Politics

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Permalink Reply by Jawid on January 14, 2009 at 11:17pm

Nowadays there are talks that the new government in American will reconsider their foreign policies toward Afghanistan. The same thing is expected to be announced by NATA, and Britain foreign Minister recently wrote that anti-terrorism camping is full of ambiguity. Can we discuss what made all these people after 7 years to confess their mistakes? In other words, how much cost we have paid? Who are to bear that cost?

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Howard on February 15, 2009 at 6:57pm

I have to say that my husband and I have been very pleased that President Obama has chosen to stop using language that is inflammatory especially the fact that he has chosen to stop using the phrase "War On Terror". Over time, many people have linked terrorism to all Muslims and that is wrong. Think of how long the United States has been unable to brake through the racial barrier in our own country. Slavery was abolished so long ago yet so many stereotypes remain to this day that continue to drive a wedge between some whites and some blacks in the U. S. Profound progress has been made however with the election of our new President who is a black man, and I pray that we continue to move forward in this country and around the world being more careful with the words we choose. I sometimes feel that all Americans are stereotyped as being selfish, rich, spoiled, UnGodly and unaware of what goes on in the world. Of course there are Americans like that, but there are also many, many, many Americans who are kind, extremely aware and hopeful about realizing peace in our world for all people. It's true. What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by Marc Belanger on January 19, 2009 at 9:33am

Jawid raises some very important questions. The Bush Administration promised to defeat the Taliban and rebuild Afghanistan but has not really followed through on either of those goals. I am not sure that President Bush ever admittted any mistakes but some military officials in the US say that a military victory is not possible and that it might be better to negotiate with the Taliban and other regional forces. When President-Elect Obama talks about Afghanistan, it is mostly about finding Bin Laden. This reminds me of the 80s when the US was fighting the Soviets and lost interest once they were out. I fear the same thing will happen again. What do people think should happen now?

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Permalink Reply by Karen Butterworth on January 20, 2009 at 9:13pm

Finding Bin Laden would bring one goal to a close, but it won't solve all of the issues. My worry is that everyone has very high hopes for President Obama and our country and our world is quite a mess. There is no one person that can fix it all. The American Public proves to be hot and cold and rarely warm. My hope is that the public oppinion will not turn cold because we don't get our instant gratification. I think that President Obama has a good team and things will improve in both wars Afghanistan and Iraq, but it will take a long time. In the end, time will tell.

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Permalink Reply by Elham Gharji on February 28, 2009 at 1:10am

People in Afghanistan really want the US involvement to go beyond finding Bin Laden. but it depends on how the US evaluates its engagement in Afghanistan. It is said that the US under Obama will leave the state building and development job in Afghanistan to its European partners and itself would go to find Bin Laden. There are extensive discussions in the US on the question why should the US be engaged in Afghanistan once Al-Qaeda is destroyed? Many have argued that the sole purpose of the the US involvement in Afghanistan was the war on terror and the defeat of Al-Qaeda. Now that Al-Qaeda is not there, why should we spend even a day in there?

From the Afghan perspective, the US re-assessment of its Afghan-engagement should be focused on re-assessing the later question. Important questions in this assessment would be: Is terrorism and anti-Americanism what only Bin Laden is doing, or anti-US ideology is discourse that has educated a generation of Anti-US terrorists in the region? Is the US security problem really Al-Qaeda? how can we contain Pakistanis and the Taliban in order for them not to harm the US and the US interests in the region? How properly have we conceived terrorism in the context of 21 century global security?

It will be disastrous to both Afghanistan and the US if US leaves Afghanistan once Al-Qaeda is weakened. It will be a failure of democratic discourse and commitment to freedom in the West. This should harm the west more than any military defeat!

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Permalink Reply by Elham Gharji on February 28, 2009 at 2:01am

A useful article concerning the topic:

A Strategy for Afghanistan
By Henry A. Kissinger Thursday, February 26, 2009 The Washington Post Page A19

The Obama administration faces dilemmas familiar to several of its predecessors. America cannot withdraw from Afghanistan now, but neither can it sustain the strategy that brought us to this point.

The stakes are high. Victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan would give a tremendous shot in the arm to jihadism globally -- threatening Pakistan with jihadist takeover and possibly intensifying terrorism in India, which has the world's third-largest Muslim population. Russia, China and Indonesia, which have all been targets of jihadist Islam, could also be at risk.

