– fordi tiden kræver et MODSPIL

23. Aug 2007

Hvad laver vi egentlig i Afghanistan?

 
Seumas Milne i The Guardian:
What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission is now an all-out war against a resurgent Taliban that has become an umbrella for Pashtun nationalists, jihadists and all those determined to fight foreign occupation. British casualties have risen sharply - seven have been killed in the past month - along with those of other western forces, while the public at home is increasingly fed a media diet of Kiplingesque deeds of derring-do by "our boys" on the front line.
Men hvad gør de vestlige styrker i Afghanistan så af godt? Nåja, de dræber civile - det kan vel også kaldes en slags indsats; men noget godt er der ikke noget, der tyder på de gør eller har gjort:
By intervening on one side of an ethnically charged civil war to overthrow the Taliban, the US and its allies ended up exchanging warlords for theocrats and turning most of the country into a collection of lawless and brutal fiefdoms. Instead of al-Qaida terror networks being rooted out, they were allowed to migrate to the borderlands, Pakistan and Iraq; Osama bin Laden, whose capture was the first aim of the war, escaped; and the limited expansion of women's and girls' freedoms in Kabul and a few other urban areas was offset by an eruption of rape and violence against women. Western politicians like to describe the Afghan government as democratically elected, when in fact the elections were marked by large-scale fraud and intimidation in polls that gave regional warlords pride of place, while political parties were not allowed to take part. In real life, occupied Afghanistan is, as the UN warned last year, a failed state, which now produces 90% of the world's opium and where corruption and insecurity have sunk reconstruction.
Link til Milnes artikel om sagen.

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