EvanL
01-31-2004, 05:52 PM
By JEFFREY SIMPSON
UPDATED AT 5:26 PM EST Saturday, Jan. 31, 2004
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Alice Murphy asked her son about serving in Afghanistan: "Jamie boy, do you have to go over there? That's a bad country." His mother's instinct did not lie.
Corporal Jamie Brendan Murphy died in that "bad country" this week, killed by a Taliban suicide bomber. Three other Canadian soldiers were wounded.
It is comforting to say that Corp. Murphy did not die in vain because a stable Afghanistan without the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies is in the best interests of Canada, Afghanistan and civilized people everywhere. But Corp. Murphy's death might later be shown to be in vain if, as now seems possible, Afghanistan descends into a narco-state, essentially run outside Kabul by warlords, and de-stabilized by political and security forces in Pakistan.
Afghanistan's fate is now finely poised. Two months ago, Major-General Andrew Leslie, the Canadian deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force there, said: "The status quo will only lead to failure."
This week, Sen. Richard Lugar, the worldly chairman of the U.S. Senate's foreign relations committee, asked of Afghanistan, "Are we winning or losing? Why should we have confidence that this is going to work out?"
Warnings have been issued for a long time. Last June, a task force of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society concluded its analysis: "Afghanistan remains a long way from achieving the U.S. goal of a stable, self-governing state that no longer serves as a haven for terrorists."
The following month, Human Rights Watch warned, "Afghanistan's window of opportunity is closing fast." The organization documented "widespread insecurity and human-rights abuse." Warlords were maintaining their grip.
The United Nations had already reported in 2002 that opium in Afghanistan was worth twice the value of all foreign aid. The drug traffickers were back, as were the Pakistani truck mafia. Afghanistan is again the world's largest producer of opium, the profits of which finance warlords' activities.
And now, the dedicated and brilliant chronicler of Afghanistan's long torment, Ahmed Rashid of Pakistan, reports: "That the Taliban are returning in force two years after their defeat is testimony enough that the West's support and strategy for rebuilding Afghanistan have so far been a failure."
Mr. Rashid, author of the definitive book on the Taliban, writes in the New York Review of Books, "The war against terrorism is still to be won in the Afghan mountains and deserts and among the Afghan people as well.
"Their nation, the largest and most tragic victim of terrorism, is not being rebuilt. Until that happens there is little incentive for al-Qaeda or extremists elsewhere to lose heart."
Afghanistan has largely vanished from the consciousness of countries engaged in the battle against terror. It quickly became yesterday's news once the U.S. shifted its focus to toppling Saddam Hussein.
An attack such as the one that killed Corp. Murphy creates a headline. His funeral produces another. Silence then descends.
Silence is not descending in either Afghanistan or neighbouring Pakistan, arguably now the world's most dangerous country. Pakistan's president-***-military ruler recently survived two assassination attempts. The country's security service contains elements still sympathetic to the Taliban. Osama bin Laden and his henchmen are believed to be hiding there. Some of the country's nuclear secrets have been sold on the international black market. In the state of Baluchistan, a radical Islamic party governs as part of a coalition and uses religious schools and mosques to train new recruits for terror in Afghanistan.
The good news from Afghanistan is that the loya jirga, or grand assembly, agreed in December on a new constitution. Elections are supposed to take place in June. This suits the Bush administration's desire to trumpet democratic progress in Afghanistan before the U.S. elections, except that the security situation is so bad that the vote might not mean much.
Only a fraction of Afghanistan's 10.5-million voters have been registered.
The World Bank said Afghanistan needed $10.5-billion in reconstruction aid over five years. It is receiving much less. The result, apparently, is restlessness and a certain disillusionment in the population with the slow rate of economic progress.
Security remains unsettled in parts of the country, especially the southeast. As some observers correctly predicted, once the Taliban regrouped it would concentrate terror in the cities, including Kabul, of the kind that just killed Corp. Murphy.
NATO is supposed to extend the International Security Assistance Force outside Kabul and environs, but it lacks the troops from member countries.
De-militarization of the warlords' armies, whose members are thought to be about 100,000, is barely proceeding.
Afghanistan remains a precarious, troubled country, although significantly better off than under the Taliban. It ought to have received -- and to receive -- more money, attention and sustained political effort from other countries to ensure that it does not become a failed state again.
