economy. Oh yes, he added, we want to make sure that the U.S. has “a level playing field” in getting access to those minerals.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Afghanistan, young soldiers are assuring that “level playing field” with their lives. On the day of the hearing, eight soldiers were killed, bringing to 33 the number of American troops killed this month amid the worst bloodshed of the nine-year conflict.
The young intern who spoke to me about La La Land has more sense than Obama, Holbrooke or the Congress that continues to fund this disaster. Or maybe he is just less jaded than politicians like Senator Lugar who supports the war but remarked, during the hearing, that the U.S. had become stuck in a “slow-motion caravan to ultimate failure.” La La Land, it seems, is not poor Afghanistan, but Washington DC, where politicians send our youth off to fight and die in an endless war they themselves don’t believe in.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK (www.codepink.org) and Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org).
Holbrooke paints a rosy portrait of developments in Afghanistan, though he doesn't identify a timetable for the withdrawal of troops. He also doesn't give up the notion that the US would like to have access to some of Afghanistan's considerable mineral wealth. Sen. Kerry and others on the committe see parallels in Afghanistan with our terrible and failed war on Vietnam. If true, and it seems true, the US-led occupation of Afghanistan means more loss of Afghanistan and American lives and an enormous squandering of resources before it ends in defeat.
Afghan Envoy Holbrooke and Senate in La La Land
by Medea Benjamin, July 15, 2010
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/15/afghan-envoy-holbrooke-and-senate-in-la-la-land/
“Man, those dudes are in La La Land,” a young intern said to me on the way out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan on June 14, his eyes rolling. “You can’t win in Afghanistan. Don’t they read history?”
It had been hard to sit through hours of Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s storytelling about some far-off land he called Afghanistan. In his Afghanistan, there were new gains in agriculture and a reduction on poppy production for opium. We were empowering women and rebuilding everything from the rule of law to the electrical grid. President Karzai was really intent on tackling corruption. There was an exciting soon-to-be-unveiled program to integrate the lower-level Taliban. We were making significant gains in training the Afghan security forces, and we had real commitments from the Pakistani government to crush Al Qaeda.
We’ve heard this tall tale for the past eight years, which made some of the Senators a bit skeptical—although not skeptical enough to stop funding the war.
The most skeptical were the Republicans, who also happen to be the most anxious to keep fighting there, indefinitely. Senator Bob Corker said that despite more than an hour of testimony by Holbrooke, “I have heard nothing, nothing” about how progress will be measured. “I have no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front.”
Ranking Republican Richard Lugar was also confused about our objectives. Sometimes, he said, it seems that we are trying to “remake Afghan economic, political and security culture”, which is “beyond our resources and powers.” Other times it seems the goal is simply to prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorists. Either way, Lugar didn’t think we could accomplish the President’s desire to begin withdrawal by July 2011.
Holbrooke, while trying to support the President, admitted that he was leery of setting a date certain for leaving. This is, after all, “not where you would choose to defend the American homeland…It’s the most remote and logistically difficult place the U.S. has ever fought in our history,” Holbrooke said, adding that “Fate and destiny have put us there.”
Senator John Kerry, the Committee chair, showed his imperial stripes when he complained that the Afghans weren’t stepping up to the plate. “The problem is that the key element of this strategy is the one over which we have the least control, and that is the willingness and ability of Afghans to assume ownership of the efforts,” Kerry lamented. All the billions and our best efforts are irrelevant, he said, if the Afghans continue to be bystanders in what they perceive as a fight between the West and Al Qaeda.
Holbrooke chided his predecessors who had trained Afghan security forces for years, at enormous costs, without realizing that we had to also teach them to read and write. Literacy, he assured the senators, is now part of our training. No one asked why the Taliban fighters, who are also illiterate, were outmaneuvering both the Afghan security forces and U.S. military.
Referring to the pending U.S. offensive in Kandahar, Kerry admitted that the presence of the U.S. military whips up the insurgency. “Prior to American troops announcing they were going to go in (to Kandahar), there were not assassinations. There was not a level of violence,” Kerry said. “The mere announcement has now brought on the process of assassination and intimidation, and I doubt that we are going to have enough troops to be able to pacify the city.”
