STRATEGICALLY LOST IN AFGHANISTAN
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The Obama administration seems to be having big second thoughts about Afghanistan. President Obama in his election campaign promised to make Afghanistan the central front in our unnamed war. (The war was initially called the Global War on Terror and then the Long War by the US government; both titles are now officially forbidden by the new administration as being politically incorrect although no replacement has been offered.) The implication caught by all observers was that under President Obama Afghanistan would be getting many more American troops, much greater economic development assistance, and the full inter-agency press to win hearts and minds of Afghans for democratic government and political stability. But even before the administration took office the back tracking started. Some reinforcements were sent although not as many as first promised. Increased aid is planned, but it is slow to flow. The civilian surge is apparently mostly a mirage. What there have been are Afghanistan strategy reviews, one after another.
There was no visible push back to an increased effort in Afghanistan from the US military despite the public firing of General McKiernan. On the contrary, the military seemed ready to implement in Afghanistan what has become the much heralded Counter Insurgency (COIN) doctrine that General Patraeus helped devise and then applied in Iraq. General McKiernan was saying all the right things about the need to have a multi-facetted approach. More troops were needed, and he did say he wanted more, but he also acknowledged that military success was insufficient and could not occur until there was economic growth, improved governmental services, and less corruption.
Conditions on the ground have deteriorated since Obama was elected, but this was largely anticipated. The Taliban has made big gains in many places in Afghanistan, though most especially in the South where the NATO contribution was both too modest and too combat shy. There are too few well trained and equipped Afghani soldiers and police, a legacy of the Bush administration’s under resourcing of the Afghan war. The Pakistan border region is a mess due mostly to failures of the Pakistan government to live up to its many promises. All of this though was to be solved in time with troop reinforcements, a much expanded training program, and an intensified diplomatic effort.
The arrival of McKiernan’s replacement, General McChrystal, brought some changes in the use of coalition air power that is intended to reduce civilian casualties. These changes were described as part of the plan to win the hearts and minds of local populations that is said to be central to successful counter-insurgency campaigns, but they seemed as much directed to improving the re-election chances of Afghan President Karzai who had sought to bolster his standing by complaining loudly about the number of civilian deaths in several well-publicized incidents.
The casualties that likely had impact, however, were the escalating count of coalition forces deaths. IED attacks are up sharply, helping push coalition deaths to multiples of the Iraq war current toll and clearly affecting our NATO’s allies’ willingness to continue the fight. The British have refused to boost their numbers, the Canadians want out by 2011, the Germans refuse to do combat operations, and the others largely see Afghanistan as worth only a token effort. More significantly, American morale has waned. Despite constant talk in the media about the likely need for decades of involvement, Secretary Gates admits that military progress has to be visible within a year or two for the mission to hold public support. And no one in or out of the Obama administration seems sure at all about what to do with the cultivation of poppies that is the core of the Afghan economy and the culture of corruption that appears to pervade Afghan society.
Suddenly the “failed policies” of Rumsfeld and Bush are starting to look good again. There is growing wonder about the need, or better yet the capacity, to go much beyond keeping al Qaeda off balance and the Taliban out of Kabul and a few other Afghan cities. Afghanistan, Seth Jones reminds us in his new book, is known as the graveyard of empires. Perhaps for America it will be instead known as the graveyard of a misinformed campaign promise. The Obama pledge to remake Afghanistan may soon be ignored if not forgotten.
The whole ‘graveyard of empires’ argument is massively overdone. It rests on a set of wholly inaccurate and really rather lazy set of historical analogies. We bring a different set of capabilities and a different set of objectives to the mission in Afghanistan than either the Soviets in the 1980s or the British in the nineteenth century.
A multi-billion dollar, multinational interagency effort is in no way comparable to a small nineteenth century British expeditionary force. It just makes no sense to compare the two. Similarly, the Soviets were fought to a grim and bloody stalemate in Afghanistan not by the Afghans alone, but rather by a force fully armed and supported by the West. America alone is estimated to have financed the Mujahedeen to the tune of $6bn in the 1980s. There is no comparable support for the Taliban today. Iran is paying around on the edges of the conflict, but the flow of arms and money to the Taliban today bears no comparison to that supplied by America and its allies in the 1980s.
And that is without even going in to the aid and development effort. It barely needs saying that there was no comparable diplomatic or development track to the Soviet effort. The new strategic concept is an altogether different beast from anything that has gone before and so those who remain sceptical need to find a better set of arguments in my opinion. The historical analogies just do not stand up.
