Rosy picture of Afghanistan hides grim truth; US airstrikes rise sharply

Related

US airstrikes rise sharply in Afghanistan

---
Rosy picture of Afghanistan hides grim truth
November 18, 2006

There is little to celebrate after five years, writes Chief Correspondent Paul McGeough.


PERHAPS it was Kabul's famously thin air. But while he was in the capital a few weeks ago, Britain's Defence Secretary, Des Browne, told the BBC back home how "the people of Afghanistan [had] lost 2 million people securing their freedom", before he added: "… to this extent".

That is a big caveat. The extent to which Afghans have been freed is debatable. Certainly, they have been liberated from the tyranny of the Taliban, but after the most violent year since the fall of Kabul, there is rising bitterness about the dismal first half-decade of their fragile democracy.

The NATO Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, seemed to be breathing the same air as the British defence chief when he wrote for the Canadian press to mark this week's fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion that came so fast on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US.

Painting a rosy picture of liberated Afghanistan, Mr de Hoop Scheffer concluded: "These numbers should act as a strong counter to the idea that the international community is not welcome [in Afghanistan]."

But he was answering the wrong question. The great disappointment in today's Afghanistan is not so much that the foreigners came, but that they came and left so quickly - and when they did leave, they left so little behind.

Indeed, there is a constitution and there have been elections for a parliament and a president. But that the parliament includes too many of the war criminals from the past, or their associates, is generally ignored by an all-powerful executive.

The President, Hamid Karzai, continually goes backwards to the future. He wants to re-activate a version of the dreaded Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which used to whip women, music-lovers and kite-fliers into line under the Taliban. Mr Karzai is setting up what he calls a "police auxiliary", which many Western observers fear is merely a veil for a new bunch of private or tribal militias that still make a misery of peoples' lives - except this time they will be foreign-trained and funded.

He shows an ill-disguised contempt for the fundamentals of democracy when he explains the Afghan way: "Our life is based on … talking with [born-to-rule] tribal elders and [unelected] religious leaders who guide society." Today, much of the south is in the grip of a harsh drought. A four-fold increase in violence in the past year has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.

Cities such as Kabul and Kandahar are told to be grateful for having electricity for just a few hours a day. Gross domestic product stands at just $US500 million ($650 million) more than in the last year of the Taliban.

The yawning gap between the poor masses and the corrupt and cosseted elites in Kabul is a point of rising friction that seems to elicit contempt from those with their snouts in troughs swirling with donor aid and drug money.

The owner of one of the capital's gaudy new "narcovillas" was quoted last week as saying: "We're praying for the poor people to have houses like us."

Despite all the Western hand-wringing over Afghanistan's economic dependence on drugs, this year's opium harvest is tipped to be up a nearly unbelievable 59 per cent and will be worth more than $US3 billion - which accounts for about one-third of the Afghan economy and 92 per cent of the world's heroin trade. So who will the policeman or the politician listen to? A cashed-up drug lord or a foreign diplomat spruiking human rights and treaties? Corruption is so bad that tax collectors have to be bribed to register that a citizen has actually paid his tax. After two years on the job, the 140 staff of Kabul's Anti-Corruption and Bribery Office have yet to obtain a single conviction and the national police prey on the people, rather than protect them.

Almost 40 per cent of children under the age of five are malnourished and 61 per cent rely on untreated drinking water. Almost 2 million girls are back in school, but up to 80 per cent of all marriages are forced, with about 60 per cent of the brides being under the age of 16. Up to 200 schools were forced to close this year and Human Rights Watch estimates that 200,000 children are being denied schooling because of the violence.

As they see a combustible mix of corruption, drugs, militias, insurgencies and the anti-democracy tendencies of the country's tribal and religious ways, only a few in the foreign diplomatic corps have paused to ask: what kind of future are all these children being educated for?

In the northern autumn, senior Canadian and Dutch officers claim that NATO forces have bested the Taliban after a hot summer season of ferocious battles in the south and the east.

Others are not so sure. There is always a winter lull in fighting in Afghanistan. Despite coalition claims each year that the Taliban have been weakened and are on the run, they have come back each spring bolder, more brazen, better armed and better trained.

About 3700 Afghans have died this year - more than a quarter of them civilians. There were only five suicide-bomb attacks in the first four post-invasion years, but more than 80 were recorded in the first 10 months of this year.

