So security is the problem in Afghanistan, is it? Who would have believed it? Those freedom-loving Afghans feel no more liberated than their Iraqi brothers 1,200 miles further west, it seems.
For Fallujah, read Kandahar. For Baghdad, read Kabul. Jack Straw (the British Foreign Secretary) visits Kandahar and what happens just before this expert on weapons of mass destruction arrives?
Someone tries to blow up a local mosque, wounding 16 people, four of them seriously. Turns out the Imam, Mawlawi Abdullah Fayaz, had condemned the Taleban’s interpretation of Islam. Those pesky Taleban ‘remnants’ — always ‘remnants’, mark you — strike again.
But it’s much more serious than this. Afghanistan was ‘liberated’ by Straw’s government and that of George Bush. And now it’s in a state of anarchy and collapsing security. Then Iraq was ‘liberated’ by Straw’s government and that of George Bush.
And now it too is in a state of anarchy and increasing guerrilla insurrection. What on earth did Straw learn in Kandahar?
With Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s loquacious foreign minister, he talked about security, reconstruction and — of course — opium. But according to the UN, Afghanistan is once more the world’s top opium exporter. And narcotics production goes hand-in-hand with lawlessness.
So what does Straw tell his hosts in Afghanistan?
“As in any other country, security must lie in the hands of the people. At the end, we can do what we can, but it’s both your responsibility and your duty.”
Fayaz saw the waistcoat in the mosque — the waistcoat covering the bomb — just before it exploded. He was head of the local council of ulema who have supported the government of Hamid Karzai. So he became a target — just as a series of aid agencies and international troops have been targeted around Kandahar in recent weeks.
Yet the one demand that almost all Afghans make — that international troops should deploy to the cities of Afghanistan, not just in Kabul, and hoover up the millions of rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — is denied them by the United States (and, of course, therefore by Britain as well).
Why? The Americans are quite happy to confiscate weapons in Iraq. Why not in Afghanistan as well? Well, most Afghans have a shrewd idea of the answer.
The Americans know that Al-Qaeda is re-forming in Afghanistan, that they are doing so around the Taleban and that the “Allied success” (alias George Bush) and “victory” (alias Tony Blair) is beginning to look more and more like a disaster.
So the Americans are buying the local tribes to fight the Taleban, just as they bought the Northern Alliance with millions of dollars in 2001 to fight the Taleban.
And the tribes don’t want to be disarmed and made amenable to central government authority in Kabul.
So these tribal warlords — and the governor of Kandahar, whom Straw met, is one of them — have no interest in the kind of ‘security’ about which Straw was talking.
They want personal power; and as long as the Americans are in Afghanistan, with their huge airbase at Kandahar, they will have it.
True, we are going to send a “Provincial Reconstruction Team” to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif (a big thank you from the Northern Alliance) and Straw is indeed very worried about “security”. Tell this, as they say, to the Afghans.
- Arab News Opinion 3 July 2003