The only thing Afghanistan’s western allies can do is indeed to remain focused on keeping the Taliban marginalized and the Al Qaeda out of the country. Moreover, any pledges made for boosting the Afghan security forces must be carried out if we’re ever to expect the Afghans to secure their own country from enemies both within and abroad. Helping the country transform itself from her current structure to a modern Liberal Democracy however, will take decades to achieve. This shouldn’t mean that Afghanistan’s allies ought to lose heart over the prospects of having to babysit the country with a large troop concentration throughout the duration. On the contrary, it is doubtful that a Liberal Democracy in Afghanistan can ever transpire, so long as all efforts towards this end take place under the shadow of a massive foreign presence. However, once the Afghans can have their own security forces that they can depend on for defending their lives and property, the US and other allies can then opt out of a massive physical presence, whilst still maintaining enough influence to effect legislative/educational reforms, support grass-root institutions for civil society and work with a new breed of young Afghan Libertarians who’ll offer their countrymen an alternative grass-root movement for inspiration.
If you’ve convinced yourselves that Afghans can not bring change, then you’re simply ignoring Afghanistan’s history. Right now, I would argue that whatever the Afghan view of themselves, they all exhibit an approach to life that in Liberal Democracies would be viewed as left of centre, in that most Afghans wrongly assume that the holy grail for their well-being can be found in a “good government”. It’s highly questionable that this broad culture has always reflected the way Afghans viewed the world. In fact, I would argue that this shameful peon mentality of present day Afghans has its roots on the more recent entry from around the early twentieth centry, of leftist European Liberal approaches to life and governance by way of France, Turkey, the Soviet Union and their useful idiots in both Iran and India.
The point I’m trying to make here in a nutshell is that just as it took decades for leftist ideals to penetrate Afghan society, so too will it take decades to give rise to a novel alternative approach to life and governance, with influences borrowed from the American Declaration of Independance. I’m of the firm belief that it’s not Islam that needs transforming, but the Muslim approach towards their professed religion as the bases for my anticipated cultural changes ahead. This can happen especially if the ordinary man in America and other allied states, begin to make the Afghans cause as an extension of their own. As it stands however, I find it unfortunate that too many from among our own allies currently brush off the Afghan people as a basketcase, irrespective of Afghan history clearly reveals that we’ve been anything but passive participants to global currents. If anything, the Afghan people have been stimulants of change.
Just to give you an idea, although many from among you hold the firm belief that the Persian Empire was Iranian, then I ask you to reconsider your approach to history. In fact the leadership of that Empire came from “Kabura”, which was ancient Kabul. Compounding with this, the first monotheistic religion and culture of the Persians came from the northern Afghan town of Balkh, wherefrom Zoroaster himself came from. Whereas Muslims boast of their historic golden age, not much is ever said about the fact that the most advanced Muslim civilization – the Abassids – came to be from an alliance of Afghans, modern day Iranians and the Yemenies for the sole purpose of challenging Arab dominion. The primary military force to make this happen was led by General Abu Muslim Khorassani, again from Northern Afghanistan. During that period in occupied Spain, it was Afghan born Ibn Sina (Avacena) who made the first attempt to reconcile Platonic reasoning with Islam, even before Thomas Aquinas’ arguably more profound articulation within Christendom. Whilst “intellectuals” in university circles brush off the advent of Buddhism as Indian, the truth is however that Nepal wherefrom Buddha has been said to be born in, had strong ethnic ties to the ancient Afghans, hence the reason behind the first Buddhist state having came to being in ancient “Ghandahara”, and with its capital in Peshawar situated in modern day Pakistan. This is a town as with the rest of NWFP, that Afghans rightfully view to be occupied Afghan lands, hence the reason for the ongoing Pakistani indoctrination of an Islam based on the Khaliphate. Why? Because they’ve successfully exploited Islamo-fascist indoctrination as a means not only for the employment of extending their foreign policy against both India and Afghanistan, but also to marginalise nationalist Pashtuns with a history of seperatism therein.
The reason I’ve brought this up does not derrive as a yearning for the “good old days”, but more so as a means to relay to you that Afghanistan can be steered to transform not only herself, but to also to bring forth new ideas in the Muslim world that challenge the current stagnancy of Muslim thought. I implore with you all to view the country more so from a big-picture perspective, than the admitted shinanigans of her current state of existence, which is indeed deplorable right now. Please do not give credance to arguments from among those in the US who don’t mind at all if the Afghan people become collateral damage to their internal politics, just as had shamefully with Vietnam, which was after all an war that was being won!
