generalspeaking

Addressing The Culprits

In the same way in which faithful Muslims who have no desire to engage in activities that would be harmful to the well-being of others - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - being incapable of believing that other Muslims would harm them, it appears that Afghan President Hamid Karzai harboured no suspicions whatever that Afghan soldiers would behave brutally toward Afghan civilians.

Nor that Afghans serving in the prison system would ever commit torture in their care of Afghan Taliban and others taken prisoner.

Now, it appears that President Karzai has undergone an epiphany.

This is a man who is far more cosmopolitan than most of his country's political peers, who has had far more opportunities to exchange social, political and diplomatic niceties with other world leaders. This is a man from a prominent Afghan family of wealth and distinction, a man who, unlike so many of his contemporaries, received a good solid universal education.

Yet he is obviously a novice when it comes to the realization of human nature. Clueless when it comes to the understanding of his own people, their tribal divisions, their religious convictions, their level of moral corruption.

It fazed him not one bit to have in his cabinet former war lords whose histories were replete with atrocities committed against their own people, sitting in the country's legislature.

He is able to overlook for the convenience of not being part of, institutionalized systemic graft and corruption, which has ensnared and enriched members of his own family, but not himself. Out of sight, out of mind. If he keeps himself morally without blemish, there is then no reason for him to believe that anyone else within his political entourage is other than innocent of blame for corruption.

This volatile-tempered man who knows how to tamp down his impatience when much is at stake and he must convince foreign governments to continue committing to funding Afghanistan's infrastructure while corruption filters away the money with little to show for it, has long been accustomed to blaming Western forces for carelessness leading to the deaths of Afghan civilians.

With the withdrawal of foreign troops and the gradual assumption of responsibility for self-protection on the stalwart, NATO-trained Afghan military, in the absence of foreign troops and the obvious visibility of Afghan troops, it has become clear that atrocities being committed against Afghan civilians are being performed by Afghan military.

Why this should be of particular surprise to President Karzai when the corrupt brutality of the Afghan police toward the civilian population is legendary, is another story altogether. Yet now, the Afghan president has called upon his own security forces to end torture and abuse of the Afghan people.

Shifting the traditional mode of blame from NATO troops for violations of human rights directly onto Afghan military.

"It's not forgivable ... Our Afghan people are not safe in their houses. Why should I blame foreigners", he now says rhetorically.  Well ... why indeed?

President Karzai has long been called upon to acknowledge the responsibility in this respect for his own troops' abusive treatment of civilians. He has long been involved in calling vehemently for the withdrawal of special foreign operations forces as a result of incidents of alleged neglect and abuse by foreign soldiers.

Now, finally, he acknowledges that his own military is capable of and engages in abuse of their very own. Is this credible?

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Islamism, NATO, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 07, 2013