The war in Afghanistan goes on... and on....
Repeat after me: Elphinstone !
Second verse, more horrific than the first.
Quote:
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......Restaurants open every week: a new Iranian kebab house is currently all the rage. The Aga Khan is building a five-star hotel. Rents - stimulated by the diplomatic and United Nations presence - are sky high. In some parts of town, a four-bedroom house at the end of a potholed road can earn $10,000 a month. ....
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Repeat after me:
Cavagnari !
Second verse, more horrific than the first.
Quote:
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This spring the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who have never been eradicated, and still lurk murderously in the mountains, gathering strength, moved on to a new strategy. They are no longer content with the robberies, hi-jacking, rocket attacks and roadblocks that have formed the standard method of disruption since the eyes of the West turned towards Iraq. They have now adapted a new tactic: execution. ....
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Repeat after me:
Yakub Khan !
Second verse, more horrific than the first.
Quote:
....The new mood of jittery nervousness may well have been behind the accidental killing of three Afghan soldiers by US embassy guards in a friendly fire incident last week.
The Taliban exudes confidence. ....
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Repeat after me:
Kabul Residency !
Second verse, more horrific than the first.
Quote:
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....So far donor countries have committed just $300m to road-building in all Afghanistan, by coincidence exactly the same amount of money as is being spent on reconstructing the US embassy in Kabul.
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Repeat after me:
Kabul Residency !
Second verse, more horrific than the first.
Quote:
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-.....Nor will the West put in the resources to provide safety. There are a number of different security organisations, each with distinct and contradictory objectives. Some 11,000 US troops, mainly Special Forces, still prosecute the war against terror. This is now an unending conflict, with echoes of Vietnam, fought in the untracked wasteland of the southern mountains and around the Pakistan border. But its aim is emphatically not the protection of the population at large.
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Repeat after me:
Elphinstone !
Second verse, more horrific than the first.
Quote:
Once again, statistics highlight the staggering scale of the Western betrayal. In Bosnia there was one peacekeeper for every 113 people, in East Timor every 66, in Kosovo every 48. There is one Isaf soldier for every 5,380 Afghans. Without an international security presence the Afghan countryside has fallen back into the hands of the warlords and their militias, conservatively estimated at some 200,000 strong. ....
One rainy morning we travelled to District Fourteen, an outer suburb of Kabul where Afghanistan's underclass, the Hezzara tribe, gather together for mutual protection. To them the local police HQ was simply a place of terror. The Hezzaras told us how the police had not even attempted to solve any of the 20 murders that had taken place over the past few months. They were certain that police officers were behind a spate of recent burglaries. There were claims that some policemen were really agents for a powerful local warlord, and exacting revenge on the Hezzara people for being on the wrong side during the Kabul wars.
This inability to pay the police reflects a wider problem. There is no money for the civil service, so government officials too are forced into corruption....
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Repeat after me:
Elphinstone ! Cavagnari ! Kabul Residency !
Second verse, more horrific than the first.
Quote:
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But that is not the biggest problem. Out in the provinces the US army continues to arm and to pay the warlords who help them in their battle against al-Qaeda. Even as Hamid Karzai battles to establish his national army, he is being undermined by his allies.
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Repeat after me:
History always repeats itself:
The first time as tragedy,
The second time as parody,
......
and the fifth time as the blackest of tragicomedies.
Second verse, more
dej� vu than the first.
05-25-2003, 08:00 AM
The war in Afghanistan goes on... and on....