….apologies for the spelling and disjointed sentences in the above….I’ve written this in a little haste ;-)
For those among you who still don’t get it and yet fancy themselves to be good Christians, then allow me to remind you of what a great sage once said: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you feed him for life”……the Afghan people need your patience and well-earned tax dollars to teach them how to fish. Do NOT turn your backs on the old sage now!
Peace,
Barekzai
Afghanistan is a waste of time. It has no value vis a vis the cost of the operation there.
The ‘coalition’ went in as a response to 9/11. bombed the bejesus out of what was already a bombed out 4th world country … and now America and Britain are trying to fight a guerilla war on one hand (lessons of Vietnam anyone?) and on the other hand are trying to impose a ridiculous democratisation process on a nation where it is perhaps less suitable than anywhere else on earth.
Get out, completely. Stop letting young women and men (on both sides) die for nothing and to hell with the political cost of withdrawal. Obama and co would have us believe they are smart. So far all I see is a continuation of the stupidity of the previous administrations foreign policy.
Replying to Barekzai,
In my opinion the Afghan people need the exact opposite of what you prescribe. They have endured meddling and invasion for a variety of purposes (none of those benevolent) throughout modern history. What they need is to be left alone to determine their own fate. Let them sort their country out and grow their own character.
let what will be, be. We need our own tax dollars right now to sort out our own problems. Selfish, no. Practical, yes.
somehow though, I think what you desire is more likely to happen that what I wish for. foreign policy has a habit of continuing on a course rather than radically changing, much to my chagrin
Stephen Mcglinchey,
Your good “opinion” is based on the scope of your good dose of unforgiveable ignorance. Afghans are the last people on earth to be lectured on the need to withstand foreign meddling, given our historical defense of our homeland against foreign invasions. In fact, even in ancient history, after Afghans had spawned the Persian Empire as I’ve stated earlier, our ancestors were also the first to break away from the empire, as the concentration of power shifted away from Afghanistan and further afield into what is now modern Iran. Thucydides had acknowledged this when he observed the breakaway region of “Bactria”, which was a good portion of modern-day Afghanistan. Even when the Arab invaders had entered the region with their Islamic hordes, the Persian poet Ferdousi notes that it was in the region of “Zabulistan” – hence the are around modern Helmand and Kandahar today – wherein the Arabs faced their greatest defeat. It was only later, with a succession of Afghan power-holders making deals with the Arabs that Islam began to spread across the country incrementally over many centuries, through the word and sword alike. For you to now lecture Afghans on the benefits of deterring the meddlers is laughable. In fact, this is precisely what our alliance with the Americans is all about, to deter our meddling neighbors who’ve been busying themselves by using their legions of murderous militias to devastate the nation over the last 30 years.
Where the hell were simpletons like you, when the nation that had liberated herself from Soviet aggression, was being pulverized by murderous militias equipped and financed by all meddling neighbors of Afghanistan? The Taliban itself was no more than a militia force, comprised of Afghan orphans and other poverty stricken youths, raised with “Islamo-Fascist” indoctrination, by Pakistani intelligence with the sole purpose of serving their murderous foreign policy interests.
Though you can be forgiven for your evident ignorance around Afghanistan, even if it is significant, what I find repulsive however is your bone-headed implication that your country had lost the Vietnam War as a consequence of the Guerilla warfare waged against your army! First of all, equating the Vietnam war to Afghanistan is indeed so adolescent, that I’ll delay my response to you until I hear back from you. Secondly, the Vietnam war was NOT militarily lost! In fact, the US lost the war owing to good people like yourself, succumbing to media-induced propaganda. Even little Afghanistan was first penetrated by the Soviets through the moles in the nation’s media. Falling short of accusing any media personality of getting paid by the Soviets, I will however bring to your attention that targeting foreign media for state-sponsored propaganda was an extremely important pillar of Soviet foreign policy. Since teaching a man how to fish can be mutually beneficial, allow me to help you understand an important passage of your own nation’s history. Here’s what General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had led the armed forces of the Communist Party in Vietnam had to say
“”What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it.
But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!”
http://www.sodahead.com/blog/13722/news-story-the-press-never-told/
General Giap’s memoirs can be found in the Vietnam War Memorial in Hanoi.
