"On the Road with the Taleban"

This report on the situation in Afghanistan is from the BBC News. It's not encouraging. From an economic standpoint, corruption is a major problem:

On the road with the Taleban, by David Loyn BBC News: NATO troops in Afghanistan have been facing a growing number of suicide bomb attacks. It was hoped the troops would be able to make peace, win friends and provide security for reconstruction projects, but now it seems the regime they removed is beginning to return.

"You destroyed our government and all because of just one guest in our country, Osama," said the man leading the war against the British. We sat late at night in what must have been the women's side of a house commandeered for just that night by a man who stays constantly on the move. ... Taleban soldiers ... filled the room ... as we talked.

Afghans feel that there is not enough to show for the billions spent by the world on their country since 9/11... He was an intelligent man in his 40s, smoother and more groomed than many Talibs I have come across, with delicate hands. ...

The commander waved me away impatiently when I said that the British had come to provide security for reconstruction. "They have had five years and look at the state of the roads here" he said. And that is the biggest problem for the credibility of the British operation in the south. ... Too little of the money promised has made any difference to life here and that is a powerful recruiting tool for the Taleban.

And there is another problem with the roads. As we made our way towards our rendezvous along the main road from Kandahar to the west, Afghanistan's trade lifeline, we were stopped every few minutes at checkpoints. At every one we were asked for money: not much - 10 Afs - about 10p ($0.19) at each one. But they demand more from truck drivers, and the amounts add up.

These checkpoints are not manned by bandits but by soldiers from the newly constituted Afghan National Army, at one point supervised by an American patrol, keeping watch from a discreet distance on the ridge.

Corruption on this road has a powerful symbolic resonance for Afghans, because it was to stop just this kind of casual theft that the Taleban began. Their founding myth is an epic drive from the Pakistani border to Kandahar in 1994, destroying checkpoints manned by rival mujahideen as they went. The Taleban leader Mullah Omar began with 20 men and by the time he arrived in Kandahar he was the head of a movement that went on to take the capital two years later.

That NATO is allowing institutionalised corruption on this same road again is extraordinary. The Taleban can hardly believe their luck since they know what people are saying: NATO and President Karzai are allowing the same kind of corruption that the Taleban stopped in the 90s. So men who had been hedging their bets, are now signing up to fight again against what they see as foreign invaders.

The other key Taleban recruiting tool ... is the increasing violence. Civilian casualties are of course inevitable in any conflict, but this British force was supposed to be providing protection for those rebuilding the country. ...

Those at the centre of this resurgent Taleban force are the same single-minded Muslims I remember from the time when I travelled with them in the late 90s. They observe their interpretation of Islamic law to the letter, and support the primitive conservative values of the villages in this region. ...

The commander told me that mistakes were made during the years of Taleban rule. They did not want to impose themselves so harshly this time, yet playing host to Osama Bin Laden was not one of the mistakes he was talking about.

He said there were hundreds of suicide bombers now waiting to attack the British-led forces. He was having to hold them back because if they all came at once there would be chaos. He justified the tactic as a valuable weapon in a war which now looks unwinnable for  NATO without destruction on an unthinkable scale.

Comments

[calmo]

That modest bribery at the checkpoints that "added up" and meant widespread corruption was somehow not as persuasive as I was expecting. (Well, shoot, I'm easy to persuade and this did not do it.)[Maybe I was not in the right (persuadable) mood. Once again: Vast numbers of army personel are extorting the people...just go through those road checkpoints and see for yourself. This is corruption? I don't think so.]
The corruption may be at higher government levels (the earth may continue to rotate) but this was not the focus. An interesting article nonetheless for the few remarks about women and the frank bleak outlook --not the usual bull about standing up so many divisions of Iraqi forces.

[Movie Guy]

British spelling preferred, eh?