Seeming to forget the rudiments of guerilla warfare, a NATO spokesman interpreted this dramatic increase in suicide missions as a sign of weakness: "Their other tactics have failed. As a result, we believe they've resorted to the weapons of the weaker party - suicide bombs, hit-and-runs, [improvised explosive devices] and mines".

But the fugitive leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, might have been signalling the annual winter shutdown when he marked the end of the month-long Ramadan fast last month with a threat and a promise: "With the grace of Allah, the fighting will be increased … and it will be organised in the next few months. I'm confident [it] will be a surprise for many."

A month earlier, a Taliban commander, Mullah Safurrahman, patiently explained to a foreign reporter: "We are in no hurry. But look how far we have come from nothing. We're in a guerilla war - it isn't a matter of two or three years; it might take us 10, even 35 years. Will the foreign soldiers last that long here?"

Memory lapse also seems to drive the rhetoric in Washington. The US under-secretary for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, declared last month that the Taliban no longer posed a strategic threat to the regime in Kabul.

But with almost one-third of the country again rated by the United Nations as "extreme risk" or "high risk", the Taliban appear to be in much the same position as they were in the early 1990s - shooting up around the perimeter of centrally held territory while, village by village and valley by valley, they offered their version of stability to wearied communities that had lost faith in their corrupted old-guard leadership.

Earlier this year, the British commander of NATO, Lieutenant-General David Richards, estimated that about 70 per cent of the southern population now sat on the fence, having not yet decided whether to support the US-backed government in Kabul or the Taliban and the criminal gangs that ride on their flanks.

The challenge for NATO's very thinly spread 40,000 troops in Afghanistan is to position themselves best to convert the bloody insecurity of the summer to stability and meaningful reconstruction before March's spring thaw.

This is because the 70 per cent of "undecideds" will make their call according to what is in it for them and their families. Their judgement will be based on the simple basics of their daily lives, not on fine words spouted in Washington or London.

In a staggering admission of defeat in the last five years, the head of the UN mission in the south, Talatbek Masadykov, told The Times: "We've never improved the situation. The security issue isn't just to do with the Taliban - it's to do with bad, weak governance. Fifty per cent of this problem is internal. People don't naturally want the Taliban back, not all, but increasingly they think that the Government offers them nothing but insecurity, and that though the Taliban offers them nothing either, they may perhaps give them some stability and an end to corruption."

As the violence encroaches on Kabul, foreigners are increasingly jittery. Some diplomats are demanding armour-plated transport and there is talk of setting up a Baghdad-style green zone for foreign diplomats and local officials. But others just get on with the business of influence.

The US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have renewed Iran's historic ambition to be a regional power across the Middle East and South Asia. Pakistan cannot believe its luck - Western officials constantly accuse it of aiding the Taliban, but Washington is too fearful of the consequences to junk Islamabad's favoured status as an ally in the "war on terrorism".

The tragedy in Kabul is that by sucking so much of the stuff of global nation-building away from Afghanistan into the Iraqi vortex - where it is being squandered - the US-led coalition has created just the veneer of a democracy that barely masks so much of what is rotten in Afghanistan.

In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Monday's fifth anniversary of the fall of the Taliban regime went unmarked in Hamid Karzai's Kabul.

Cities such as Kabul and Kandahar are told to be grateful for having electricity for just a few hours a day. Gross domestic product stands at just $US500 million ($650 million) more than in the last year of the Taliban.

The yawning gap between the poor masses and the corrupt and cosseted elites in Kabul is a point of rising friction that seems to elicit contempt from those with their snouts in troughs swirling with donor aid and drug money.

The owner of one of the capital's gaudy new "narcovillas" was quoted last week as saying: "We're praying for the poor people to have houses like us."

Despite all the Western hand-wringing over Afghanistan's economic dependence on drugs, this year's opium harvest is tipped to be up a nearly unbelievable 59 per cent and will be worth more than $US3 billion - which accounts for about one-third of the Afghan economy and 92 per cent of the world's heroin trade. So who will the policeman or the politician listen to? A cashed-up drug lord or a foreign diplomat spruiking human rights and treaties? Corruption is so bad that tax collectors have to be bribed to register that a citizen has actually paid his tax. After two years on the job, the 140 staff of Kabul's Anti-Corruption and Bribery Office have yet to obtain a single conviction and the national police prey on the people, rather than protect them.

Almost 40 per cent of children under the age of five are malnourished and 61 per cent rely on untreated drinking water. Almost 2 million girls are back in school, but up to 80 per cent of all marriages are forced, with about 60 per cent of the brides being under the age of 16. Up to 200 schools were forced to close this year and Human Rights Watch estimates that 200,000 children are being denied schooling because of the violence.

