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TJP
Nov-23-2011 22:52
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Impossible Afghanistan
Tim King Salem-News.comTaliban has it all Under Control...
 Two women in Kabul: both victims of the Taliban, never will walk again. Salem-News.com photo by Tim King |
(SALEM) - Guardian UK reports: The Afghan government is prepared to resume negotiations with the Taliban despite the assassination of its chief peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the senior official responsible for organising the talks has said.
Ever hear the term sh*t or get off the pot?
They must feel confident these days- those Taliban- people who make a sport out of violating the established rules as set forth in the Qu'ran, according to which, one of the most grave sins is the intentional taking of a life.
When Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, was asked what the major sins were, he said, “Associating others with God, disobeying one’s parents, murder and bearing false witness.”
The Taliban have about as much control over their lives as an impoverished American in a gang ridden neighborhood. Sure, they don't have to join up, they can resist the gang, or the Taliban in this case, but their pride is evoked, their religious faith is tested, and it is not uncommon for young men to be attracted to war and fighting. Plus, when I was in-country, in 2006 and 2007, I heard from more than one source that the Taliban was paying a higher wage than the Afghan National Army. That competition is not a healthy or balanced one.
So the bottom line is that they're the products of their own environments, in places that were colonialist by greedy western ambitions and thus left in shambles. Almost always the story is the same. But the worst damage came at the hands of the Russians, and millions of Afghan families fled to Iran and Pakistan to seek refuge. A large number of the anti Coalition militias (ACM's) are comprised of young men whose parents fled Afghanistan in the 80's.
The present story of violence in Afghanistan, like so many other places, begins in the mid to late 1800's, when the British come gunning for war and property. The first time they had their asses handed back in a basket.
Their tragedy inspired the timeless words of Kipling...
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
 Another victim of years of violence in Kabul. |
The second invasion allowed the English military to maintain a presence and while they lost political control, that colonial spirit remained well into the 1970's.
Then the peace ended abruptly when the Russians invaded.
Communism, which had been Afghanistan's political system since the end of WWII, allowed women equal rights and also suppressed religion. But the Afghan government was edging away from Mother Russia in the 1970's after receiving a great deal of economic and military aid, and as a satellite country that was not part of the Soviet Union specifically, Afghanistan was important to Russian strategy and pride.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 took the country like wildfire and the Soviet Union invaded. As this happened, the Afghans banded together to remove their oppressor and ten years later Russia went home.
They needed help and guidance at the end of that conflict, but the west turned its back and left the place to the bands of Mujaheddin do decide for themselves. In the ensuing years the educational systems have been crushed, and women were relegated into the shadows of their blasted burqas. The educational system does not cater to females in a large number of cases, and most Afghan men are still illiterate. Hopefully that trend is in reversal, by some accounts it is.
 H.E. Minister Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai |
Wake of an Assassination
In his first interview since leaving hospital last week, Masoom Stanekzai, who runs the secretariat of Afghanistan's High Peace Council (HPC), told the Guardian that attempts to engage the Taliban in peace talks would continue as soon a a successor to the recently assassinated Burhanuddin Rabbani's was chosen.
He added: "There is no alternative to peace."
Rabbani, a former Afghan President, was killed on 20 September in his home, when an assassin detonated a bomb that was concealed in his turban. Stanekzai was severely injured, his lung was pierced, and he received injuries to his left arm and both legs.
He said a conclusion that had been reached by the Loya Jirga, or consultative assembly, which had stressed: "[The insurgents] should talk from a clear address.
 Late former President Burhanuddin Rabbani |
"They can't say we are here and there, somewhere hiding, when nobody clearly understands whether [the person they are negotiating with] is an … authorised representative or just someone who is being hired by a spy agency, doing something to prolong the conflict."
So the demand was issued that in order to restart the talks, the Taliban insurgents must establish a political office first.
Since the insurgent group has an established history of lying and sending people to political meetings who are actually carrying suicide bombers, it seems a fair request. Every peacemaker lost in the endless cycle of violence sets any real hope for peace farther ahead.
The Guardian's Julian Borger, in Kabul, explains in his article how Rabbani was attempting to organize a deal with the Taliban at the time of his death, to establish a political office in Qatar. Stanekzai believes those efforts will resume, however the precise location of the Taliban's future office, remains a matter for discussion.
If this issue had been pressed prior to the fatal meeting involving Rabbani and Stanekzai, the opportunity to snuff out his life would have been far less attractive.
Avoidable Tragedy
 Artwork by Carlos Latuff, friend of Salem-News.com |
The Afghan government blames Taliban leadership for the deadly attack, claiming they acted in concert with Pakistani intelligence – but Stanekzai remained cautious about whether the killing had been officially sanctioned, suggesting it could have been a rogue operation.
He said, "Until the whole investigation is completed … it would be better to wait until we get a final, concrete result."
Regarding the fallen former President Rabbani, Stanekzai said, "I remember his last words were that 'unless we create a culture of peace in this country, we will not succeed, and we have to work to broaden to the scope and make this process more inclusive so that everybody can participate and lessen the relevance of those who are fighting.'"
He continued, "Then he asked that these people should be brought in from the guest house, and before they arrived I went out to the room where his secretary and my assistant were sitting and I told them no matter whoever is coming they have to be properly checked before they enter in the room.
"They arrived, two people … Professor Rabbani stood and said welcome, and I also stood, and they were hugging and I was standing beside them and the blast happened.
