[R-G] Afghanistan, the barely functioning state that trusted its saviours

[DavidMcR at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/24/03 4:49:23 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
vlerner at interpac.net writes:

<< 
  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=381093
 Living in poverty and fear of abandonment, the barely functioning state that
 trusted its saviours
 By Phil Reeves in Kabul
 24 February 2003
 
 
 The details are so compelling. The snowman, for instance, that someone built
 on a roundabout in the middle of this battered city.
 
 This was clearly meant to represent Osama bin Laden, for his name was
 written on his midriff. He also had a long scraggy beard made of grass and a
 Taliban head-dress.
 
 A little joke, a dash of black humour to take the mind off the oppressively
 cold weather and dismal poverty? Or was it an act of scorn at a defeated
 oppressor? Or an expression of support? And what about the blizzard of
 propaganda leaflets flung into the streets from a passing car the other
 night?
 
 That was the first time the "night letters" – regularly distributed in
 provincial cities – have appeared in the capital, threatening jihad against
 the foreign soldiers and their allies. Are these the desperate death throes
 of defeated Islamist extremists, or a sign that they are rallying anew? And
 what of the persistent whispers that al- Qa'ida and Taliban elements have
 secretly slipped back into Kabul? These were considered serious enough by
 the United Nations security analysts for them to issue a kidnapping warning
 to staff on Thursday.
 
 Now, remember, this is Kabul, a city protected by nearly 5,000 international
 peacekeepers, and the safest, quietest place in Afghanistan. Yet anxiety is
 gripping it like winter flu.
 
 These unsettling little tremors, possible signals of a more dangerous
 faultline, are not all. A more basic issue is in play: a deep concern in
 Kabul that the international community is losing interest even though the
 task of repairing the wreckage of war – let alone, the even more massive job
 of nation-building – has just begun.
 
 People remember Tony Blair's pronouncement that the world "will not walk
 away from Afghanistan, as it has done so many times before". But Afghans
 have also listened with astonishment as Americans portray their country's
 experience since the overthrow of the Taliban as a "success".
 
 Now the United States is priming its laser-guided bombs anew, and the
 attention of the world's media has swivelled to the deserts and oilfields of
 Iraq. Few in Kabul seem convinced by the repeated assurances – from the US
 government and its military, from the UN and Britain – that they will not be
 forgotten or allowed to lapse back into the bloodshed that prevailed after
 the occupying Soviet forces were driven out by the CIA-funded and CIA-armed
 mujahedin in 1989.
 
 There are plenty who dislike the presence of the Americans and their allies
 sweeping around their pot-holed streets in shiny new four-by-fours or army
 jeeps. This is a city that still has a deeply conservative strain – despite
 all the trumpeting about the liberation of women, many of those on the
 streets still wear burqas – and one whose capacity for trust has been
 corroded by past international betrayals. But a fear of abandonment – or at
 least a sharp fall-off in international support – is palpable and
 encompasses many international aid agency workers as well as residents. One
 agency official, a veteran of several previous conflicts, told The
 Independent: "The Pentagon and the White House have absolutely no policy on
 Afghanistan."
 
 You find the anxiety in the squalid little shack where Ilal Mohammed adds a
 few dollars to his $30 monthly income as a government worker by renting out
 DVDs of women's wrestling and vaguely raunchy Hindi movies – unthinkable in
 the Taliban days. Feeding his five small children is hard and conditions at
 home are miserable. But, he says, it wasworse before.
 
 You find it over the road in the grubby hut where Hazrat Shah, a gnarled
 75-year-old Pashtun, is selling firewood – a thriving business in a city
 routinely plagued by power cuts and freezing weather. He has seen it all –
 Soviet invasion, civil war, the rise of the Taliban, the arrival of the
 Americans after 9/11. There is at last a measure of relative stability, he
 says. But these are "very risky times".
 
 And it is there in the outdoor money-changers' market, where a local surgeon
 called Dr Ali – he was fearful of giving his full name – is investing in a
 few greenbacks. He spelt the position out better than anyone. "If the
 Americans attack Iraq and leave here, we will lose everything. We have
 already been through that once before, and we don't want it to happen again.
 The international community is our only hope, the only way that we can stand
 on our two feet one day." That day is still a very long way off. The brave
 new world promised in the aftermath of the Taliban's ousting has yet to
 dawn. The country is not remotely close to becoming a functioning state,
 with a viable infrastructure and control over its territory. And the US-led
 war against al-Qa'ida is not over, even though the world's attention has
 drifted elsewhere.
 