Heretofore, America has pursued traditional anti-insurgency tactics: to create a central government, help it extend its authority over the entire country and, in the process, bring about a modern bureaucratic and democratic society.

That strategy cannot succeed in Afghanistan -- especially not as an essentially solitary effort. The country is too large, the territory too forbidding, the ethnic composition too varied, the population too heavily armed. No foreign conqueror has ever succeeded in occupying Afghanistan. Even attempts to establish centralized Afghan control have rarely succeeded and then not for long. Afghans seem to define their country in terms of a common dedication to independence but not to unitary or centralized self-government.

The truism that the war is, in effect, a battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan population is valid enough in concept. The low standard of living of much of the population has been exacerbated by 30 years of civil war. The economy is on the verge of sustaining itself through the sale of narcotics. There is no significant democratic tradition. Reform is a moral necessity. But the time scale for reform is out of sync with the requirements of anti-guerrilla warfare. Reform will require decades; it should occur as a result of, and even side by side with, the attainment of security -- but it cannot be the precondition for it.

The military effort will inevitably unfold at a pace different from the country's political evolution. Immediately, however, we are able to make sure that our aid efforts, now diffuse and inefficient, are coherent and relevant to popular needs. And much greater emphasis should be given to local and regional entities.

Military strategy should concentrate on preventing the emergence of a coherent, contiguous state within the state controlled by jihadists. In practice, this would mean control of Kabul and the Pashtun area. A jihadist base area on both sides of the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border would become a permanent threat to hopes for a moderate evolution and to all of Afghanistan's neighbors. Gen. David Petraeus has argued that, reinforced by the number of American forces he has recommended, he should be able to control the 10 percent of Afghan territory where, in his words, 80 percent of the military threat originates. This is the region where the "clear, hold and build" strategy that had success in Iraq is particularly applicable.

In the rest of the country, our military strategy should be more fluid, aimed at forestalling the emergence of terrorist strong points. It should be based on close cooperation with local chiefs and coordination with their militias to be trained by U.S. forces -- the kind of strategy that proved so successful in Anbar province, the Sunni stronghold in Iraq. This is a plausible approach, though it seems improbable that the 17,000 reinforcements President Obama recently committed are enough. In the end, the fundamental issue is not so much how the war will be conducted but how it will be ended. Afghanistan is almost the archetypal international problem requiring a multilateral solution for a political framework to emerge. In the 19th century, formal neutrality was sometimes negotiated to impose a standstill on interventions in and from strategically located countries. This provided a framework for defusing day-to-day international relations. (Belgian neutrality, for example, was not challenged for nearly 100 years.) Is it possible to devise a modern equivalent?

In Afghanistan, such an outcome is achievable only if its principal neighbors agree on a policy of restraint and opposition to terrorism. Their recent conduct argues against such prospects. Yet history should teach them that unilateral efforts at dominance are likely to fail in the face of countervailing intervention by other outside actors. To explore such a vision, the United States should propose a working group of Afghanistan's neighbors, India and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Such a group should be charged with assisting in the reconstruction and reform of Afghanistan and establishing principles for the country's international status and obligations to oppose terrorist activities. Over time, America's unilateral military efforts can merge with the diplomatic efforts of this group. As the strategy envisaged by Petraeus succeeds, the prospects for a political solution along these lines would grow correspondingly.

The precondition for such a policy is cooperation with Russia and Pakistan. With respect to Russia, it requires a clear definition of priorities, especially a choice between partnership or adversarial conduct insofar as it depends on us.

The conduct of Pakistan will be crucial. Pakistan's leaders must face the fact that continued toleration of the sanctuaries -- or continued impotence with respect to them -- will draw their country ever deeper into an international maelstrom. If the jihadists were to prevail in Afghanistan, Pakistan would surely be the next target -- as is observable by activity already taking place along the existing borders and in the Swat Valley close to Islamabad. If that were to happen, the affected countries would need to consult each other about the implications of the nuclear arsenal of a Pakistan being engulfed or even threatened by jihadists. Like every country engaged in Afghanistan, Pakistan has to make decisions that will affect its international position for decades.