Several times during the hearing Holbrooke insisted that Afghanistan was not the unwinnable war of Vietnam, and that we had real security issues in Afghanistan. Ironically, on the very same day of the hearing, Senator Kerry released—for the first time ever—some 1,200 pages of transcripts from private meetings 40 years ago of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Vietnam War. They showed the Senators expressing the same concerns about not having a reliable partner, getting overly-rosy reports from the administration, wondering how much the war would cost in lives and dollars, and having hard time picturing what victory might look like.
“Some of the parallels are almost eerie,” Kerry said, insisting the lawmakers should learn from the past. But that learning has escaped Kerry himself, who continues to support what has now become Obama’s Vietnam and America’s longest war.
The most concrete rationale for staying in Afghanistan emerged when the senators asked about recent reports of enormous mineral wealth such as copper and lithium. Holbrooke said the mineral wealth not a new discovery, but there were now modern techniques that now allowed the minerals to be more easily mined. Holbrooke assured the senators that we are helping Afghans develop their resources and strengthen their economy. Oh yes, he added, we want to make sure that the U.S. has “a level playing field” in getting access to those minerals.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Afghanistan, young soldiers are assuring that “level playing field” with their lives. On the day of the hearing, eight soldiers were killed, bringing to 33 the number of American troops killed this month amid the worst bloodshed of the nine-year conflict.
The young intern who spoke to me about La La Land has more sense than Obama, Holbrooke or the Congress that continues to fund this disaster. Or maybe he is just less jaded than politicians like Senator Lugar who supports the war but remarked, during the hearing, that the U.S. had become stuck in a “slow-motion caravan to ultimate failure.” La La Land, it seems, is not poor Afghanistan, but Washington DC, where politicians send our youth off to fight and die in an endless war they themselves don’t believe in.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK (www.codepink.org) and Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org).
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Pentagon report questions quality of Afghan army
The US-led occupation of Afghanistan is justified publicly by official statements from the US government and military that the US occupation will end, or largely end, when two objectives are achieved: (1) a "democratic" government of some sort is established, and (2) an Afghan military force, capable of providing "security" to the country is created. There are a host of reports that find the Afghan central government in Kabul has little influence in the country as a whole, is filled with corruption, and is dependent on warlords.
The following article reports on a new Pentagon report and related interviews that strongly indicate that there is too little progress in creating an effective Afghan army. There is another relevant point, made by Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program last night. Rachel said that the cost of the US training programs is currently 9 billion, rising an additional billion a year over the next two years (or more). If the US were to withdraw its troops, the Afghan government would not have the financial ability to maintain an Afghan army of any sufficient size, let alone an army like the one now being trained or in the field.
The implication is that the US is on a fool's errand.
Here is a quote from an article by correspondent Tim McGirk in Time magazine online, June 14, 2010 (http://www.time.com/). The title of the article: "Will Afghanistan's Military Ever Be Fit to Fight?" McGirk reports in the quote on just the US support payments for the Afghan army and refers to the relatively paltry Afghan government's annual tax revenues.
"It will require loads of money to stave off the ANA's collapse. Not counting training costs, the price tag for just keeping the Afghan army fed, paid, clothed and ready for combat is estimated at more than $6 billion a year, far beyond the Kabul government's yearly earnings of $1 billion in tax revenue, as calculated by the presidential office. This guarantees that the U.S. and its NATO allies will be footing the bill for many years to come." Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993886-2,00.html#ixzz0to9uiRoB
Quality of Afghan Army Questioned by Pentagon
Ben Farmer and James Kirkup, The Daily Telegraph, with files from Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News · Wednesday, Jul. 14, 2010
Source: National Post.com (see full URL at end of article); also can be found at Antiwar.org, July 15-2010
Raising the competence of the Afghan army is central to the entire NATO strategy for Afghanistan, but a recent Pentagon report questions the quality and reliability of the force.
With the Afghan National Police widely regarded as corrupt and unreliable, even greater importance rests on the Afghan National Army (ANA). Western nations have said they will only withdraw their forces when the Afghans can secure the country themselves.
