No End of Agony For Afghanistan
"We are planning to extend our security patrols to those parts [of the city east of Kabul] where you feel more in danger and risk."Taliban statement"When someone walks behind me on the street, I am scared to death.""During the Taliban's regime, people could leave behind their money on the street and pray. Now the crime statistics have skyrocketed.""The price for robbery [punishment] is so low."Hadi Khoshnawis, 27"We are afraid of this country. When we go to the countryside, we are afraid of the Taliban. In the capital, we do not feel safe.""If there was a government, such incidents would not have happened. We have lost our hope for the government."Delawar Hidari, 33"The Taliban are no less than bandits. It's like a clean-up operation by one criminal group against the other.""Taliban and kidnappers are allies with each other. Kidnappers take people from Kabul and shift them to Taliban areas where Taliban keep them hostage.""We are caught between the Taliban and criminals like between the devil and the deep sea."Dr.Abdullah Khan
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In Doha, Qatar, U.S. and Taliban leaders signed a deal that aims to end years of fighting. Photo: Hussein Sayed/Associated Press
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Throughout the entire time that the Taliban negotiated in Doha, Qatar with U.S. peace settlement negotiations, there were ongoing attacks against U.S. military personnel, along with violent attacks against civilian Afghan targets, including in the most supposedly safeguarded areas of the capital Kabul, targeting foreign diplomatic delegations, and Afghan government offices. In a display of Taliban effectiveness in infiltrating any area of the country they wish to. As well as a display of contempt for the government and the negotiations.
As a sign of good faith it was never very impressive. Just the Taliban showing their true colours, as usual, even while taking part in the sham of negotiating for an end to the hostilities, the violence that has wracked and rocked the country for decades. The Taliban demanded the departure of all foreign troops from the soil of Afghanistan before it would agree to negotiate directly with the Afghan government which it views as a creature of the United States. That it is a weak government is obvious. And that once the foreign military is gone, the government will be left to the tender mercies of the Taliban is a reality.
Foreign military advisers worked for years attempting to forge the national police and military of the country into a functional, modern and effective protective unit. What they were up against was engrained corruption at every level, a lack of commitment, absenteeism without authorization and a seeming inability to want to grasp the fundamentals of military discipline and responsibility. The point of the exercise was to whip the military and the police into a self-protective unit capable of withstanding Taliban attacks and beating them back.
The Taliban responded by exacting a huge death toll on Afghan soldiers and police. And the government itself appeared incapable of organizing reliable defences against Taliban death squads and suicide bombers entering Afghanistan's large 'protected' enclaves with impunity, wreaking mayhem. In this aura of destabilization violence within the country as a whole has been given free rein and kidnappings for ransom are rife.
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| An Afghan security officer carries a baby after gunmen attacked a |
maternity hospital in Kabul, May 12, 2020
Now, the Taliban offers to protect Kabul residents from robbery and kidnapping. Public anger with their government is at high tide, the population fed up with the spikes in lawlessness. So, look to the Taliban for rescue from the dilemma of trying to avoid becoming a victim? Announcements posted on mosques in Kabul made visible the campaign by the Taliban to persuade the population to trust its motivation in promising to protect the capital; the very perpetrators of horrendous violence against the capital and its population.
Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president called upon his deputy to oversee efforts to clean up the city when armed robbers raided a high school to loot the cellphones of students. According to analysts the propaganda campaign has exaggerated the reach and influence of the Taliban but provided a demonstration of its adeptness at using public frustration with the government to advance its agenda. To persuade Afghans intimidated by the ongoing violence, fearful of going out at night lest they become victims, that the Taliban is there to protect them.
Delawar Hidari spoke of his brother, Sayed Muzafarshah who was shot a week ago during a hold-up at the family pharmacy in western Kabul. When three people in their late teens fired a pistol and killed his brother. It took the police, he said, 20 minutes to show up. Residents of the worst-hit area of Kabul consider the Taliban no better than the criminals it promises to stop in their violent rampage. They face an issue of declining safety in a violence-prone country, unable to depend on the government and fearful of the return of the Taliban.
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| Afghan security personnel inspect the site of an attack on an army base in Gardez, capital of Paktia province, May 14, 2020. |
Labels: Afghanistan, Peace Agreement, Taliban, Violence
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 21, 2020
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