"Afghans fear chaos will return when US leaves; Hope and high anxiety as a war winds down" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff, October 12, 2013
KABUL — Colonel Muhammad Ayaz Qayum is worried. The December 2014 deadline to withdraw all American combat troops from his country is approaching, and the nation’s central crime lab — like so many other basics of a modern state — is far from ready.
Within the drab complex of dusty courtyards and squat buildings, DNA analysis is so primitive that when a blood sample comes in, the best that technicians can do is determine whether it is animal or human. Unsolved cases sit stacked head-high in cardboard boxes that stretch for dozens of yards along the lab’s narrow main hallway.
“If equipment and facilities are provided, we can be on our feet very quickly,” says Qayum, a commander with the Afghan National Police. “Without that, expecting to stand on our feet is not realistic.”
The US military says help is on the way for this and many other needs, but pledges made in good faith at one point can be altered or abandoned.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Tarok Kolache Brings a Tear to the Eye
They could do without that kind of help.
And at a time when global attention is riveted on Syria, another troubled land far from US soil, Americans appear to have little stomach for extended overseas commitments.
Because we are sick of being lied to and looted for wars of conquest.
It’s a form of battle fatigue, reflected in national polls, that has been forged in large part in the crucible of Afghanistan, a place where America’s longest war is testing its pledge to a country that desperately needs its help.
If you are trying to make us feel guilty for wanting to get out, mouthpiece, save your ink.
That help has been immense, and immensely costly, but its impact has been mixed.
Afghan soldiers now lead all combat operations across their violence-racked nation, but government agencies such as the central crime lab are often unable to perform more than the basics. When Afghans investigate a roadside explosion, for example, the case often takes six to 12 weeks to close, US military officials said. By comparison, the investigation into the death of an allied soldier by US and NATO officials usually wraps up in three days.
All they need are the tools, Afghan leaders say, and they will do as well themselves.
“There’s a saying: If you bring me into this world, just give me a rope and I will find the necessities of life,” Qayum said.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in US spending and 2,286 American military deaths have made this a somewhat safer, more stable place, and led to better schools, public works improvements, and new respect for women’s rights.
As our schools and public works crumble from neglect.
Related:
"US and international donors have pledged more than $8 billion yearly in aid to keep Afghanistan’s military and economy running, including funds for development and infrastructure projects."
During an age of austerity!
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: Afghan Classroom
Did you learn any le$$ons?
But even American military officials concede that much remains to be done.
“This has been a monumental undertaking,” said Colonel Altrus “Ace” Campbell, who heads the allied effort against roadside bombs. Campbell, the Army’s top electronic warfare officer, was referring specifically to bringing the crime lab up to modern standards. But he could have been referring to the US effort in Afghanistan as a whole.
Despite the promise of progress, interviews with dozens of ordinary Afghans reveal a concern bordering on conviction that improvements across the country will rapidly disintegrate after the Americans leave.
We here in AmeriKa have been told this for years and years!
“Afghanistan is like a baby. We need more time,” said Sayed Mohammad Yasin Najafizada, 53, a former provincial official who lives in Kabul.
Yeah, those Afghans couldn't get along without us.
More time is unlikely, but top US commanders argue that the 55,000 American troops here will make the most of the 15 months ahead.
“The Afghans are in the lead. They’re in the fight. The casualties reflect that,” said Marine General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who commands allied forces in Afghanistan. “There’s no doubt in my mind that we can move to a train, advise, and assist role in 2015. They will be successful. I’m very confident of that.”
Continued success, however, probably will depend on continued American help — both on the ground and from a war-weary, spending-wary Congress. The legislative push-back against airstrikes in Syria, for example, shows that the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made US policy in the region much less predictable.
Yeah, the American people rising up with a huge bipartisan NO caused a divisive distraction of a shutdown.
Another unpredictable component is reaching an agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the size and role of US forces after 2014. American leaders would like a deal by this month, but talks continue amid speculation that a breakdown would trigger the so-called zero option: no US troops in 2015 and beyond.
Blah, blah, blah.
Such a scenario, Dunford said, would imperil the difficult and precarious gains made in Afghanistan.