NATO leaders have repeatedly claimed that the ANA is making excellent progress, but those claims have been questioned by a U.S. government audit.
Arnold Fields, the U.S. Defense Department's inspector general for Afghanistan, concluded that the capabilities of many "top-rated" ANA units had been "overstated" by NATO commanders.
Several ANA units officially passed as able to operate without international support or guidance have not proved they are capable of independent operations, the auditor found in a report last month.
NATO admits that Afghan forces remain totally reliant on NATO for air support and artillery, for medical evacuation from the battlefield and often for supplies.
The audit's findings are echoed by NATO commanders in the field.
Many NATO troops have hair-raising stories of careless young Afghan soldiers accidentally firing their weapons, including rocket launchers.
Commanders in the field have also occasionally questioned the Afghans' commitment.
On a recent visit to the Babaji area of Helmand, where yesterday's shooting took place, The Daily Telegraph saw Afghan troops refuse to carry their own food or water on patrol and demanded that Gurkhas supply them instead.
Some Afghan soldiers also refuse to patrol at night or in the heat of midday. One British officer said, "The Afghan soldiers and police like to have fresh food. They are fixed to their meal times. Sometimes they have been out on patrol and said 'It's lunchtime, it's over'."
NATO commanders almost always describe operations as Afghan-led, although it is not always obvious that is the case. For example, when an important bridge near Kandahar City was blown up by insurgents several months ago, NATO said the operation to fix it was led by Afghan troops.
In fact, virtually all the work was done by Canadian and U.S. navy Seabee engineers while the few Afghan soldiers at the site rested in the shade.
There are about 119,000 members of the ANA. To allow the transfer of security duties, NATO has set a target of 171,000, due to be reached by 2014. That means an accelerated process that sees new recruits given two months' basic training before being assigned to units, often formed from scratch.
Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute said a few units are of good quality but, because of the short training period for rank-and-file soldiers, "the quality is always going to be patchy".
There are questions about the commitment of the ANA and Prof. Clarke estimated that one in ten newly trained ANA soldiers go absent without leave.
British officers training the ANA say that there is a particular shortage of noncommissioned officers, the sergeants and sergeants-major who are the backbone of any modern army.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Quality+Afghan+army+questioned+Pentagon/3273913/story.html#ixzz0tnaie8sW
The following article reports on a new Pentagon report and related interviews that strongly indicate that there is too little progress in creating an effective Afghan army. There is another relevant point, made by Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program last night. Rachel said that the cost of the US training programs is currently 9 billion, rising an additional billion a year over the next two years (or more). If the US were to withdraw its troops, the Afghan government would not have the financial ability to maintain an Afghan army of any sufficient size, let alone an army like the one now being trained or in the field.
The implication is that the US is on a fool's errand.
Here is a quote from an article by correspondent Tim McGirk in Time magazine online, June 14, 2010 (http://www.time.com/). The title of the article: "Will Afghanistan's Military Ever Be Fit to Fight?" McGirk reports in the quote on just the US support payments for the Afghan army and refers to the relatively paltry Afghan government's annual tax revenues.
"It will require loads of money to stave off the ANA's collapse. Not counting training costs, the price tag for just keeping the Afghan army fed, paid, clothed and ready for combat is estimated at more than $6 billion a year, far beyond the Kabul government's yearly earnings of $1 billion in tax revenue, as calculated by the presidential office. This guarantees that the U.S. and its NATO allies will be footing the bill for many years to come." Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993886-2,00.html#ixzz0to9uiRoB
Quality of Afghan Army Questioned by Pentagon
Ben Farmer and James Kirkup, The Daily Telegraph, with files from Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News · Wednesday, Jul. 14, 2010
Source: National Post.com (see full URL at end of article); also can be found at Antiwar.org, July 15-2010
Raising the competence of the Afghan army is central to the entire NATO strategy for Afghanistan, but a recent Pentagon report questions the quality and reliability of the force.
With the Afghan National Police widely regarded as corrupt and unreliable, even greater importance rests on the Afghan National Army (ANA). Western nations have said they will only withdraw their forces when the Afghans can secure the country themselves.
