[News] Afghanistan Starting to Look Like Iraq

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 10:58:58 -0500
From: listmgr at afghanwomensmission.org

Subject: Afghanistan Starting to Look Like Iraq

Dear Friends,

Please see the following article in which Afghan Women's Mission Director, 
James Ingalls is quoted. It highlights the increasing similarities between 
Iraq and Afghanistan.


Published by Inter Press Service
May 6th 2004

Afghanistan Starting to Look Like Iraq

by Thalif Deen

The growing instability in Afghanistan ñ a country under virtual military 
occupation by U.S. and other western forces ñ has been overshadowed by news 
of the escalating violence, torture and killings in U.S.-administered Iraq.

But analysts who closely monitor the region say security in Afghanistan 
remains "tenuous" and "has shown no signs of improvement." And they predict 
the explosive situation there might soon turn out to be as bad as Iraq ñ 
but on a smaller scale.

The similarities are striking. As in Iraq, insurgents in Afghanistan have 
not only been attacking the multinational military force but also local 
police and foreign aid workers.

The Pentagon, responding to charges of torture by US soldiers, said 
Wednesday that at least 25 prisoners have died in US custody, in both Iraq 
and Afghanistan.

But unlike Iraq, the potential destabilization of Afghanistan has taken 
added momentum following last week's announcement of possible US troop 
withdrawals from the politically troubled country.

During a visit to the Afghan capital Kabul, General Richard Myers, chairman 
of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted that Washington might gradually 
reduce its 15,500 troops immediately after nationwide elections scheduled 
for September.

Any such action, say Afghan analysts, would be a recipe for political and 
military disaster.

"If the United States cuts the number of troops after the Afghan elections, 
it would be the clearest confirmation of what many have feared ñ that the 
US main interest in Afghanistan is not stabilizing the country or improving 
people's lives, but getting Hamid Karzai elected president and making 
Afghanistan look like a 'war on terror' success in time for US 
(presidential) elections in November," says James Ingalls of the California 
Institute of Technology.

Ingalls, a founding director of the Afghan Women's Mission, also remains 
skeptical about the ability of the Karzai government to hold "fair and free 
elections," postponed till September from the original June timetable.

"The U.S.-backed warlords continue to control parts of the country with 
impunity," he told IPS. "If allowed to participate in the political 
process, they will likely bully and buy their way into parliamentary 
positions, as they have in the past."

"Those who don't get their way will resort to force. They have little 
incentive to do otherwise," he added.

"At best," Ingalls predicted, "the elections will be meaningless because 
the people have no real choices ñ who are Karzai's challenger(s)? ñ at 
worst, the elections could spark a new civil war."

Mark Sedra, a research associate at the Bonn International Center for 
Conversion, where he leads a project that monitors and analyses security in 
Afghanistan, is equally pessimistic about the future.

"A significant reduction of US troops in Afghanistan would send a very 
negative signal to the Afghan people," Sedra told IPS.

"It would fuel the growing perception among Afghans that the United States 
and the international community are once again turning their backs on the 
country ñ as they did after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union," he added.

The Soviets, who militarily occupied Afghanistan for over a decade, pulled 
out in 1989. The Taliban government that followed was ousted by US military 
forces in late 2001. Washington then installed Karzai, described by many as 
a US puppet, as the new prsident.

While insurgent groups such as the Taliban are not in a position to 
overthrow the central government, says Sedra, they still pose a potent 
security risk.

"By focusing their attacks on 'soft targets' such as aid workers and Afghan 
government employees, they have effectively halted development work in 
approximately one-third of the country," added Sedra, who recently returned 
from Afghanistan where he managed, on behalf of the United Nations, the 
security section of the Afghan government study tabled at last month's 
donor conference in Berlin.

Reconstruction of war-battered Iraq has come to a complete standstill 
because of the security situation. Both the World Bank and the United 
Nations, along with major humanitarian aid groups, have withdrawn all of 
their international staff because of security fears.

Since the killing of a U.N. aid worker in Afghanistan last November, most 
international staff working for more than 30 UN agencies have been 
withdrawn from southern and eastern Afghanistan. As a result, the United 
Nations has also suspended aid to refugees returning from neighboring Pakistan.

Jean Arnault, the UN special representative in the country, said he was 
"shocked" by last week's "brutal slayings" of two local aid workers in the 
southern city of Kandahar. The two worked for Coordination of Humanitarian 
Assistance, an international aid organization.

"This and other recent attacks in Kandahar urgently point towards the need 
to make more forces available to the provincial authorities in order to 
enable them to uphold the law and facilitate the expansion of 
reconstruction," Arnault told reporters last week.

The Taliban, warlordism and the booming opium trade are other current 
threats to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, according to Sedra.

"The US military presence in the country, while limited compared to Iraq, 
serves as a powerful deterrent to the outbreak of major hostilities, 
whether perpetrated by the Taliban or a regional warlord," he added.

The US military also provides vital support to the multinational 
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is in the process of 
expanding outside Kabul.

"The timing of the potential troop reduction, however, is also 
disconcerting, for if elections do take place in September, the period 
immediately following will likely be extremely tense," pointed out Sedra.

"It is in the immediate aftermath of the polls that we will see whether the 
country's major powerbrokers will accept its result.î

"The withdrawal of even a small number of troops would provide a 
psychological boost to insurgent groups and terrorists; embolden regional 
warlords to challenge the central government; and encourage interference in 
the country's affairs by regional actors, notably Pakistan and Iran." he added.

After his return from Kabul last January, UN Special Representative to 
Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi said that despite a heavy western military 
presence and a two-year-old U.S.-backed government in Kabul, Afghanistan 
was reduced to a country with no rule of law.

He implicitly criticized the government, the police, the army, the 
international community and the 4,500-strong ISAF for their failure to 
resolve the problem of insecurity.

"There is of course, what we see in our press, what we hear about on the 
radio, what we see on television about bombs that blow up here and there, 
about rockets that fall here and there," he said.

"But there is (also) the insecurity we don't see in the press: the fear 
that is in the heart of practically every Afghan because there is no rule 
of law yet in this country," he added.

(Inter Press Service)







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