As for your arrogant commentary about “sorting your own problems” and your need for your own “Tax Dollars”. Where were you when in 1979, Jimmy Carter sanctioned the arming and financing of the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, whilst delegating the Pakistanis – not Afghans – as the ultimate decision makers in the war? So it was all ok for the US to fund wars abroad with your tax dollars, so long as they are fought by people other than Americans? Tell me something, is the color of American blood gold? Why weren’t there any protests across the United States during the ‘80s, criticizing successive governments for supporting the Afghan war against the Soviets with money and blood? Don’t tell me you’re also such an ignorant sap, that you don’t know about the billions spent by your governments back then. As for your good “tax dollars”, perhaps had you voted for a President who weren’t so trigger happy with your money, this might not have been such an issue for you.
thanks for the eloquent reply.
p.s I’m not American.
It is not boneheaded to raise questions about the strategy being followed in Afghanistan or even the value of the war. Afghanistan is a long way off from both America and Europe in terms of geography and political culture. Billions of dollars are being spent for the war that clearly could be directed toward other purposes.
I am totally against fixing other countries. I want to fix my own. Wars do change America. In Vietnam we lost over 50,000 soldiers; we are not doing that again. To be sure, the purpose of the wars are quite different. In Vietnam we convinced ourselves that it was necessary to stay as long as we did to hold back the global Communist tide. But it really was a global Capitalist tide that was flowing. Along the way we decided Vietnam wasn’t worth any more American lives. Millions of lives were disrupted (lost or altered) by our troops going there and by the decision to leave and then abandon South Vietnam. Was it wrong to leave?
I think the mistake was staying too long. The Vietnamese care more about Vietnam than do Americans. Intervention has its limits. We fought Vietnam’s civil war and took too long to train the side we wanted to win. By staying too long we made our side too dependent upon US troops, air support etc. The South Vietnamese held in 1972 when we supplied air power to stop the attack of the North. A couple of years later when our Congress forbid the use of American forces to support the South Vietnamese, the South Vietnam military ran in the face of another attack from the North though the South had significant military resources. We had taken their self-confidence with our forces.
We may have stayed too long in Iraq. We will soon find out. We are in Afghanistan because al Qaeda was using it as a base. America is currently debating what it takes to keep al Qaeda from doing that again. Some think that it requires making Afghanistan a modern country, economically and politically, but many do not, some because those tasks are impossible to achieve and others because they are unnecessary. Our interests will always be narrower than the Afghans. They live there and shouldn’t.
Harvey wrote:
I stand behind that sentiment 100%. Charity begins at home. The west is pushing this model of the perfect life on the non western world whilst at home we’re suffering major social/economic/political problems that are eating at our core. I’m not an isolationist, but I think foreign policy as it currently stands is doing vastly more harm than good.
Dear Harvey,
I call an argument “bone-headed”, if the person I’m addressing beckons to be crowned by it by way of his uneducated, arrogant, and reckless argument. Moreover, if you don’t mind, I would appreciate it if you avoid having me play by your rules during our discourse, for I reserve the right to address people as I see fit. With regards to Vietnam, it was a war for the American people to lose and they did a fine job of it. I find it irreconcilably repulsive, that irrespective of the betrayal you had meted out to both your armed servicemen as well as your regional allies whom you left behind to be massacred by the Communists, you still defend this shameful history!
What’s more, your argument about Vietnam reaps of a shallowness that above all, contradicts American history. Where you’ve vowed never to repeat the loss of 50,000 servicemen in Vietnam, I would ask in response why it is that you choose to ignore a far greater number of servicemen who sacrificed their lives fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War Two? You wouldn’t happen to be impressing upon me that the murderous communists were in some way less deserving of American attention than the murderous Nazis and Imperial Japan, would you? Why is it that you’ve no problem with the US having sacrificed up to 500,000 lives, forcing regime change against the will of the common folk in THOSE countries? Is the future well-being of EuroPeons or their “white Japanese” counterparts more valuable than that of the “great unwashed”? Last I checked, the likes of you don’t mind at all enjoying a reputation for living in a country that spanked murderous buffoonery in those countries. I also don’t recall any great “anti-war” movement during the Clinton years, as he militarily intervened in both Latin America and the Balkans, wherein the US military relied primarily on air-power to fight of the Serbian army. Did you notice how there were hardly any significant military casualties in that war? Don’t tell me there weren’t any significant collateral damage over there. So why was there no significant anti-war movement during those years? If you’ve such a problem with US meddling into other people’s affairs, then where’s your consistency been in all this?