NATO leaders have repeatedly claimed that the ANA is making excellent progress, but those claims have been questioned by a U.S. government audit.
Arnold Fields, the U.S. Defense Department's inspector general for Afghanistan, concluded that the capabilities of many "top-rated" ANA units had been "overstated" by NATO commanders.
Several ANA units officially passed as able to operate without international support or guidance have not proved they are capable of independent operations, the auditor found in a report last month.
NATO admits that Afghan forces remain totally reliant on NATO for air support and artillery, for medical evacuation from the battlefield and often for supplies.
The audit's findings are echoed by NATO commanders in the field.
Many NATO troops have hair-raising stories of careless young Afghan soldiers accidentally firing their weapons, including rocket launchers.
Commanders in the field have also occasionally questioned the Afghans' commitment.
On a recent visit to the Babaji area of Helmand, where yesterday's shooting took place, The Daily Telegraph saw Afghan troops refuse to carry their own food or water on patrol and demanded that Gurkhas supply them instead.
Some Afghan soldiers also refuse to patrol at night or in the heat of midday. One British officer said, "The Afghan soldiers and police like to have fresh food. They are fixed to their meal times. Sometimes they have been out on patrol and said 'It's lunchtime, it's over'."
NATO commanders almost always describe operations as Afghan-led, although it is not always obvious that is the case. For example, when an important bridge near Kandahar City was blown up by insurgents several months ago, NATO said the operation to fix it was led by Afghan troops.
In fact, virtually all the work was done by Canadian and U.S. navy Seabee engineers while the few Afghan soldiers at the site rested in the shade.
There are about 119,000 members of the ANA. To allow the transfer of security duties, NATO has set a target of 171,000, due to be reached by 2014. That means an accelerated process that sees new recruits given two months' basic training before being assigned to units, often formed from scratch.
Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute said a few units are of good quality but, because of the short training period for rank-and-file soldiers, "the quality is always going to be patchy".
There are questions about the commitment of the ANA and Prof. Clarke estimated that one in ten newly trained ANA soldiers go absent without leave.
British officers training the ANA say that there is a particular shortage of noncommissioned officers, the sergeants and sergeants-major who are the backbone of any modern army.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Quality+Afghan+army+questioned+Pentagon/3273913/story.html#ixzz0tnaie8sW
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Obama's rhetoric conflicts with facts on ground in Afghanistan
Under the Radar: Afghanistan in Ruins – Evidence on the Ground Contradicts Obama’s Promises to Defeat Terrorists and Promote Stability
Posted on July 13, 2010 by Media-ocracy (Anthony Dimaggio)
A Media-ocracy News Report, http://media-ocracy.com
Violence in Afghanistan spiked in 2010 in light of the U.S. “surge,” its targeting of the Taliban, and growing attacks on Afghan civilians. Attacks reached an all time high since the U.S. invaded in 2001, according to the group Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM). ARM estimates that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed this year, with another 1,500 injured, while the Taliban “has become more resilient, multi-structured and deadly.”
The U.S. is said to be responsible for approximately one third of all the civilian deaths, although Taliban forces were found to have incited more than 60 percent of all deaths. The recent ARM report from this month represents an important admission from those on the ground that the U.S. promise to help “stabilize” Afghanistan and reduce violence and terrorism remain more rhetoric than reality. The 140,000 troops the U.S. has added to Afghanistan appear to have increased the threat to Afghans by causing an escalation of violence to the point where the country is further spiraling out of control.
Recent social indicators from the United Nations indicate that Afghanistan remains one of the worst off countries in the world. Life expectancy is at a pitiful 44 years, as the country ranks the second lowest in this area (behind only Niger) in all countries throughout the globe. The 2009 UN Human Development Index finds that Afghanistan remains in the bottom 10 percent of countries in terms of its Gross Domestic Product, in the bottom 20 percent in terms of literacy, in the bottom four percent in life expectancy, and in the bottom 30 percent in child malnutrition. Afghanistan excels in one area, however: outmigration. Afghanistan actually finishes in the top 30 percent of countries in terms of people leaving the country, a damning indication of the dangers civilians face throughout the U.S.-NATO occupation.