As they see a combustible mix of corruption, drugs, militias, insurgencies and the anti-democracy tendencies of the country's tribal and religious ways, only a few in the foreign diplomatic corps have paused to ask: what kind of future are all these children being educated for?

In the northern autumn, senior Canadian and Dutch officers claim that NATO forces have bested the Taliban after a hot summer season of ferocious battles in the south and the east.

Others are not so sure. There is always a winter lull in fighting in Afghanistan. Despite coalition claims each year that the Taliban have been weakened and are on the run, they have come back each spring bolder, more brazen, better armed and better trained.

About 3700 Afghans have died this year - more than a quarter of them civilians. There were only five suicide-bomb attacks in the first four post-invasion years, but more than 80 were recorded in the first 10 months of this year.

Seeming to forget the rudiments of guerilla warfare, a NATO spokesman interpreted this dramatic increase in suicide missions as a sign of weakness: "Their other tactics have failed. As a result, we believe they've resorted to the weapons of the weaker party - suicide bombs, hit-and-runs, [improvised explosive devices] and mines".

But the fugitive leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, might have been signalling the annual winter shutdown when he marked the end of the month-long Ramadan fast last month with a threat and a promise: "With the grace of Allah, the fighting will be increased … and it will be organised in the next few months. I'm confident [it] will be a surprise for many."

A month earlier, a Taliban commander, Mullah Safurrahman, patiently explained to a foreign reporter: "We are in no hurry. But look how far we have come from nothing. We're in a guerilla war - it isn't a matter of two or three years; it might take us 10, even 35 years. Will the foreign soldiers last that long here?"

Memory lapse also seems to drive the rhetoric in Washington. The US under-secretary for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, declared last month that the Taliban no longer posed a strategic threat to the regime in Kabul.

But with almost one-third of the country again rated by the United Nations as "extreme risk" or "high risk", the Taliban appear to be in much the same position as they were in the early 1990s - shooting up around the perimeter of centrally held territory while, village by village and valley by valley, they offered their version of stability to wearied communities that had lost faith in their corrupted old-guard leadership.

Earlier this year, the British commander of NATO, Lieutenant-General David Richards, estimated that about 70 per cent of the southern population now sat on the fence, having not yet decided whether to support the US-backed government in Kabul or the Taliban and the criminal gangs that ride on their flanks.

The challenge for NATO's very thinly spread 40,000 troops in Afghanistan is to position themselves best to convert the bloody insecurity of the summer to stability and meaningful reconstruction before March's spring thaw.

This is because the 70 per cent of "undecideds" will make their call according to what is in it for them and their families. Their judgement will be based on the simple basics of their daily lives, not on fine words spouted in Washington or London.

In a staggering admission of defeat in the last five years, the head of the UN mission in the south, Talatbek Masadykov, told The Times: "We've never improved the situation. The security issue isn't just to do with the Taliban - it's to do with bad, weak governance. Fifty per cent of this problem is internal. People don't naturally want the Taliban back, not all, but increasingly they think that the Government offers them nothing but insecurity, and that though the Taliban offers them nothing either, they may perhaps give them some stability and an end to corruption."

As the violence encroaches on Kabul, foreigners are increasingly jittery. Some diplomats are demanding armour-plated transport and there is talk of setting up a Baghdad-style green zone for foreign diplomats and local officials. But others just get on with the business of influence.

The US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have renewed Iran's historic ambition to be a regional power across the Middle East and South Asia. Pakistan cannot believe its luck - Western officials constantly accuse it of aiding the Taliban, but Washington is too fearful of the consequences to junk Islamabad's favoured status as an ally in the "war on terrorism".

The tragedy in Kabul is that by sucking so much of the stuff of global nation-building away from Afghanistan into the Iraqi vortex - where it is being squandered - the US-led coalition has created just the veneer of a democracy that barely masks so much of what is rotten in Afghanistan.

In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Monday's fifth anniversary of the fall of the Taliban regime went unmarked in Hamid Karzai's Kabul.

About 3700 Afghans have died this year - more than a quarter of them civilians. There were only five suicide-bomb attacks in the first four post-invasion years, but more than 80 were recorded in the first 10 months of this year.

Seeming to forget the rudiments of guerilla warfare, a NATO spokesman interpreted this dramatic increase in suicide missions as a sign of weakness: "Their other tactics have failed. As a result, we believe they've resorted to the weapons of the weaker party - suicide bombs, hit-and-runs, [improvised explosive devices] and mines".