Moreover, why were you all mute, when the US bankrolled and helped train the Mujahideen resistance against the Soviet Union? Was THAT not “meddling”? Additionally, why did ALL Americans – left AND right – give support to the current war in Afghanistan, immediately after 9/11? What gives you the right to take away earlier promises to the vast majority of Afghans who supported the war effort by investing in their support to the American involvement in their country? “Ooops, I’m sorry, but we misunderstood?”.
I assure you that if and when the US prematurely pulls out of Afghanistan and in effect betrays the people therein, the country will be up for sale to the next anti-American aggression in a far more toxic way than that offered by a pathetic bunch of dopey village idiots by way of the Taliban. Why? Because people need to make a living, and they’ll join anyone who’ll help them make a living. As Afghans still hold, it’s better to be a vagabond with your head raised high, than to live in abject poverty for lack of a better choice. You’re very mistaken if you believe Afghan resolve to be like the Palestinian Satanic cult and their Arab brethren in their ongoing aggression against the tiny state of Israel. Those people reap from the stench of their lies and hypocrisy, given the actual facts behind Israel’s emergence as a nation-state. Afghans are nothing like those people, because once they lock jaw like Pitt-bulls against a people they view to have dishonored them, they’ll not let go. The Indians knew this long ago, when they chanted…”the tooth of a tiger, the venom of a cobra, and the vengeance of an Afghan.” So when you decide to betray the Afghans, then by all means make sure you Nuke what you leave behind, for you’ll be forever haunted by them.
With regards to Al-Qaeda and Iraq, I don’t think you’ve the faintest idea what this war is really all about, so allow me to try and explain to you in a nutshell. First of all, there is every reason to believe that Bin Laden had worked for Saudi Intelligence during the Mujahideen years against the Soviet led Afghan genocide. His role involved little little more than to channel Saudi Funding – that equaled “dollar for dollar” that from the United States – in support of the Afghan struggle. No Afghan had wanted these scoundrels and their Islamist brethren to soil their land from far-away places like Egypt, I assure you. Moreover, these cowards never engaged Soviet troops in any serious way to ANY Afghan’s memory.
Secondly, Bin Laden’s fallout with the Saudi Monarchy began with the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, wherein the Saudi Royal family supported the landing of US forces on their soil to take on Iraq. It needs to be mentioned here that by way of your silence, you also didn’t mind “meddling” in that war either. Never-the-less, In Bin Laden’s uncompromising view, the tides of that war meant that the “Kuffur” were being courted on Saudi soil to fight a fellow-Muslim. Along with many supporters in all segments of the Saudi elite, Bin Laden had made numerous efforts to get the Saudi King to review his decision and instead of hosting a US-led war to oust Saddam from Kuwait, to let him and his own vanguard – the Al Qaeda – to fight against him instead.
Though Bin Laden was rebuffed and the war went on ahead anyway, the shameless conclusion to that war ended with Saddam still in place, although his troops were significantly marginalized and were contained by the US and UK between the Northern and Southern “No-Fly zones”, which were in themselves highly costly on the allied purse-strings (that’s US/UK “tax dollars”). Moreover, the UN sponsored economic sanctions were meted out against the Iraqi regime which in all intensive purposes, brought more harm on the ordinary Iraqi than it did to Saddam personally. You never had any problem with this “meddling”, right? Yet with Saddam in place, his troops marginalized and his country suffering under the weight of a decade’s worth of sanctions, where were ordinary Iraqis to turn to for venting their anger, if not to Iranian backed Hezbollah-type groups and Bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda which continued to try and bring change in their own way, whilst the US had exempted herself from a more active involvement. Just because YOU choose not to “meddle”, it doesn’t mean others will do the same. Those Iranian and Al Qaeda groups that you noticed AFTER Bush’s war on Iraq, had their roots in the years PRIOR to the war. Moreover, some o f us had noticed precisely what the primary intention for the war in Iraq was, when General Tommy Franks had described the war as a “well-hung fly paper” for the Al Qaeda. This was a reference for the anticipated diversion of the Al Qaeda war effort from Afghanistan to Iraq, wherein they were easily taken out in flat deserts.