The Afghan war’s popularity is at a historic low as of mid 2010. Americans appear to be recognizing that the situation in the country is not improving, but in fact worsening in terms of Afghan civilian and U.S. soldiers’ lives lost. Growing public opposition is a testament to the weakness of Obama’s rhetorical defense of the war, which is becoming less convincing each day. According to Newsweek polling, the percent of Americans opposing Obama’s handling of the war increased by a whopping 26 percent from just 27 percent of Americans in February to 55 percent in June. According to Washington Post-ABC polling, while 52 percent of Americans thought the war was “worth fighting” immediately following Obama’s December 2009 speech, that figure fell to 44 percent by early June 2010. General opposition to the war as not “worth” it reached a majority of Americans by April of this year.
The Afghan War, Up Close and Personal
U.S. casualties throughout 2010 have been the worst in the war’s history. They averaged 32 per month, compared to the average of 26 per month in 2009 and 13 deaths per month in 2009. U.S. casualty rates have actually increased steadily every year since 2001, a sign of the increasing toll the war is exacting on the American people. The story of growing U.S. deaths, however, has remained largely under the radar in the American press, which has rarely featured any stories about the historical levels casualties since it first emphasized the topic in late 2009. It appears that journalists have learned well the lesson not to “rock the boat” for a war in which both parties are strongly supportive, despite the growing public rebellion.
Posted on July 13, 2010 by Media-ocracy (Anthony Dimaggio)
A Media-ocracy News Report, http://media-ocracy.com
Violence in Afghanistan spiked in 2010 in light of the U.S. “surge,” its targeting of the Taliban, and growing attacks on Afghan civilians. Attacks reached an all time high since the U.S. invaded in 2001, according to the group Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM). ARM estimates that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed this year, with another 1,500 injured, while the Taliban “has become more resilient, multi-structured and deadly.”
The U.S. is said to be responsible for approximately one third of all the civilian deaths, although Taliban forces were found to have incited more than 60 percent of all deaths. The recent ARM report from this month represents an important admission from those on the ground that the U.S. promise to help “stabilize” Afghanistan and reduce violence and terrorism remain more rhetoric than reality. The 140,000 troops the U.S. has added to Afghanistan appear to have increased the threat to Afghans by causing an escalation of violence to the point where the country is further spiraling out of control.
Recent social indicators from the United Nations indicate that Afghanistan remains one of the worst off countries in the world. Life expectancy is at a pitiful 44 years, as the country ranks the second lowest in this area (behind only Niger) in all countries throughout the globe. The 2009 UN Human Development Index finds that Afghanistan remains in the bottom 10 percent of countries in terms of its Gross Domestic Product, in the bottom 20 percent in terms of literacy, in the bottom four percent in life expectancy, and in the bottom 30 percent in child malnutrition. Afghanistan excels in one area, however: outmigration. Afghanistan actually finishes in the top 30 percent of countries in terms of people leaving the country, a damning indication of the dangers civilians face throughout the U.S.-NATO occupation.
The Afghan war’s popularity is at a historic low as of mid 2010. Americans appear to be recognizing that the situation in the country is not improving, but in fact worsening in terms of Afghan civilian and U.S. soldiers’ lives lost. Growing public opposition is a testament to the weakness of Obama’s rhetorical defense of the war, which is becoming less convincing each day. According to Newsweek polling, the percent of Americans opposing Obama’s handling of the war increased by a whopping 26 percent from just 27 percent of Americans in February to 55 percent in June. According to Washington Post-ABC polling, while 52 percent of Americans thought the war was “worth fighting” immediately following Obama’s December 2009 speech, that figure fell to 44 percent by early June 2010. General opposition to the war as not “worth” it reached a majority of Americans by April of this year.
