Murdered for going to school - six years after the Taliban was toppled

[ProSense]

Murdered for going to school - six years after the Taliban was toppled

21.10.07

The United Nations bureaucrats insist on paying me for a report I have just completed about the children of Afghanistan.

The fee is $1. When I get the cheque I shall frame it.

The real reward has been to travel through Afghanistan to meet so many of the children themselves and to learn of their hopes and fears. It has been truly inspiring, if rather dangerous.


Young hearts and minds: One of Canada's hard-pressed troops reaches out to a
child in Kandahar

To travel through clouds of dust on the road from Kandahar to Spin Boldak near the Pakistan border, Unicef staff need a heavily armed police escort.

Kidnapping is a lucrative business and a local Taliban leader is telling his fighters this would be a good time to abduct a foreigner.

Among those targeted are aid workers trying to reach the vulnerable. And the young are the most vulnerable of all.

More than half the country's population is under 18, including up to 60,000 destitute and street children, huddled in cities because of the return of the Taliban and increasing insecurity in rural areas.

<...>

The Americans also concentrated their military effort on Iraq. The result was a power vacuum in Afghanistan which grew until we reached the present make-or-break time.

<...>

Which brings me back to the children. The Unicef report, called Child Alert, will be published on Thursday.

<...>


Back in force: The Taliban can always find new recruits

more

Six years, $600 billion and the "surge" equals two lost wars

Absolutely no one can screw up a country (Afghanistan) like Bush can

As we implement a new strategy in Iraq, we are also taking new steps to defeat the terrorists and extremists in Afghanistan. My administration has just completed a top-to-bottom review of our strategy in that country, and today I want to talk to you about the progress we have made in Afghanistan, the challenges we face in Afghanistan, and the strategy we're pursuing to defeat the enemies of freedom in Afghanistan.

It wasn't all that long ago that we learned the lessons of how terrorists operate. It may seem like a long time ago -- five years is a long time in this day and age of instant news cycles -- but it really isn't all that long ago, when you think about the march of history. In Afghanistan, we saw how terrorists and extremists can use those safe havens, safe havens in a failed state, to bring death and destruction to our people here at home.

It was an amazing turning point in the history of our country, really, when you think about it. It was a defining moment for the 21st century. Think about what I just said, that in the remote reaches of the world, because there was a failed state, murderers were able to plot and plan and then execute a deadly attack that killed nearly 3,000 of our citizens. It's a lesson that we've got to remember. And one of the lessons of that September the 11th day is that we cannot allow terrorists to gain sanctuary anywhere, and we must not allow them to reestablish the safe haven they lost in Afghanistan.

Our goal in Afghanistan is to help the people of that country to defeat the terrorists and establish a stable, moderate, and democratic state that respects the rights of its citizens, governs its territory effectively, and is a reliable ally in this war against extremists and terrorists. -- George Bush

Edited to add Bush's propaganda

[aquart]

1. Now, now. Afghanistan was screwed up before we got there.

[ProSense]

2. "The rates of addiction in Afghanistan have increased sharply since 2003 to nearly 4 percent..."

The rates of addiction in Afghanistan have increased sharply since 2003 to nearly 4 percent of the population, the UN says. There are now roughly 150,000 opium users, 50,000 heroin addicts and 520,000 cannabis smokers. Of those 120,000 are women and 60,000 are children.

[AuntPatsy]

7. Far too many Americans are to eager to just blindly except that

we can always make a difference for the better, I don't know why that is? Are we that arrogant to believe that it is just impossible for us to make things worse instead of better?

[Elspeth]

10. When we got there in 1979?

And created the Taliban and gave them stinger missiles?

(And gave Osama Bin Laden his street cred?)

[xxqqqzme]

3. A big 'R'

for this.

[kelliebrat]

4. This article from the UK shows what REAL

reporting is. What's the chance of that same article being being published here if it was written by an American reporter for a U.S. publication? I'm almost embarrassed to admit I did not know Canadian troops were fighting and dying in Afghanistan. Seems to me that reporting any part of this article would be a tad more important than the latest Brittney Spears fiasco.

[Mojorabbit]

5. k and r

[ProSense]

6. Kick! n/t

[Kool Kitty]

8. Just some more of that ol' freedom on the march.

[eridani]

9. Would everyone please bear in mind that we've been fucking with them since 1979?

We recruited radical Islamists from all over the world to fight against the Soviets starting that year, with the deliberate intention (according to Brzezinski) of drawing the Soviets into a Vietnam-like quagmire. We paid American universities to develop pro-jihadi textbooks. Of the native reactionaries, we gave most of our $5 billion or so financial aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who made his bones in the 70s thowing acid in the faces of female university students. (Yes, as late as 1975, female students in Kabul occasionally wore miniskirts.) The CIA knew all about his prior history, and they were happy to watch him burn down girls' schools.

After the Soviets left, warlord factions destroyed a lot of Kabul and killed around 40,000 of its citizens. We fully supported the Pakistani ISI in their sponsorship of the Taliban, which the warlord-weary population of Afghanistan thought might suppress lawlessness.

AFter 9-11 we ignored constant pleas from indigenous anti-Taliban forces to not engage in massive bombing of civilians in support of the (formerly Soviet-allied_ Northern Alliance warlords. After our allies kicked the Taliban out of major population centers, we refused to let the Loya Jirga of 2002 install their choice of ruler, the former king (favored mainly because he had pissed off the fewest number of people). They also wanted nothing to do with the warlords we insisted on installing.

Our current campaign there consists of supporting warlords who are not much different from the Taliban with extensive bombing of civilians.

Why in fecking hell anybody believes that more of the same can possibly do Afghanistan any good is beyond me.

[ProSense]

11. Kick! n/t

[Disturbed]

12. Afghanistan: Five Years Later

Afghanistan: Five Years Later
by Stephen Zunes


Barnett Rubin, America's foremost scholar on Afghanistan, described the country as not having “functioning state institutions. It has no genuine army or effective police. Its ramshackle provincial administration is barely in contact with, let alone obedient to, the central government. Most of the country's meager tax revenue has been illegally taken over by local officials who are little more than warlords with official titles.” According to Rubin, the goal of U.S. policy in Afghanistan “was not to set up a better regime for the Afghan people, but to recruit and strengthen warlords in its fight against al-Qaida.”

While women are now allowed to go to school and leave the house unaccompanied by a close male relative-­rights denied to them under the Taliban-­most women in large parts of Afghanistan are afraid to do so out of fea of kidnapping and rape. Human Rights Watch reports that, despite the ouster of the misogynist Taliban, “Violence against women and girls remains rampant.”
The security situation in the countryside is so bad that groups like Medecins Sans Frontieres-­which stayed in Afghanistan throughout the Soviet war and occupation of the 1980s, the civil war and chaos of the early to mid-1990s, and the brutal repression of the Taliban through 2001-­have completely withdrawn from the country.

Yet the Bush administration continues to be in denial about the worsening situation in Afghanistan. President Bush recently declared that Afghanistan was doing so well that it was “inspiring others … to demand their freedom.” And Vice President Cheney has referred to the rapidly deteriorating Afghan republic as a “rising nation.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld earlier described the new Afghanistan as “a breathtaking accomplishment” and “a successful model.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1014-22.htm