"After that I don't know what happened, and when I came back to my senses I was in the hospital."
Assassination in Retrospect
Representing the Loya Jorga council, Safia Siddiqui said:
| “ |
It was stupidity of a big office like that to accept that meeting. This was a young man coming from Quetta [a Pakistan border city that serves as a Taliban headquarters], with no address, and Rabbani came all the way back from Iran to meet him. |
” |
Now Stanekzai, who is responsible for establishing contacts and arranging meetings, denied the they had been too hasty in seeking Taliban contacts, arguing that kickstarting a peace process was an urgent necessity.
"From one side, if you look at it technically, it might be seen as a rush. If you look to the last 33 years in Afghanistan, it is not a rush. He equated it more to a genuine willingness.
The Brass Tacks
 |
There is little hope for any political or military group that commits terrorism against its own citizens. The Central American drug cartels do this, and the Taliban has performed these wicked acts for too long.
It's nothing more than stepping back a thousand or more years in time. People have always used religion to gain ground and control, they have used it to subjugate women and races of people; it's nothing new, just something very old. And that applies to almost all of Afghanistan. I spent two months there covering the war and remember nothing about the place that strikes me as new at all.
And along with that goes the real lesson, that the extremely rugged people who are Afghanistan, are essentially unbeaten at the game of war. American technology means a lot less when your gameboard begins at 10,000 feet. Aircraft are strained to operate and thus limited in scope. It isn't the same game and the country is covered in land mines. These prevent western troops from venturing off the beaten path, and were a great tool the U.S. used in extending the mystery of a man named Usama bin Laden who was killed in 2001 when the war began, not recently in Pakistan as Obama and the occupational American militants claim.
Taliban Havoc Began in the 90's
 Photo of Ahmed Massoud - the "Lion of Panjshir" in |
Some of us were aware of the Taliban long ago, and aware of the business deals they cut with Unocal, as they slaughtered the population in Kabul and so many other places. My wife Bonnie King and I circulated a petition in the late 90's in Las Vegas urging Americans to boycott Unocal for their business dealings with this group that stripped women and girls of Human Rights.
The country had just emerged from a ten year Soviet occupational war, when the Taliban executed its successful drive for power. They were among those who defeated the Soviets, the Mujaheddin, yet they were the last choice for the world to have.
Another incredible Afghan Mujaheddin leader, Ahmad Massoud, who had been a university student, had what it took to lead Afghanistan to a better day, but he was killed in September 2011 by the religious zealots.
Americans are so sidetracked with 'al Quaeda' which is a name given to the American CIA operation to fund the Mujaheddin's defeat of the invading Soviet forces, that they have become disconnected from one of the most defined enemies, the Taliban.
If only the allied forces could really have ousted this mostly Pashtun group from power without killing civilians along the way; the reaction to everything was knee-jerk, and too late.
I would say that the Afghan people could have managed it, perhaps eventually overthrown the Taliban, but the ensuing American led war has instead empowered and strengthened the Taliban with their black turbans and spiteful ways.
 This Kabul man lost a brother to the Russians, and |
They strike Afghan people, and that means they are disloyal to their own hearts. I don't know any other way to see it, I met several Afghan people whose lives were fully terrorized and even ruined by the Taliban and their eccentric religious interpretations.
I simply see them as lowly men who will hurt women and never will I see it any other way. There is a natural order and violence should be eliminated from every facet of life. The Taliban are totalitarian.
The only things that may have worked to bring peace to this place are long behind us, it is time for Americans and their friends to get the Hell out of Afghanistan because they aren't winning and they aren't improving the situation for the Afghan people.
Standing up political stooges, failing to protect the ones that really try to make a difference, and U.S. politicians' tolerance of religious Human Rights violations, and complicity, even if indirect, to the cruel and insanely archaic laws and rules; that is what makes Afghanistan a nearly impossible situation.
Americans never had any business going there at all, and bin Laden issued a press release immediately after 9/11 stating clearly that he had nothing to do with it. I know the words shock people, but they are true.
Tragedy Without Necessity
In the end we must admire the people of this war torn place who are still trying to make a difference after so much bloodshed and loss. They are handed a heavy burden at birth.
One of those of course is a terribly high death rate and it starts with infant mortality, and of course includes all manners of violent death. It is sad political officials like both Massoud and Rabbani, must disappear in violent explosions by masquerading trickster terrorists who use treachery and deceit to gain access to their victims.
Two months have passed since the attack; Stanekzai still walks with a crutch and is due to have a second operation to restore the hearing in his left ear.
In the meanwhile an investigation into the Rabbani assassination continues, and a team is due to arrive in Pakistan to investigate the connection to Quetta, where a surviving conspirator, Hamidullah Akhundzada, said the plot had been hatched, the Guardian explains.
It is time to end the multi-billion dollar nightmare and let things take their course. The Russians learned, the British learned, and they are only the most recent two. Now it is time for the Americans to follow suit.
_________________________________________________________
Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer
Tim King has more than twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim is a former U.S. Marine.
Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Silver Spoke Award by the National Coalition of Motorcyclists (2011), Excellence in Journalism Award by the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs (2010), Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), First-place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. Tim was a member of the National Press Photographer's Association for several years and is a current member of the Orange County Press Club.
Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website. As News Editor, Tim among other things, is responsible for publishing the original content of 91 Salem-News.com writers. He reminds viewers that emails are easily missed and urges those trying to reach him, to please send a second email if the first goes unanswered. You can write to Tim at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com
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