The Afghan War, Up Close and Personal
U.S. casualties throughout 2010 have been the worst in the war’s history. They averaged 32 per month, compared to the average of 26 per month in 2009 and 13 deaths per month in 2009. U.S. casualty rates have actually increased steadily every year since 2001, a sign of the increasing toll the war is exacting on the American people. The story of growing U.S. deaths, however, has remained largely under the radar in the American press, which has rarely featured any stories about the historical levels casualties since it first emphasized the topic in late 2009. It appears that journalists have learned well the lesson not to “rock the boat” for a war in which both parties are strongly supportive, despite the growing public rebellion.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Time Magazine award to Malalai Joya distorts what she stands for
MAY 4, 2010 11:10AM
How TIME Magazine hijacked Afghan activist Malalai Joya
http://www.salon.com/blog/judy_mandelbaum/2010/05/04/how_time_magazine-hoodwinked_afghan_activist_malalai.joya
Malalai Joya (Source: Women's Space)
Judy Mandelbaum (JM) offers excerpts from her interview with Malalai Joya (MJ) and related commentary.
JM - Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, Homer wrote thousands of years ago. Today human rights activists would be well-advised to beware of major American news magazines passing out honors. Last week, noted Afghan politician Malalai Joya, the author of "A Woman Among Warlords" whom the BBC has called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan,” was named one of TIME Magazine’s “World’s Most Influential 100 People” of 2010. The trouble is, the magazine presented her to the world in a brief but misleading text by Islam critic and American Enterprise Institute fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who concluded her tribute with the words: “I hope in time she comes to see the US and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country.”
JM - What an odd choice of words, considering that Ali is writing about a woman who wrote in the Daily Beast last week that:
MJ - more than eight years of occupation have made life bleak, and we are tired of being pawns in the US and NATO's game for control of Central Asia. We can longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and women. We can no longer bear these "accidents" and these "apologies" for the deaths of the innocent.
JM - Are Ali and the editors of TIME really entitled to tell Malalai Joya what to think about her country's plight? To set the record straight and to find out what really motivates this activist, journalist Sonali Kolhatkar of UprisingRadio contacted Ms. Joya yesterday and conducted an interview, which I have excerpted below (you can – and should – read the entire discussion here):
MJ - I am very angry with the way they have introduced me [Joya said]. They have a completely painted a false picture of me that does not mention at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side by side with the glorious-anti war movement around the world and have proved again and again that I will never compromise with the US and NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots [inaudible] in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone by one hand and getting it back by another hand. I have sent my protest to it to the Defense Committee [for Malalai Joya] but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the USA. …
JM - Regarding this freedom and the war that is supposedly designed to secure it:
MJ - Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it. So no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually many women and children, not insurgents. Afghan media are also truly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. … For the US it’s not just fighting a war through military means, but they also fight on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war as justifiable. For this they are using their lie-machines. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say all they have killed are Taliban. …
JM - Regarding the upcoming US and NATO offensive in Kandahar, Ms. Joya said:
MJ - [T]he US does not want to defeat the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive of Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past as well. … They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan. The only outcome of such operation is civilian casualties. Poor and innocent are killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat and even major casualties. Afghans know well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace in Afghanistan.
… I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women’s rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and [inaudible] supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country. So as long as I am alive I am the same person. As always I am saying if a thousand times they will kill me and again I will be alive, and see that these same enemies are in power with the mask of democracy and continue with their wrong policy and their crimes and war crimes, these internal enemies of my country, these warlords, also Taliban, and also their foreign masters, these occupation forces, the US and NATO.
JM - How to explain this discrepancy? Is TIME Magazine pursuing a sinister or at least tendentious editorial policy? You can bank on it. But TIME is also a commercial enterprise, and I suspect that this choice - like so much of our politics - has a lot to do with the middle-brow American take on the world, which always follows the rules of melodrama. As far as the money-driven mainstream media are concerned, our planet is packed to the rafters with heroes and villains, perpetrators and victims. It is particularly shaped by long-suffering heroines and noble fighters for human rights and justice, who must by necessity be allied with the United States, the leader of the “free world" and the very essence of truth and justice. If Malalai Joya hates the Taliban, it follows that she must love the US, right?
JM - I’m afraid that a heroine who hates both – and who openly protests the ongoing destruction of her country by remote-controlled drones in order to "save" it for... whom exactly? – is too complex for most Americans in the age of talk radio and “24.” Their brains simply can't process this sort of information anymore, rather like those African famine victims whose emaciated bodies can't absorb rich Western food supplies. Malalai Joya asks too many embarrassing questions and leaves behind too many messy loose ends. But I'm sure the American Enterprise Institute would love to have a go at her.