 A year ago, the impromptu church service held this month for a small group
 of US infantrymen in the mountains of south-eastern Afghanistan would have
 made TV news bulletins worldwide. We would all have seen Capt Jimmy Nichols,
 battalion chaplain for 2-504 Parachute Infantry Regiment, lead his soldiers
 in a gruff rendering of the hymn "Keep on the Firing Line". Dressed in full
 combat gear, he launched into a sermon about Samson, turning to the wrathful
 pages of the Old Testament to fire up his men before they resumed their
 efforts to kill or capture a small group of armed zealots.
 
 Samson was, the chaplain declared, the "original tough guy, long before
 Rambo", whose "super-strength" was a gift from God. "God has given us also
 gifts. You see, the reason that Samson is such a good story for folks like
 you and me in the military is that Samson is you – Samson is me."
 
 On the front line, fundamentalism is used to fight fundamentalism.
 
 But, 15 months after the fall of the Taliban, the American Samson has yet to
 prevail. According to Col Roger King, the US military spokesman at the
 Bagram air base outside Kabul, there are "probably several hundred" Taliban
 and al- Qa'ida forces around Afghanistan and "maybe a larger number" over
 the border with Pakistan. Some of these forces appear to have forged links
 with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a militiaman who once pocketed CIA funds to fight
 the Soviet Union before joining the civil war, earning a reputation for
 extreme brutality. He is marching under the banner of a self-declared jihad
 against the Americans and their allies.
 
 The head of the Hezb-i- Islami party, he is suspected in Kabul of
 involvement in numerous rocket attacks and a car bomb that killed 30 in
 September. Last year he narrowly missed being killed by a missile fired by a
 CIA Predator, an unmanned aircraft.
 
 There are other ominous signs. Some 400 rockets have been fired at American
 forces in 10 months. They find two or three caches of arms, often 107mm
 Chinese rockets, each week. "This place is a 100 times more dangerous than
 Iraq," said one US reserve officer at Bagram, a veteran of Operation Desert
 Storm in Iraq in 1991. "Here they are liable to toss a grenade under your
 vehicle at any time." A fortnight ago the Taliban issued what is thought to
 be its first communiqué since being removed from power. It named two senior
 figures – Mullah Obaeidullah and Mullah Biradar – as commanders in a new
 campaign to oust the Americans.
 
 And the international effort to help establish a meaningful central
 government under Hamid Karzai is also incomplete. Many of the building
 blocks of a viable nation – institutions capable of imposing law and order,
 health services, power supplies, a road network, communications, education –
 are often absent.
 
 In the first six months of the Karzai interim administration, two ministers
 including the first vice-president were assassinated. The President came
 close to being killed in Kandahar last September.
 
 Some international agency workers report that there is outright anger and
 frustration in the provinces over the slow pace of reconstruction and the
 lack of security, a sense that the Karzai government has done nothing for
 them. Ethnic rivalries are crucial: dissatisfaction is said to be
 particularly strong among Pashtuns, who believe that the interim government
 is dominated by the light-skinned, sandy-haired and often green-eyed
 Panjshiris.
 
 The Karzai transitional government has been unable to assert its control
 over most of the country. Until it does so, the free-and-fair elections
 required next year by the Bonn Agreement will remain a pipe dream.
 
 The UN and Hamid Karzai have tried to persuade the international community
 to tackle the resulting "security vacuum" by extending Kabul's peace-keeping
 force, the International Security Assistance Force, (Isaf) to key provincial
 cities – exporting the relative stability that they have created within the
 capital.
 
 These efforts failed. The Pentagon has proposed a cheaper option:
 dispatching reconstruction teams of 80 to 100 dominated by US reservists to
 provincial centres. But this has met strong opposition from international
 aid agencies.
 
 In the meantime, Afghanistan is awash with hundreds of thousands of weapons,
 many supplied by the West after the Soviet invasion. Much of this arsenal,
 including tanks, is in the hands of rival warlords who are still feuding
 over control of key trading routes. Though several have taken senior jobs
 and most have expressed verbal support for the Karzai government, they have
 yet to relinquish their private armies.
 
 The lack of money has dogged Afghanistan from the start. A year ago, the
 World Bank estimated $10.2bn (£6.4bn) was needed over five years.
 International pledges were about half that sum. And, according to Care
 International, an NGO monitoring international aid, the money actually
 spentper capita last year in Afghanistan was under half that of
 post-conflict Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor. The CIA has spent some
 of that paying warlords and militias for help in the "war on terror" –
 strengthening rivals to the central government.
 
 So what does this tell us about the fate of Iraq after the Americans have
 taken it apart?
 
 It is not hard to find international aid workers who see that the problems
 of Afghanistan will be repeated in Iraq. "There is a real question over
 whether the international community is prepared to take on the burden of
 rebuilding Iraq over the long term," said Paul O'Brien, advocacy
 co-ordinator for Care in Afghanistan.
 
 Another Western observer summed up his views more acidly. "If the Americans
 think this is success, then outright failure must be pretty horrible to
 behold."
 
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