“What we need to do is ensure that all our sacrifice actually has meaning well into the future,” said Dunford, who grew up in South Boston and Quincy. “I am absolutely sure that if we don’t stay here past 2014, that those networks that we have been suppressing here over the past decade will return.”
Meaning we are there forever.
The ‘Y2K effect’
US commanders and analysts say that an American force of about 10,000 advisers, as well as continued financial and military aid, should be enough to help the country repel new threats and consolidate past gains.
But there is no such confidence when the “zero option” is discussed....
Related: AmeriKa Has Lost Afghanistan
How many years ago was that? Is there really anything more to type?
The country has come too far, at too great a cost, to walk away and watch those gains evaporate, Dunford and other generals said.
I get the me$$age.
“When I first came to this country, Kabul was a city in ruins. It looked very similar to the cities of World War II, those photos of Dresden and Hamburg” in vanquished Nazi Germany, said Army Lieutenant General Mark A. Milley, a native of Winchester, Mass., who commands day-to-day operations in Afghanistan for the allied coalition.
Wow, western war crimes receive a mention!
“They had at that time been through 30-plus consecutive years of unrelenting warfare,” said Milley, who arrived in 2002 for his first of three tours. “There were no schools, very little electricity, and very little potable water. Roads were in very, very poor repair. No health care to speak of. Then you flash forward 12 years.”
Thirty years of warfare brought to them mostly by the CIA.
Now, Milley said, about one-third of the country’s population of 30 million is enrolled in school, and about 40 percent of those students are female. Under the Taliban, whose extreme Islamic rule ended after US intervention in 2001, girls were barred from the classroom.
That's a lie.
"She taught at one of the handful of girls’ schools the Taliban permitted"
You learn something new every day!
And I suppose all the the men and children the U.S. has killed was all a huge favor to them, as well as the destruction of villages and littering of the environment with war material.
Eighty percent of the population lives within an hour of medical care, he said, and thousands of miles of road have been paved in a country whose harsh geography has hindered travel and communication for thousands of years.
The ranks of the Afghan army and national police, which did not exist after the Taliban’s defeat in 2001, now number 350,000.
That's an inflated number and I no longer have the time to find posts from years ago to refute current lies. Believe who you want.
And perhaps most crucially, Milley said, is the exposure to new ideas from social media and technology. In 2001, one television station existed in Afghanistan. Now, the country has 50.
“Television, radio, the Internet, cellular phones, Twitter, Facebook — all those vehicles of communication have literally exploded in this country in the last 10 years,” Milley said. “And when you get a proliferation of information, then you no longer have to rely on a single source of information for how you view the world or the community.’’
Oh, I'M THERE, sir!
See:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
The pri$m through which we in New England see the world through out flaghit jewspaper.
The country also is increasingly populated by younger people, particularly in the cities, who did not grow up in the shadow of a Taliban government. About 55 percent of Afghanistan’s population is 25 or younger and has been exposed to Western values for much of their lives, Milley said.
There is little doubt that, in many respects, Afghanistan is a country transformed. But progress is not uniform, and some observers take issue with the US military’s talking points....
That is what I have been reading.
To Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University professor who advised General Stanley McChrystal when he commanded coalition forces in Afghanistan, the key to success here will be whether Congress continues to send money to the Afghan military after US combat forces depart. As the months and years pass, Biddle said, support from lawmakers might be tougher to obtain.
But even without US advisers, Biddle said, the Afghans probably can hold the territory they control. But they won’t be up to much more than that. “The Taliban probably won’t be able to drive into Kabul in their pickups again,” Biddle said.
However, he added that the two big goals of the war — that Afghanistan not be a base to attack the West or destabilize its neighbors — could be badly undermined if the standoff continues.
“The war is going to be going on after 2014,” Biddle said. “And as long as the war is going on, you can’t say you’ve achieved either of those two objectives.”
Apprehension and hope
Off a dirt street cratered by potholes and strewn with garbage, dozens of young people gather under the shade of apricot trees to peer at their laptops and chat.
This is the Afghan Cultural House, a lush, manicured oasis in chaotic Kabul where university students — men and, now women —prep for exams, troll the Internet, and look for romance. It’s the kind of forward-looking place that American policy makers, and the young people who animate the Cultural House, hope will represent the inquisitive, searching face of a new Afghanistan....
