Wishing A Fond Farewell
"My recent comments were meant to help reform, not destroy the relationship.
"We want good relations and friendship with America, but the relationship must be between two independent nations.
The relationship "is complicated [by] terrorism, transition of the Bagram detention facility, continued civilian casualties (from NATO operations), and lack of respect for the national sovereignty of Afghanistan."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai
President Karzai is well known for intemperate, puzzling and belligerent statements. He has made it somewhat of a pastime to accuse his Western allies of neglecting Afghan sensibilities. Worse, of course, heedlessly pursuing the Taliban in areas where civilians are certain to become involved. In attacking the Taliban, innocent Afghan bystanders often join the Taliban in death.
And each time something of this nature occurs, President Karzai erupts like a volcano, spewing hot ash and lava over the landscape of NATO involvement. Afghan blood is precious, he rants, as though the blood of any human being can be overlooked. Say, for example, foreign soldiers whose national governments have tasked them to travel to Afghanistan to protect its people and themselves die in the effort.
President Karzai is famous for missing the target when he scoffs at the numbers of foreign military personnel who have died in his country. Their numbers, he says, are as nothing in comparison to the Afghan population who have met death. Yes, certainly so, but these are Afghans who die primarily at the hands of other Afghans, their war-mongering is tribal in nature, and religiously inspired.
When the Taliban succeeded in wrenching the control of Afghanistan from the war lords with the withdrawal of Soviet troops, imposing a wretchedly inhuman system of theocratic rule on Afghanistan, oppressing women and children, leaving them with no human rights whatever, banning music, art, celebration, flogging unbearded men and women without burqas, and imposing capital punishment on 'heretics' leaving Islam, that represented Afghanistan at its most barbaric.
Much of the barbarism remains in the distant countryside, with the infiltration of Taliban and their supporters. President Karzai's national police and military have yet to impress with their ability to meet the challenge of Taliban resurgence and militia attacks. It is the Taliban who sprinkle the land with IEDs that create an existential peril for the people of Afghanistan. So much for respecting and honouring Afghanistan's 'independence'.
The very expression of a belief that the U.S. has colluded with the Taliban to aid them in mounting attacks so that the government of Afghanistan will be more amenable to American troops staying on after 2014 is so bizarre and indicative of a scrambled mind, it is difficult to credit that any leader of any country that has been so dependent on the presence and protection of foreign troops would make such a charge, that Mr. Karzai paints himself as a lunatic.
Leading General Joseph Dunford to issue a communication to battlefield commanders reminding them that those incendiary remarks could potentially spur increased insider attacks. Which is to say more attacks of the kind where Afghan military and members of the police turn on their supporting U.S. troops. One instance after another of Afghan security members shooting and killing the foreigners who are there to assist them in retaining control of their country.
The concern is there, and it is well merited; that the charges mounted by Mr. Karzai could have the effect of sparking violence to further target American forces. Coinciding with the juncture of milder weather leaving the mountain passages between Afghanistan and Pakistan free for travel, when conventionally, the Taliban return to the battlefield in Afghanistan from their safe haven in Pakistan.
Seems somehow it would be so much more satisfying to simply leave Afghanistan to its own convoluted devices. Which, in fact, is precisely what the NATO and ISAF forces have longed to do, having had their fill of ten years of conflict in that historically benighted country.
Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Human Relations, NATO, Taliban, United States
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 16, 2013
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