generalspeaking

Islamist Fictions

Can't win for losing in Islamist states. And most certainly Pakistan and Afghanistan qualify for that designation. Both tribal cultures informed by fundamentalist Islam orthodoxies. And each represents a breeding ground for jihadists. Both countries resent and detest any kind of foreign presence on their sacred soil. Understandable, to a degree, since both have a long history of centuries of occupation.

They remain institutionally, and their populations for the most part as well, highly resistant to the presence of foreign elements. It is anathema to them to think of the presence, above all, of foreign troops, most particularly non-Islamic foreign troops, on their soil. Afghanistan has accepted the presence of foreign troops, its Western-supported government appealed for their presence.

For the purpose of helping the current conglomeration of the Northern Alliance with their fractious and greedy and violent war lords in the current 'democratically-elected' parliament struggling against the resurgent Taliban, the pseudo-scholars of Islamism who had presided over the misery that was latter-day Afghanistan in friendship with al-Qaeda.

As for Pakistan, which had armed and trained and protected and given haven to the Afghan Taliban, and which is now itself locked in an existential struggle against its own Taliban and its Haqqani network of fiery-fierce Islamist fanatics, it has always been eager to grasp at foreign aid funding of its military in recompense for its promised alliance against terrorism. Which it stokes and supports.

And now Pakistan is prepared to impose tariffs on routes that NATO, with its ISAF program in Afghanistan, uses to supply its troops. The U.S. has re-commenced its Taliban-command-deadly drone strikes, and the Pakistan ISI and military, still sizzling with rage over the successfully surreptitious entry of the U.S. into Pakistani air space, demands some form of punishment.

While taking billions of funding annually from the U.S. treasury in support of the corrupt Islamist military and the secret intelligence network, the embattled and fearful Pakistani government, to appease both, stands prepared to enact hefty tariff fees on its purported allies transiting the country with supplies for its ISAF mission. Canada, caught with circumstances where it is repatriating its own equipment post troop recall home, will be paying millions.

And for its part, Afghanistan unofficially conducts its own war of malignant attrition with the foreign forces that remain on their soil, with four French soldiers killed by Afghan soldiers on the week-end, causing France to announce its withdrawal. The United States, desperate for its own withdrawal from that sinkhole of misery, keeps fantasizing that Afghan forces they are helping to train finally being capable of defending themselves with the withdrawal of NATO.

Foreign military personnel have become very closely acquainted at a degree of separation of necessity with their Afghan counterparts. Both entities have found ample reason through observation and joint operations to view one another with suspicion and contempt. Fate has thrown them temporarily together, and as professionals they must work out their differences.

Increasingly, however, Afghan soldiers have begun to demonstrate just how incendiary the situation is. While foreign troops are busy training them in the finer points of precision military professionalism to make of them a decent fighting force, they are turning their deadly weapons on those trusting foreign troops, killing them in discrete numbers.

Initially attributed to the infiltration of the Afghan troops and police by factions of the Taliban, the realization has set in that it is not the Taliban, but ordinary Afghans working as soldiers and police who are simply expressing their jihadist credentials in destroying the lives of foreigners who continue to exhibit the gall to present themselves where they are not wanted.

Contaminating the sacred soil of an Islamic country by their presence. The foreign military which would love nothing better than to decamp completely, and the sooner the better, are informed by their political and diplomatic superiors that they are obligated to do their utmost for the advancement of the interests and the future of Afghanistan.

And, of course, the constant eruption of attacks are simply an inconvenience that must be tolerated. The international community of the Western, non-Islamic world is present in an Islamic country to save it from the predations of another Islamic nation which has designs upon it, but which insists it is reliably on board with the aspirations of the West to destroy terror.

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, France, NATO, Pakistan, United States

posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 20, 2012