Other countries, especially our NATO allies, face comparable choices. Symbolically, the participation of NATO partners is significant. But save for some notable exceptions, public support for military operations is negligible in almost all NATO countries. It is possible, of course, that Obama's popularity in Europe can modify these attitudes -- but probably to only a limited extent. The president would have to decide how far he will carry the inevitable differences and face the reality that disagreements concern fundamental questions of NATO's future and reach. Improved consultation would ease this process. It is likely to turn out, however, that the differences are not procedural. We may then conclude that an enhanced NATO contribution to Afghanistan's reconstruction is more useful than a marginal military effort constrained by caveats. But if NATO turns into an alliance a la carte in this manner, a precedent that can cut both ways would be set. Those who tempt a U.S. withdrawal by their indifference or irresolution evade the prospect that it would be the prelude to a long series of accelerating and escalating crises.

President Obama said Tuesday night that he "will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world." Whatever strategy his team selects needs to be pursued with determination. It is not possible to hedge against failure by half-hearted execution.

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Permalink Reply by Jawid on January 20, 2009 at 6:30am

I think the US foreign policy needs to be a bit flexible. Flexibility in the sense that when things proved to be ineffective, re-evaluate the policies and search for feasible solutions. In the last couple of years, both the Americans and the Afghans discerned that the strategy chosen for Afghanistan is wrong. But no action was taken. I hope Obama’s theme “change” will be translated into reality.

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Permalink Reply by Zahid on January 22, 2009 at 4:38am

That is true that there is a need for change and change should be positive. Like millions of other people around the globe, Afghans and Iraqis are hopeful for and expect positive changes in their life, country and surroundings.
On behalf of myself and on behalf of people who think like me, I am thankful to the previous government of the US for their generous contributions and cooperation that they have made to Afghan people. I believe they have, to a large extent, fulfilled their promises. We will never forget… but I also should admit that there were some shortcomings in the way the strategy toward Afghanistan was conducted. For example, many civilian casualties have significantly damaged the US image in many minds within Afghanistan… I hope those mistakes are avoided this time and I hope Obama’s administration realize those facts and stay committed to their promises that they have made with American people, Afghans, Iraqis and International society. WE ARE IN THE STATE OF HOPE YET…!!!

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Permalink Reply by Elham Gharji on March 2, 2009 at 1:26am

On Saturday 28th of February 2009, President Hamid Karzai ordered the Independent Election Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan to re-schedule the date for the election, in order to comply with the constitution. The constitution has set the date of elections, 30-60 days before the incumbent president’s five-year term finishes on the 21st of May. The IEC had declared earlier that it could not conduct the election in the given constitutional timeframe due to the current security environment and a lack of technical facilities, including the required $220 million for the election budget. The IEC therefore, decided to postpone the election to 21 of August 2009. The decision by the President Karzai to order the IEC to re-schedule the election date further complicates the political process, generating new challenges and uncertainties.

The presidential decree has generated new discussions on the statue of the Independent Election Commission which is conceived to be run independent of the Afghan government. The new circumstance created by the presidential decree for the IEC puts the Commission in a difficult condition in terms of identifying its status in relation to the executive power. If the IEC complies with the presidential decree, then it might lose the trust of the public as an independent institution and will be regarded as being controlled by the president. This will seriously affect its legitimacy in terms of conducting the election in a fair, free and transparent.

There are serious doubts about the possibilities of an earlier election. Given the current technical limitations and political context, it is impossible for the IEC to conduct an earlier election within the time limit identified in the constitution. Furthermore, according to the election law of Afghanistan, the IEC has to declare the exact date of the election 90 days before the Election Day, in order to give potential candidates sufficient time for preparation. Therefore, the IEC can not legally announce an earlier election date as identified in the constitution.

With the legal constraints pertaining to announcing the election date in April, it is obvious that the authorities will have to decide on a later election date. This time around however, the blame will not be placed on President Karzai, but the circumstance. The circumstance can also be utilized by the president to either call for a Loya Jirga mechanism instead of the regular election or, very unlikely, issue a state of emergency after his term finishes on May 21. The first option, most likely to be tried, might allow the president to extent his term, but all these will depend on how the Loya Jirga processes will turn out. It is extremely hard to control the Loya Jirga process.

What do you think?

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