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Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 10:58:58 -0500<br>
From: listmgr@afghanwomensmission.org<br><br>
Subject: Afghanistan Starting to Look Like Iraq<br><br>
Dear Friends,<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<br>
Published by Inter Press Service<br>
May 6th 2004<br><br>
Afghanistan Starting to Look Like Iraq<br><br>
by Thalif Deen<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Any such action, say Afghan analysts, would be a recipe for political and
military disaster.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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."<br><br>
"Those who don't get their way will resort to force. They have
little incentive to do otherwise," he added.<br><br>
"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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"A significant reduction of US troops in Afghanistan would send a
very negative signal to the Afghan people," Sedra told
IPS.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
The Taliban, warlordism and the booming opium trade are other current
threats to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, according to
Sedra.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
The US military also provides vital support to the multinational
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is in the process
of expanding outside Kabul.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
"It is in the immediate aftermath of the polls that we will see
whether the country's major powerbrokers will accept its
result.î<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
(Inter Press Service)<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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