Remembering the Afghani People

I found this article this morning on CNN.com. It goes right along with what we discussed last week in section:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/02/bush.nato.france/index.html

Last Friday we talked for most of the last half of section about the peacekeeping, occupation, and nation building going on in Afghanistan, and what, if anything, the United States and her allies could be doing to better serve the native Afghani people and protect themselves. I think this article is telling us just how complicated a question this is. About five and a half years after the War on Terror began with the invasion of Afghanistan the member-states of NATO are still increasing their troop presence and vowing to extend their commitments. It would almost seem as though we’re simply throwing as much manpower as we can into the country and hoping that eventually everything just works itself out. Every single recent news article I found about Afghanistan pertains to one of three subjects: Increased troop deployment (see above), casualty counts for skirmishes with the Taliban, or how Afghanistan is being used as a pawn in US-Russian conflicts and Georgia and Ukraine’s bid to join NATO (again, see above). It leads one to wonder if we’ve lost sight of the fact that there are actually, non-terrorist people living in Afghanistan, and that our top priority should be their well being after our disposition of the Taliban regime, and NOT our political agendas. We did, after all, invade their country, the least we could do is be polite houseguests.

The fact that NATO strategists feel we need more troops isn’t just unsettling because of the ever increasing death counts. It tells us that about five years after the Taliban fell and democracy was instituted, the elected officials, backed by the combined armies of the west, don’t have control yet. The “hearts and minds” of the majority of the people may have been won over, but the Taliban will continue to operate without the hold over the populace they once had, and as long as they do, we’ll just keep sending troops. So where did we go wrong? One may say that the framework wasn’t in place. The Taliban kept order through fear despite waning infrastructure, something a legitimate government is hard pressed to do, and though the people would rather be governed democratically, it just can’t be done properly until the basic necessities of their country are met. With the Taliban attacking all attempts that NATO and the US make at creating such infrastructure, a stable state could be a distant hope.

It begs the question, what’s the point? Our leader has placed our armies in the middle of a vicious cycle. We leave until there’s stability, we can’t have stability without infrastructure, we can’t have infrastructure until the Taliban is gone, and the Taliban won’t be gone until we send many more troops, the opposite of us leaving. Perhaps it could be worth it if it really was stopping terrorism, but since 2001 we’ve seen many more instances, most notably in the transit systems of London and Madrid. US forces are in Afghanistan for the long haul, with neither their physical or ideological goals within reach. In order to best serve the needs of the Afghani people, which should be our main objective now that the Taliban regime is disposed of, we must either reassess our situation and role as occupiers and peacekeepers, or face a never ending cycle of war and death which will hurt us as much as them.

One last note I thought of while typing this. In Afghanistan, the people were very supportive of us, and the United States had and still has numerous allies trying to make things right. And yet, the War on Terror will be entering into its sixth year with no end in sight. What does that say about Iraq, where the people are much less cooperative, we have no allies, and there’s significantly more resistance?