Given this, I find ramblings about the Iraq war as having been in any way a “diversion from the war on terror” to be a complete joke. You can fool yourselves from denying yourselves the responsibility to keep with your pledges in helping the Afghan nation “back on her feet”, but you’ll not fool this Afghan, I assure you. The only reason Afghanistan right now continues to struggle, is because of the fact that the Iraq war has indeed gone well for the Americans. We know the Al Qaeda and Iran have been bruised, which is precisely why they’ve both chosen to turn their attention over to Afghanistan again. Thanks to America’s choosing to look the other way from Pakistan’s resuscitation of the Taliban movement, the Al Qaeda and Iran have plenty of cannon-fodder to use against the US. Yet even still, much of what you hear today as violence attributed to an insurgency, is in fact violence that is linked to a culture of barbarism that ‘s been 30 years in the making. Afghans always had an “eye-for-an-eye” culture of impunity towards a Man’s “right” to enact vengeance against another who once violated him; this has however taken a new turn after the war-years . People briefly join government or Talib to exact vengeance against they avowed enemies. This has nothing to do with any Afghan support for the Taliban movement.
Anyway, I will however concur with you in one thing Harvey, and that’s with your concern about a large concentration of US troops in the country. In any country, this would be a problem, but in Afghanistan, it’s suicide. However, until recently, the concentration of NATO troops in Afghanistan was too minimal to awaken the giant of Afghan Xenophobia. Both Bush and Rumsfeld were smart enough to have realized the need to do just this from the outset. They were both also in favor of the current increase in troop numbers, but only to help with the elections and the training and expansion of the Afghan armed forces. Obama is simply following that same strategy and I see no reason to believe the troop levels will rise as high as the Soviets or are intended to stay in the country for longer than five years at the most. What is needed in Afghanistan is an absolute focus on this effort, as all the security forces therein need to be trained, well-equipped, and well—financed. This will be America’s ticket out. Moreover, the US can still maintain a significant presence by way of ongoing training and perhaps humanitarian aid. Afghanistan can and will become a Liberal Democracy, but only with an ongoing support from the Americans that need not be by way of an ongoing massive troop concentration.
If Afghanistan becomes a westernised liberal democracy in my lifetime (I am 28) then I fully expect manned colonies on Mars and other such unlikely idealistic dreams to come true also. It is important to seperate dreams from reality. And in the end, that is the moral of the story regarding Afghanistan in many more ways than one.
Perhaps as an olive branch here, Barekzai’s enthusiasm makes him as guilty as myself and Professor Sapolsky in misreading the situation in Afghanistan. He is clearly too close to the subject to see the reality from the trees and apparently we are too far away from it in our academic ivory towers.
The difference is, Barekzai, you express your opinion in an argumentative, rambling and insultory way rather than engaging the issues in a civilised manner. The latter is a condition for participating in the comments facility on this site. Keep it civil or your comments will be removed.
…as for any notion exuding to Afghanistan becoming a Liberal Democracy overnight, this has been a ridiculous notion that used to be recklessly championed by many in the western media at the beginning of the war against the Taliban. As I’ve already tried alluding to earlier, a move to a Liberal Democracy will be gradual and will require many years to come about and does not require a large concentration of foreign troops on the ground. Democracy, though merely in skeletal form, is however already in place and the only people capable of building the rest are the Afghans themselves. Living in liberty is a state of existence that can be built from the ground up though the sacrifices of the people. What the Afghans need however, is a helping hand to get them there and as I’ve stated, the focus should be towards helping them build their security forces so that they could build the peace amongst themselves. It is completely false, that Afghanistan has always been at war with itself as many commentators recklessly point out. Prior to the Soviet aggression, police officers in the country didn’t even require bullets for maintaining order and not out of a lack of affordability for them. People in many Liberal Democracies today could only dream of that privilege.
Above all, please keep in mind that it was the United States and Britain that had offered Afghans a helping hand, as no Afghan including Karzai had asked for allied troops on the ground. In fact, had the Afghans a real choice, they’d have asked the Americans to station their troops into the heart of Pakistani territory among their allies to take out the Al Qaeda, while giving the Afghans financial support to build their own country. Yet even still, there is no truth in news articles that convey the Afghans as overwhelmingly insurgent….this is a gross untruth that keeps repeating like an old soviet propaganda mouthpiece. In fact, I often wonder if this is a deliberate attempt by members from among allied governments who keep dropping “leaks” to the media with the view to making Afghanistan sound bad enough to arouse public support for leaving her to rot. How truly shameful!