[anne]

Extensive and excellent:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22afghanistan.html?ex=1319169600&en=c5d5be7dda19fa67&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

October 22, 2006

In the Land of the Taliban
By ELIZABETH RUBIN

One afternoon this past summer, I shared a picnic of fresh mangos and plums with Abdul Baqi, an Afghan Taliban fighter in his 20's fresh from the front in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. We spent hours on a grassy slope under the tall pines of Murree, a former colonial hill station that is now a popular resort just outside Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. All around us was a Pakistani rendition of Georges Seurat's "Sunday on La Grande Jatte" — middle-class families setting up grills for barbecue, a girl and two boys chasing their errant cow with a stick, two men hunting fowl, boys flying a kite. Much of the time, Abdul Baqi was engrossed in the flight pattern of a Himalayan bird. It must have been a welcome distraction. He had just lost five friends fighting British troops and had seen many others killed or wounded by bombs as they sheltered inside a mosque.

He was now looking forward to taking a logic course at a madrasa, or religious school, near Peshawar during his holiday. Pakistan's religious parties, he told me through an interpreter, would lodge him, as they did other Afghan Taliban fighters, and keep him safe. With us was Abdul Baqi's mentor, Mullah Sadiq, a diabetic Helmandi who was shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan auditing Taliban finances and arranging logistics. He had just dispatched nine fighters to Afghanistan and had taken wounded men to a hospital in Islamabad. "I just tell the border guards that they were wounded in a tribal dispute and need treatment," he told me....

[spencer]

be sure and read the rest of the article anne links to.

[calmo]

Thank you anne (and spencer). Rubin persuades me on each of those 10 pages (And that is only part I. For those who need more, plug in again next week.).

[Emmanuel]

Like in Iraq, there is very limited buy-in of the invader's programme of government. Given a choice, I'm sure that most folks in Iraq wouldn't go for Sunni/Shi'te extremists just as most folks in Iran wouldn't go for the Taleban. But, the sad fact appears to be that the American and British occupiers are even worse.

BTW: For some reason, "On the Road with the Taleban" gives me an image of Willie Nelson and Mullah Omar cruising around Kabul in a pickup truck. Weird! I just can't wait to get on the road again.

[Emmanuel]

Oops, I meant Afghanistan, not Iran :-)

[Movie Guy]

Emmanuel - "But, the sad fact appears to be that the American and British occupiers are even worse."

Worse than the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan?

[Richard]

Al Quaeda had but limited power in Afghanistan.

And compared to the corruption and viciousness of their predecessors, the Taliban were greeted as puritanical but fairer. Like other countries in Central Asia, one tribe is larger demographically but not overwhelmingly; in the case of Afghanistan, the Pashtoons constitute 60% of the population and have strong familial ties with the Northwestern tribes in Pakistan. Hence Pakistan's foreign policy for years: better autocratic but friendly speakers of Peshto than an equally autocratic country dominated by Uzbeks.

And like the Northwest tribes of Pakistan, Afghanistanis don't generally care for foreigners. Al Queda represented guests who were resented but grudgingly respected for their Islamic knowledge. None of that respect is accorded to the Westerners now in Afghanistan.

[Emmanuel]

MG: I'm afraid so. I don't think signing up for suicide bombing missions is a rational response if you had some semblance of a future. Richard also makes insightful points that are better than mine.

On the bright side for drug addicts the world over, while the Iraqi invasion seems not to have secured a stream of oil (as intended), the Afghanistan invasion has secured a bumper crop of heroin (who knows, it might have been intended). Talk about cash cropping.

Hamid Karzai = "Heroin Hamid"

[adam]

nyt link was excellent

love how the author looked beyond the "they want to kill us view" we tend too often get fed by both parties.

roads, liberal education, females getting educated are all things important to developing an economy that removes the power of religious leaders. this is the central target of those that want a return to the past there. what speeds commerce hurts radical islam whether it is a u.s. soldier building a road or and indian engineeer.

[ilsm]

The British dealt with the Afghans for over 100 years:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!
Kipling: "The Young British Soldier"

[ninjaplease]

What exactly is Afghanistan's comparative advantage? The best place on earth to grow opium?

When people don't have jobs for a long time, bad things happen. Take note, and recite this everytime you defend comparative advantage or "Lean" manufacturing.