But the fugitive leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, might have been signalling the annual winter shutdown when he marked the end of the month-long Ramadan fast last month with a threat and a promise: "With the grace of Allah, the fighting will be increased … and it will be organised in the next few months. I'm confident [it] will be a surprise for many."

A month earlier, a Taliban commander, Mullah Safurrahman, patiently explained to a foreign reporter: "We are in no hurry. But look how far we have come from nothing. We're in a guerilla war - it isn't a matter of two or three years; it might take us 10, even 35 years. Will the foreign soldiers last that long here?"

Memory lapse also seems to drive the rhetoric in Washington. The US under-secretary for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, declared last month that the Taliban no longer posed a strategic threat to the regime in Kabul.

But with almost one-third of the country again rated by the United Nations as "extreme risk" or "high risk", the Taliban appear to be in much the same position as they were in the early 1990s - shooting up around the perimeter of centrally held territory while, village by village and valley by valley, they offered their version of stability to wearied communities that had lost faith in their corrupted old-guard leadership.

Earlier this year, the British commander of NATO, Lieutenant-General David Richards, estimated that about 70 per cent of the southern population now sat on the fence, having not yet decided whether to support the US-backed government in Kabul or the Taliban and the criminal gangs that ride on their flanks.

The challenge for NATO's very thinly spread 40,000 troops in Afghanistan is to position themselves best to convert the bloody insecurity of the summer to stability and meaningful reconstruction before March's spring thaw.

This is because the 70 per cent of "undecideds" will make their call according to what is in it for them and their families. Their judgement will be based on the simple basics of their daily lives, not on fine words spouted in Washington or London.

In a staggering admission of defeat in the last five years, the head of the UN mission in the south, Talatbek Masadykov, told The Times: "We've never improved the situation. The security issue isn't just to do with the Taliban - it's to do with bad, weak governance. Fifty per cent of this problem is internal. People don't naturally want the Taliban back, not all, but increasingly they think that the Government offers them nothing but insecurity, and that though the Taliban offers them nothing either, they may perhaps give them some stability and an end to corruption."

As the violence encroaches on Kabul, foreigners are increasingly jittery. Some diplomats are demanding armour-plated transport and there is talk of setting up a Baghdad-style green zone for foreign diplomats and local officials. But others just get on with the business of influence.

The US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have renewed Iran's historic ambition to be a regional power across the Middle East and South Asia. Pakistan cannot believe its luck - Western officials constantly accuse it of aiding the Taliban, but Washington is too fearful of the consequences to junk Islamabad's favoured status as an ally in the "war on terrorism".

The tragedy in Kabul is that by sucking so much of the stuff of global nation-building away from Afghanistan into the Iraqi vortex - where it is being squandered - the US-led coalition has created just the veneer of a democracy that barely masks so much of what is rotten in Afghanistan.

In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Monday's fifth anniversary of the fall of the Taliban regime went unmarked in Hamid Karzai's Kabul.

In a staggering admission of defeat in the last five years, the head of the UN mission in the south, Talatbek Masadykov, told The Times: "We've never improved the situation. The security issue isn't just to do with the Taliban - it's to do with bad, weak governance. Fifty per cent of this problem is internal. People don't naturally want the Taliban back, not all, but increasingly they think that the Government offers them nothing but insecurity, and that though the Taliban offers them nothing either, they may perhaps give them some stability and an end to corruption."

As the violence encroaches on Kabul, foreigners are increasingly jittery. Some diplomats are demanding armour-plated transport and there is talk of setting up a Baghdad-style green zone for foreign diplomats and local officials. But others just get on with the business of influence.

The US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have renewed Iran's historic ambition to be a regional power across the Middle East and South Asia. Pakistan cannot believe its luck - Western officials constantly accuse it of aiding the Taliban, but Washington is too fearful of the consequences to junk Islamabad's favoured status as an ally in the "war on terrorism".

The tragedy in Kabul is that by sucking so much of the stuff of global nation-building away from Afghanistan into the Iraqi vortex - where it is being squandered - the US-led coalition has created just the veneer of a democracy that barely masks so much of what is rotten in Afghanistan.

In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Monday's fifth anniversary of the fall of the Taliban regime went unmarked in Hamid Karzai's Kabul.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/rosy-picture-of-afghanistan-hides-grim-truth/2006/11/17/1163266786021.html