But the Bush administration had Iraq in its sights, cooked up reasons for invading that country, and is now spending vastly more money there than where terrorism really did take root, and is taking root again: Afghanistan.
jsimpson@globeandmail.ca
UPDATED AT 5:26 PM EST Saturday, Jan. 31, 2004
Advertisement
Alice Murphy asked her son about serving in Afghanistan: "Jamie boy, do you have to go over there? That's a bad country." His mother's instinct did not lie.
Corporal Jamie Brendan Murphy died in that "bad country" this week, killed by a Taliban suicide bomber. Three other Canadian soldiers were wounded.
It is comforting to say that Corp. Murphy did not die in vain because a stable Afghanistan without the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies is in the best interests of Canada, Afghanistan and civilized people everywhere. But Corp. Murphy's death might later be shown to be in vain if, as now seems possible, Afghanistan descends into a narco-state, essentially run outside Kabul by warlords, and de-stabilized by political and security forces in Pakistan.
Afghanistan's fate is now finely poised. Two months ago, Major-General Andrew Leslie, the Canadian deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force there, said: "The status quo will only lead to failure."
This week, Sen. Richard Lugar, the worldly chairman of the U.S. Senate's foreign relations committee, asked of Afghanistan, "Are we winning or losing? Why should we have confidence that this is going to work out?"
Warnings have been issued for a long time. Last June, a task force of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society concluded its analysis: "Afghanistan remains a long way from achieving the U.S. goal of a stable, self-governing state that no longer serves as a haven for terrorists."
The following month, Human Rights Watch warned, "Afghanistan's window of opportunity is closing fast." The organization documented "widespread insecurity and human-rights abuse." Warlords were maintaining their grip.
The United Nations had already reported in 2002 that opium in Afghanistan was worth twice the value of all foreign aid. The drug traffickers were back, as were the Pakistani truck mafia. Afghanistan is again the world's largest producer of opium, the profits of which finance warlords' activities.
And now, the dedicated and brilliant chronicler of Afghanistan's long torment, Ahmed Rashid of Pakistan, reports: "That the Taliban are returning in force two years after their defeat is testimony enough that the West's support and strategy for rebuilding Afghanistan have so far been a failure."
Mr. Rashid, author of the definitive book on the Taliban, writes in the New York Review of Books, "The war against terrorism is still to be won in the Afghan mountains and deserts and among the Afghan people as well.
"Their nation, the largest and most tragic victim of terrorism, is not being rebuilt. Until that happens there is little incentive for al-Qaeda or extremists elsewhere to lose heart."
Afghanistan has largely vanished from the consciousness of countries engaged in the battle against terror. It quickly became yesterday's news once the U.S. shifted its focus to toppling Saddam Hussein.
An attack such as the one that killed Corp. Murphy creates a headline. His funeral produces another. Silence then descends.
Silence is not descending in either Afghanistan or neighbouring Pakistan, arguably now the world's most dangerous country. Pakistan's president-***-military ruler recently survived two assassination attempts. The country's security service contains elements still sympathetic to the Taliban. Osama bin Laden and his henchmen are believed to be hiding there. Some of the country's nuclear secrets have been sold on the international black market. In the state of Baluchistan, a radical Islamic party governs as part of a coalition and uses religious schools and mosques to train new recruits for terror in Afghanistan.
The good news from Afghanistan is that the loya jirga, or grand assembly, agreed in December on a new constitution. Elections are supposed to take place in June. This suits the Bush administration's desire to trumpet democratic progress in Afghanistan before the U.S. elections, except that the security situation is so bad that the vote might not mean much.
Only a fraction of Afghanistan's 10.5-million voters have been registered.
The World Bank said Afghanistan needed $10.5-billion in reconstruction aid over five years. It is receiving much less. The result, apparently, is restlessness and a certain disillusionment in the population with the slow rate of economic progress.
Security remains unsettled in parts of the country, especially the southeast. As some observers correctly predicted, once the Taliban regrouped it would concentrate terror in the cities, including Kabul, of the kind that just killed Corp. Murphy.
NATO is supposed to extend the International Security Assistance Force outside Kabul and environs, but it lacks the troops from member countries.
De-militarization of the warlords' armies, whose members are thought to be about 100,000, is barely proceeding.
Afghanistan remains a precarious, troubled country, although significantly better off than under the Taliban. It ought to have received -- and to receive -- more money, attention and sustained political effort from other countries to ensure that it does not become a failed state again.
But the Bush administration had Iraq in its sights, cooked up reasons for invading that country, and is now spending vastly more money there than where terrorism really did take root, and is taking root again: Afghanistan.
jsimpson@globeandmail.ca