Drugs, Bases, and Jails

[donsu]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=2303


Drugs, Bases, and Jails
The Bush administration's Afghan Spring


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Drugs
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When you begin to look around, you quickly find that just about everyone -- Bush proponents and critics alike -- seems to agree on at least some of the following when it comes to the experiment in "democracy" in Afghanistan: The country now qualifies, according to the Human Development Index in the UN's Human Development Report 2004, as the sixth worst off country on Earth, perched just above five absolute basket-case nations (Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone) in sub-Saharan Africa. The power of the new, democratically elected government of Hamid Karzai extends only weakly beyond the outskirts of Kabul. Large swathes of Afghanistan are still ruled by warlords and drug lords, or in some cases undoubtedly warlord/drug lords; and while the Taliban was largely swept away, armed militias dominate much of the country as they did after the Soviet withdrawal back in 1989. In addition, a low-level guerrilla war is still being run by elements of the former Taliban regime for which, in areas of the South, there is a growing "nostalgia."

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According to the UN report, "Every 30 minutes a woman in Afghanistan dies from pregnancy-related causes… 20 percent of children die before the age of five… the poorest 30 percent of the population receive only 9 percent of the national income, while the upper 30 percent receive 55 per cent."

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Bases
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Strange, those 14 airfields, since in Iraq the U.S. has reportedly been building up to 14 permanent bases (or "enduring camps"). You have to wonder whether there's something in that number. In certain numerological systems, 14 is evidently associated with "addiction." The question is: What exactly are America's air-field upgraders and base builders addicted to?

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Jails

In recent months, the best news reporting on Afghanistan has focused on the detention and jailing practices of Americans in that country and has been based largely on limited investigations conducted by one or another part of our government. A December Washington Post piece by R. Jeffrey Smith (General Cites Problems at U.S. Jails in Afghanistan), while discussing "a wide range of shortcomings in the military's handling of prisoners in Afghanistan," managed to mention that we have "roughly two dozen" (count 'em: 24) prisons in that country. Smith's piece began:

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wish I could have posted more

the criminal bushgang is not finished murdering and pilfering and using Afghanistan