How TIME Magazine hijacked Afghan activist Malalai Joya
http://www.salon.com/blog/judy_mandelbaum/2010/05/04/how_time_magazine-hoodwinked_afghan_activist_malalai.joya
Malalai Joya (Source: Women's Space)
Judy Mandelbaum (JM) offers excerpts from her interview with Malalai Joya (MJ) and related commentary.
JM - Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, Homer wrote thousands of years ago. Today human rights activists would be well-advised to beware of major American news magazines passing out honors. Last week, noted Afghan politician Malalai Joya, the author of "A Woman Among Warlords" whom the BBC has called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan,” was named one of TIME Magazine’s “World’s Most Influential 100 People” of 2010. The trouble is, the magazine presented her to the world in a brief but misleading text by Islam critic and American Enterprise Institute fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who concluded her tribute with the words: “I hope in time she comes to see the US and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country.”
JM - What an odd choice of words, considering that Ali is writing about a woman who wrote in the Daily Beast last week that:
MJ - more than eight years of occupation have made life bleak, and we are tired of being pawns in the US and NATO's game for control of Central Asia. We can longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and women. We can no longer bear these "accidents" and these "apologies" for the deaths of the innocent.
JM - Are Ali and the editors of TIME really entitled to tell Malalai Joya what to think about her country's plight? To set the record straight and to find out what really motivates this activist, journalist Sonali Kolhatkar of UprisingRadio contacted Ms. Joya yesterday and conducted an interview, which I have excerpted below (you can – and should – read the entire discussion here):
MJ - I am very angry with the way they have introduced me [Joya said]. They have a completely painted a false picture of me that does not mention at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side by side with the glorious-anti war movement around the world and have proved again and again that I will never compromise with the US and NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots [inaudible] in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone by one hand and getting it back by another hand. I have sent my protest to it to the Defense Committee [for Malalai Joya] but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the USA. …
JM - Regarding this freedom and the war that is supposedly designed to secure it:
MJ - Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it. So no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually many women and children, not insurgents. Afghan media are also truly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. … For the US it’s not just fighting a war through military means, but they also fight on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war as justifiable. For this they are using their lie-machines. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say all they have killed are Taliban. …
JM - Regarding the upcoming US and NATO offensive in Kandahar, Ms. Joya said:
MJ - [T]he US does not want to defeat the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive of Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past as well. … They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan. The only outcome of such operation is civilian casualties. Poor and innocent are killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat and even major casualties. Afghans know well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace in Afghanistan.
… I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women’s rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and [inaudible] supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country. So as long as I am alive I am the same person. As always I am saying if a thousand times they will kill me and again I will be alive, and see that these same enemies are in power with the mask of democracy and continue with their wrong policy and their crimes and war crimes, these internal enemies of my country, these warlords, also Taliban, and also their foreign masters, these occupation forces, the US and NATO.
JM - How to explain this discrepancy? Is TIME Magazine pursuing a sinister or at least tendentious editorial policy? You can bank on it. But TIME is also a commercial enterprise, and I suspect that this choice - like so much of our politics - has a lot to do with the middle-brow American take on the world, which always follows the rules of melodrama. As far as the money-driven mainstream media are concerned, our planet is packed to the rafters with heroes and villains, perpetrators and victims. It is particularly shaped by long-suffering heroines and noble fighters for human rights and justice, who must by necessity be allied with the United States, the leader of the “free world" and the very essence of truth and justice. If Malalai Joya hates the Taliban, it follows that she must love the US, right?
JM - I’m afraid that a heroine who hates both – and who openly protests the ongoing destruction of her country by remote-controlled drones in order to "save" it for... whom exactly? – is too complex for most Americans in the age of talk radio and “24.” Their brains simply can't process this sort of information anymore, rather like those African famine victims whose emaciated bodies can't absorb rich Western food supplies. Malalai Joya asks too many embarrassing questions and leaves behind too many messy loose ends. But I'm sure the American Enterprise Institute would love to have a go at her.
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