I want to vomit.
And that face is?
Sahar Fetrat, a 17-year-old who studies law at the American University of Afghanistan, stands beside her sister, Sadaf, a 20-year-old music student who is breaking down gender walls with her work playing in bands at wedding receptions.
I'm so sick of the war-promoting pre$$ waving women in our face to sell continued war!
The gigs are high-profile affairs in a city where gleaming, Las Vegas-style halls are sprouting to accommodate families who often empty their savings to pay for $10,000 wedding fetes.
But behind their smiles and optimism, the sisters concede that the future is a huge worry. If the country descends into factional fighting, Sahar says, women’s rights will be the first to be negotiated away.
“It’s a big fear,” Sahar says. “We have been fighting so hard to go to school.”
Across the garden, three men sit in folding chairs and compare notes from engineering class. Afghanistan needs plenty of engineers, but the men have little confidence that the Afghan army will provide enough protection to allow the country to develop.
“The government has power only in the cities. There will be civil war in the countryside,” says Mohammad Khalid, 22, a student from Wardak province, west of Kabul. “In my village, for example, there is no security.”
And where there is no security, the students say, there is corrosive fear.
But it's success, progress, and gains!
“I used to work with the British army, but I have abandoned my job as an interpreter,” says Mohammad Nassool, a 24-year-old from Kabul. “I left my village for my safety. The Taliban are aware of each interpreter in Afghanistan.”
The men say they want a democratic future for Afghanistan but acknowledge with sighs that most of their countrymen do not know what democracy means or requires. And Karzai, they say dismissively, is not the leader to nurture the concept.
I sigh a lot, too.
“Sometimes, he’s with the Taliban; sometimes, he’s with the international forces,” Khalid says of the president, throwing up his hands. “We don’t know what he is,” adds Zadihullah Safi, 32, from Kunar province, near Pakistan.
To Dunford, the coalition commander, the presidential election in April will be critical. If a peaceful transition of power occurs, with robust participation and little violence, a key psychological hurdle will be cleared for the many Afghans worried about the withdrawal of American troops.
Translation: the U.S will declare them a success so they can get out -- or claim they are a failure to stay in.
But if elections are delayed or riddled by fraud, a year of transition could become more unsettled — or worse.
Related:
"The elections will help determine if the billions spent by the United States and its allies in a nation-building campaign will have paid off."
Are you frikkin' kidding?
That's going to be the measure of success, some s*** election?
“The Afghan people at the end of the day are going to get the kind of government they demand. They are going to get the kind of security forces they demand. And what has to take place over time is developing a culture of accountability,” Dunford says.
So when are Americans going to get that?
Time, however, is not a friend.
As December 2014 approaches, Afghans such as Sahar Fetrat continue to relish the higher education and political participation that were denied the country under the Taliban. But they also realize that good intentions need muscle and national willpower to back them up. “I try to be optimistic,” Sahar says, “but only being optimistic is not good enough.”
That is a difficult thing to contemplate, and I will need a few moments of self-reflection.
--more--"
You can take heart, Afghans!
"Kerry, Karzai meet on extending US stay in Afghanistan" by Matthew Rosenberg | New York Times, October 12, 2013
KABUL — With talks on keeping US forces in Afghanistan beyond next year deadlocked, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Kabul on Friday to try to break the impasse and head off a full US withdrawal from the country.
Kerry was counting on his relatively good relationship with President Hamid Karzai to push through the two remaining sticking points in the talks on a long-term security deal that would allow US forces to remain here after the NATO combat mission ends in 2014.
But with neither Afghan nor US officials showing much willingness to compromise, a senior Western diplomat put the odds of a deal at “no better than 50-50.”
Senior officials on both sides expressed confidence over the summer that a deal would get done, and US generals spoke of staying on after 2014 as an inevitability. But....
But nothing.
Related: Partial accord reached to keep US forces in Afghanistan
Ah, yes, a "dramatic turn in talks that only a day earlier were deadlocked."
I'm so sick of the agenda-pushing dekes and deceptions from my newspaper.
Most of the issues that officials were most concerned about when talks began a year ago have been settled. The matter of legal immunity for US troops, which derailed similar talks with Iraq in 2011, is already resolved, for instance.
