Allies
Perhaps it would be better put to state that we are the allies, through the necessity to combat spiralling Islamist terrorism, of Afghanistan. After all, a Western alliance, spear-headed by the United States and under the aegis of NATO and the UN, entered Afghanistan to cleanse it of the presence of a viciously occupying Islamist tyranny.One that had allied itself with the Islamist jihadist group al-Qaeda. Which had itself celebrated a spectacular assault on the United States, precipitating that entry.
When the Taliban was routed and with it their honoured al-Qaeda guests, a new, made-in-Afghanistan, ostensibly moderate government was born out of the Northern Alliance resistance to the Taliban of the country's tribal groups, with the Western-enlightened Hamid Karzai as president.
President Karzai was grateful to the international forces which had routed the Taliban and restored sanity to Afghanistan.
He toured the nations whose troops were stationed in his country to entreat them to remain in his country until it was fully stabilized and capable of undertaking its own self-protection from the resilient and resurgent Taliban. But then there were too many civilian casualties at the hands of Western troops, particularly through unmanned drones seeking out Taliban in the remote border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The reality is that every civilian death is a tragedy. The reality also is that far more civilian deaths occur at the hands of the Taliban. But the Taliban represent tribal Afghans. Making it somehow more tolerable than the deaths through Western intervention. Hostility and resentment expressed against those who have sacrificed blood, treasury, good will and good intentions do not make for a sound relationship.
And then there is Afghanistan itself, its tribalism, its fundamental Islamic ideology, and its fierce antipathy toward foreigners, historical in origin and well entrenched to the present day. Western governments that have committed to aiding Afghanistan become a normal, functioning country capable of looking after its own interests and that of its poor, largely rural and uneducated population, are themselves anxious to depart.
The foreign troops still in Afghanistan are Western and Christianized, working on behalf of a fanatically Muslim country. A country where conversion to Christianity from Islam merits the death penalty. Where a 45-year-old father of six, Musa Sayed, who is a Red Cross worker, was sentenced to death when he converted six years ago to Christianity. After languishing for nine months in jail he was freed, and fled his home country.
And NATO's International Security Assistance Force is probing yet more killings in the country. This time, as happens on occasion, the killing of two foreign soldiers and a security guard. For not only do Afghan civilians accidentally become targets on occasion, but Afghans in their detestation of foreigners occasionally target foreigners for death.
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Security, Societal Failures, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 20, 2011
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