generalspeaking

The Agony Of Afghanistan

Another Canadian soldier lost. This time the highest-ranking of Canada's military personnel assigned to the war in Afghanistan. Some war that is.

There are no distinct enemy lines. Foreign troops are stationed in the country to defend it against the ongoing incursion of a vital element of that very nation; the most populous of the main tribal groups whose dedication to re-installing a sternly fundamentalist version of Islam that routinely violated human rights, and which remains an insurgent force that has been unstoppable.

International human rights workers and foreign civilians skilled in health care, political reform, municipal infrastructure, legal and social and educational reforms all working alongside Afghan civilians, medical personnel, civic officials and politicians to try to bring the country into the 20th Century with 21st-Century dedication to the less fortunate.

Foreign military personnel have been attempting to persuade the civilian population that they are present in their country to support their human rights.

But who represents the civilian population? Many among them, loyal Pashtun tribespeople, are also Taliban; this is an army that wears no uniform. Among them are people who do wear uniforms, the uniforms of the national police, of the country's military, some of whom have another persona at other times as members of the Taliban. How does one identify and deal with these realities?

And thanks to the pre-warning, the very public and well-reported notification by NATO that they plan assaults in specific targets at specific times, the 'insurgents' are always prepared. They are resilient and dedicated, and they are fearlessly dedicated to causing as much damage to as many symbols of foreign and national infrastructure and personnel as they possibly can.

And possibly they can, far more than NATO likes to admit. Having infiltrated the very bastions of foreign and national structures and presence, they have become adept at outfoxing the incapable Afghan government forces, as well as the foreign forces far more capable of battling traditional, uniformed and identifiable enemy contingents than evanescent civilian-clad insurgents, capable of evaporating into the larger community.

Since NATO has been able to mount larger offences to retake towns that the Taliban have become comfortable within, particularly in Kandahar province, the pay-back from the Taliban has been increased violent assaults. "In the last three months, you've seen the rate of assassinations go from basically one or two a week to one or two a day - that's really serious", according to a spokesperson for Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

Afghans holding public office, struggling to represent their constituents in municipalities where the Taliban are known to infiltrate easily, are murdered and those whom they represent become increasingly psychologically debilitated. The son of an assassinated local leader, has said: "...people come into a place like this with guns and kill someone, and no one saw anything, no one knows who they are or where they've gone?"

Assassins enter mosques with impunity and kill their targets. They drive motorcycles or vans loaded with explosives and detonate themselves, killing scores of innocent people. Little wonder the population is increasingly demoralized. "There are criminals among the police - not all, but a big group who are accountable to warlords and drug dealers. They can be bought for money", one mayor recounted, whose own life has been threatened countless times.

A member of Kandahar's provincial council, one accustomed to presenting as an interlocutor between the Taliban and foreign forces explains: "Whoever says anything against the Taliban, they threaten them or kill them", so who will identify the Taliban among them? "There are checkpoints and so forth outside the city, so they can't come in big numbers, but they can come in by car or motorbike, by many separate ways", eluding NATO forces, but known to the local population who know better than to turn them in.

In the final analysis, despite the assurances of success as a potential due to a new way of thinking and acting, foreign troops are stationed in a country whose traditions and history have been known for hundreds of years to be unamenable to foreign intervention. It's called tilting at windmills. An entire society cannot be turned around; its heritage, culture, religion, to reflect the values of societies which have nothing in common with them geographically, socially, historically.

Villagers speak uneasily that regardless of the presence of Western and Afghan troops, nothing hinders Taliban fighters - remaining difficult to identify from any other Afghan male - from filtering back into the very places where they have been ousted from, through well-publicized NATO operations. Ordinary Afghans cannot, even if they wished to, be too helpful to foreign troops, or to their own, distrusted military.

To do so would be to become readily identifiable as a target for Taliban retribution. Where is the solution?

Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, NATO, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 19, 2010