Instead, the two sides now find themselves struggling to bridge the divide on a pair of demands that Karzai says must be met, and that the Obama administration says it cannot or will not consider.
The first is Karzai’s insistence that the United States guarantee Afghanistan’s security as it would if the country were a NATO ally.
That could compel the United States to send troops on raids into Pakistan, an ally of Washington and a nuclear-armed power.
Doesn't seem like it will be much of a problem:
"Complicating the talks between Karzai and Kerry was a report that the US military had seized Latif Mehsud, a senior Pakistani Taliban leader in Afghanistan. Mehsud had been an asset for the Afghan intelligence services."
The guy is a member of the infamous TTP? I guess the CIA would know where to find one of their own.
Related:
[This incident is an eerie replay of the mysterious circumstances behind the secret British deal with Mansour Dadullah, the brother of Taliban legend Mullah Dadullah, the original organizer of the Pakistani Taliban (SEE: 'Great Game' or just misunderstanding?). Trying to make sense from conflicting reports of the recent incident, we come-up with the following scenario--Karzai's Peace negotiators were about to gain an inside track with the TTP leadership, to help him gain access to the Afghan Taliban leadership, by clinching a deal with the No. 2 TTP commander, Latif Mehsud. This was a replay of the British deal with Dadullah. In order to get their hands on Mehsud, US Special Forces stopped (attacked) the column of Afghan Special Forces that was escorting him, then abducted Mehsud from our Afghan allies---all to prevent Karzai from negotiating outside of American control.
There is an even more interesting sub-plot to all of this, Latif Mehsud is the central actor in Hakeemullah Mehsud's feeble attempt to hold onto Baitullah Mehsud's TTP organization (SEE: TTP headed for major split as Mehsud promotes his driver). This is a continuation of the Hakeemullah/Waliur Rehman feud. It didn't end with Rehman's death by drone attack last May. Odds are very high that one of Hakeemullah's boys were the ones who planted the drone tracking chip on Waliur, just as the rival Mullah Nazir group was probably responsible for planting the tracking chip on Hakeemullah's predecessor, Baitullah.) Rehman's second -in-command "Khan Said," alias Sajna, has evidently solidified his hold on all of the TTP terrorists, so that it is doubtful that they would have followed Mehsud, in the event that Hakeemullah was incapacitated or killed.
Was the reason that Mehsud was abducted by the American forces to prevent Karzai from interfering with a new anti-Pakistan TTP initiative, or merely to keep Karzai from escaping his American-made box? (SEE: US Secretary of State John Kerry makes unannounced Kabul visit). It seems very likely that this "Khan Said," alias Sajna, is the new American hand in FATA, the new incarnation of "Baitullah Mehsud." Hakeemullah was possibly telling the truth, when he blamed recent terror bombings on "others." Perhaps this is the new face of Pakistan's new "Public Enemy No. 1."] -- US Special Forces Forcibly Halt Karzai’s Peace Negotiations Once Again
I don't like to rely on a $ingle $ource of information anymore.
The Afghan leader is also refusing to allow US forces to continue hunting for operatives of Al Qaeda here. Instead, he wants any intelligence gathered by the United States handed over to Afghan forces, who could then conduct the raids on their own.
If the Americans are unwilling to meet both conditions, “they can leave,” Karzai told the BBC in an interview this week.
The Obama administration has made it clear that it may do just that in what has become known as the zero option.
I'm going to zero out all those and related talks articles I've lagged on the last nine months or so then because an agreement has been reached.
The pullout would be along the lines of what took place in Iraq, but the consequences for Afghanistan could be far more troubling. Afghanistan’s economy is anemic, and the government depends on the international community to pay almost 80 percent of its expenses.
The Taliban, meanwhile, remain a far more organized and potent threat than any Iraqi insurgent group was when US forces were forced to leave the Middle Eastern country at the end of 2011 after US and Iraqi officials failed to strike a deal that would have allowed them to stay on....
That does seem to be the only way to make them leave, so Al-CIA-Duh has infiltrated instead and turned Iraq into a hell.
--more--"
Also see: The Kerry Chronicles: Kicking Around Afghan Women
Just giving them a hand, 'er, foot.
