Karzai Declared President;
Questions about Afghan Police Recruits;
Bad Translations Land Innocents in Jail
Hamid Karzai has been declared the winner of the Afghanistan presidential contest by the misnamed Independent Electoral Commission, the local Afghan commission appointed by . . . Hamid Karzai. The commission ruled that since the only other candidate had withdrawn, there was no point in holding a run-off election, and that Karzai had won by default. His rival, Abdullah Abdullah appears to still be seeking cabinet posts for members of his party, though he himself is not willing to join the government. Karzai says he wishes to reach out to the civil political opposition in forming his government.
President Obama responded to the announcement by asking Karzai to do more to stop corruption in the country.
Aljazeera English has video of the pressure Karzai's reelection puts on President Obama:
Russia Today interviews Abdullah Abdullah for his reaction to the announcement of Karzai's win:
Meanwhile, it turns out that Canadian and probably US military interpreters of Pashto sometimes mistranslate statements of detainees, causing them to be branded Taliban and sent to prison! The CBC says that Thomas Hammes, a retired US Marine colonel who also was in Afghanistan told it: "We're willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure ice cream and steak is there . . . And I would trade all of that for my entire tour if I could have one decent translator . . . Many times I'd trade body armour for a translator."
Washington's plans for Afghanistan are premised on an ability to train up 200,000 police, and another 200,000 regular army troops, to provide security for the country. This plan does not reckon with social realities, such as the ethnic composition of the army and police, and such as the fact that 90% of the present army troops are illiterate. A US police chief who helped train Afghan policemen reports, according to Mark Brunswick of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
' Ball spent 15 months in Afghanistan, overseeing a $340 million annual contract to recruit and train the country's nearly nonexistent national police force for DynCorp International with the U.S. State Department. Many of the recruits he was provided -- some under threat of imprisonment if they did not show up -- did not know right from left. Some had never seen their reflection in a mirror. Opium drug lords, more than the Taliban, run provinces like plantation owners in the Old South. Government officials at the highest levels not only tolerate corruption but expect it.'
Noah Coburn and Ana Larsen explain why [pdf] the presidential election, which coincided with provincial elections, was and was not a disaster. They maintain that legitimacy in Afghanistan lies on a spectrum rather than being a black and white matter, and point to Karzai's Hazara constituency beyond his Pashtun one.
In Afghanistan, US troops fight and die, and a Chinese firm is awarded a $3 bn. copper mining contract.
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End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/03/2009 12:29:00 AM
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6 Comments:
"Spreading democracy" - isn't that what Washington claims is the goal of their foreign policy?? hmmmmmm Afghanistan feels more like a tragic Saturday Night Live sketch.
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Colonel Hammes goes by "Tom" or "T. X." That's what he told me over breakfast when we collaborated on a project in August 2008.
http://www.ndu.edu/inss/index.cfm?type=section&secid=8&pageid=126
I did some graphics for his chapter.
And I don't think he fought in Afghanistan, just Iraq. But I'm often wrong.
your avid student
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[‘Taliban’, Warlords and Druglords] “run provinces like plantation owners in the Old South.” see also: Matthew Hoh, "valleyism" (doncha love the malleability of naïve chat & chew English newspeak :-)
MATTHEW HOH: ...the way the country works, it's so localized there. It's what I refer to and other people refer to as ‘valleyism’. They're concerned with their...
JUDY WOODRUFF: Valleyism ?
MATTHEW HOH: ‘Valleyism’, yes, so if you take the idea of ‘nationalism’, shrink it down to a much smaller level... These are folks who live within communities of 100 to 500 people. And that's -- I don't want to say where their world ends, but that's what they're concerned with. And they have never had a central government there that has done any good, that has never -- that has delivered services to them. And they have never had a central government that has brought them anything. It's only taken. And, so, to them, whether it was the ‘Najibullah’, the ‘Rabbani’, the ‘Taliban’, or the ‘Karzai government’, they're all one in the same.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, the argument, though, by as you know, by General Stanley McChrystal, who's in charge over there for the military, by John McCain, who's very much in favor of the U.S. staying [= military occupation], is that, if the U.S. leaves, ‘Taliban’ takes over, and al-Qaida is going to come back.
MATTHEW HOH: I don't believe al-Qaida will "come back" -- I believe that, since 2001, al-Qaida has evolved : They have turned into, as I like to say, an ideological cloud that exists on the Internet and recruits worldwide. They -- if you look at the attacks al-Qaida has been successful with over the last seven, eight years, including attacks on 9/11, they weren't conducted by Afghans or Pakistanis.
And a lot of the preparation and training, it took place in Western Europe or even here in the United States. So, I don't think al-Qaida has any interest in ever tying itself again to a geographical or political boundary. [They don't want to rule anything; nor do they have any need for rulers, such as ‘Taliban’, or anyone else, anywhere else, to be an existential threat to US]. I think Al-Qaida is content to exist as they have evolved. And they are a threat, and they should be our priority. We need to defeat them. But, again, 60,000+ troops [military occupation-ism] in Afghanistan does not defeat ‘al-Qaida-ism’.»
It seems like Abdullah-two-times' concession is part of a larger deal, backed by the US government, to reduce the possibility of further instability in Afghanistan by pressuring Karzai-bin-Kingsley to work on a power sharing compromise formula.
While this may very well provide the US with a stable partner to work with in Kabul, I doubt it will significantly change the situation in the rest of the country. Not as long as the CIA continues to work with drug kingpins and warlords in the hopes of a quick-and-dirty fix to the AfPak problem.
Interesting report about negotiations between the Taliban and USA offering Taliban control over 6 provinces in exchange for 8 NATO, assumedly permanent, bases. The report was denied by the USA.
In Afghanistan, US troops fight and die, and a Chinese firm is awarded a $3 Billion copper mining contract.
In Iraq, US troops squat and Occupy, while a British petroleum giant makes off with the Iraqis' OIL.
Outcry against 'colonial' takeover by BP of Rumaila oilfield in Iraq
The British oil giant British Petroleum will today take control of Iraq’s biggest oilfield in the first important energy deal since the 2003 invasion. The move has created uproar among local politicians invoking resentful memories of their nation’s colonial past.
Many Iraqi MPs say that the deal is illegal, and that the constitution should give them, not the Oil Minister, the final say over the country’s vast resources.
BP has not been criticised directly, but its involvement will revive memories of past exploitation by the British. It is believed widely that Britain created and controlled the country for the benefit of British exporters.
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