I know we have limited choices on how to proceed in this action, but every instinct I have says this one’s going to bite us in the butt:
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2001-daily/02-10-2001/main/main10.htm
Will the Afghan people accept anyone a western power helps into place? Will the Northern Alliance instantly turn on us as soon as the Taliban is ousted? “‘No harm in trying,’ say U.S. strategists”, but I dunno.
IMHO, those people are all nuts. Half a century of war, famine, and poverty has created a nation of violent psychopaths. It doesn’t matter which group (Taliban, Northern Aliance, whoever) is in charge because the fighting will continue.
Whatever group we help put in charge, the other groups will then blame us for their shitty country and then we’ll be right where we started from.
RAWA, the underground Afghan woman’s association is very much opposed to any dealings with the Northern Alliance. Apparently their human rights record isn’t exactly sterling either.
Reports indicate that the Northern Alliance is rolling around on an axle that is nearly as bent as the Taleban’s.
However difficult to implement, whatever interim government that rules Afghanistan may need to exclude all of these unstable elements by force and painstakingly introduce some form of democracy instead. Just how, I do not know. The information from RAWA does little to give me hope for the rebels or the plight of women there.
It’s a catch 22. We’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t.
If we take out the Taliban ourselves (easy enough to accomplish)and try to bring order out of chaos, we risk being viewed as oppressors. If we help the Northern Alliance, we risk siding with a potential future enemy who we’ve supplied with weapons.
Anything that would bring a little stability to the country and by extension the region would be a good thing. The current Taliban have proven that they don’t want to play with every one else. I’m under no illusions about the Northern Alliance. Elements of the Taliban will remain in whatever new tribal coalition emerges, probably a reinvented Taliban sans Bin Laden’s millions.
So, probably end up with a new coalition that brings a modicrum of stability to the country. Then, some much needed foreign aid would further add to stability and provide a carrot. It might even influence Afganistan in a positive way. Right now, there is zero stick that the US, West and maybe the entire world has to influence Afganistan.
Please read this article. Very well written by a former Pakistani leader, and answers the question perfectly (sorry haven’t bothered to figure out links yet.)
<http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/opinion/41110_bhuttop.shtml>
(I was in fact going to start a thread on this today, but I’ll just throw it in here instead)
msmith537 + others, IMHO you have a very unfortunate, pessimistic philosophy. Why try anything, if its bound to fail? Why try to give human rights to blacks in the 60’s, they hadn’t bettered themselves for almost 100 years since slavery was over, right? Hopeless cause. And if you say yes, and look, “they” just blame “us”,well,i’ll give up.
The problem is that it’s not like trying a new model of car for awhile and then trading it in if we don’t like it. What I’m suggesting is that we don’t simply prop up one bad government in order to replace another. Supporting the Taliban against the Russians left us in the curent situation. I don’t know enough about Afghan history to really say who should be running the country. But I do think we should support groups that share our idealogy (ie freedom, self determination) and not just take an “the enemy of my enemy…” approach. That is shortsighted at best.
Exactly the point of my link and my post. I’m glad we have a like mind mrsmith 
Hello theretsof. I’ve fixed the link which is here.
Mrs Bhutto has some interesting points to make, but she doesn’t so much say what should be done as what should not be done.
In cautioning against supporting the strongest faction of the Northern Alliance, does Mrs. Bhutto imply that the US should sponsor all seven groups on a shared basis? If so, she must be aware that these guys are going to have a problem forming any kind of committee for the government of Afghanistan due to mutual antipathy.
I had no idea that Pakistan had only been afflicted by a drug culture for such a short time.
Benazir Bhutto makes some valid points there. And she of all people oughta know. It was on her watch when the Taliban took over. Rather ironic for a feminist leader.
Of course, it wasn’t her directly who sent the Taliban into Afghanistan. It was Pakistani Intelligence who set them up. I don’t know exactly to what extent she approved that operation, or how much they snuck it under her nose.
I had been following Benazir’s career since the mid-1980s, and cheered her on when she was on her way to becoming the Prime Minister. I felt very delighted and encouraged as an Islamic feminist to see her succeed. But what I hadn’t counted on was the extreme corruption of the whole government that is endemic in Pakistan. It’s the most corrupt country in the world. She and her husband turned out to be just as corrupt as anyone else, which is why she got thrown out. Twice.
I have no idea to what extent she was complicit in setting up the Taliban. Probably something like Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. Except that in this case the spooks succeeded in infiltrating their agents into the neighboring country. One thing you have to understand is the intense rivalry between Pakistan and Afghanistan that had been going on for 50 years. Afghanistan had been causing irredentist problems over the border with Pakistan’s Pathan ethnic group since the 1950s. Afghanistan and India were both cooperating in the Soviet orbit to make trouble for Pakistan. This has driven Pakistan’s longtime foreign policy objective of neutralizing Afghanistan’s propensity to interfere with them. Thus the Pakistani military & intel had the designs first by installing their own mujahidin government during the anti-Soviet war, and then when that didn’t work out, they installed the Taliban. Now they have to cut their losses there as well. Benazir Bhutto had to have gone along with this to some extent. Now the chickens have come home to roost. Pakistan has been suffering for years from a very bad BLOWBACK problem with all the fundie extremists and terrorists they had armed and trained.
I think the Northern Alliance is the closest thing to a legitimate government that Afghanistan has. I think only Pakistan recognizes the Taliban now, and they are jumping off that raft as we speak.
I wish there were tolerant, pluralistic, non-theocratic, democratic forces just waiting to explode all over the Muslim world. I wish.
Of course the Northern Alliance will turn on us when the war is over, they must do that publicly to hold the country together. But there is no need to have a terroristic, brutal, backwards regime in power. It is hard to imagine the NA being as harsh towards women, or the rest of the world, as the Taliban is. The Taliban make the Ayatollah Khomeni look like a hippie.
[sub]I thought Benazir Bhutto was hot. Not as hot as the Queen of Jordan, but still a babe…[/sub]
“Mrs Bhutto has some interesting points to make, but she doesn’t so much say what should be done as what should not be done.” (Nostradamus)
What I took away from the article is in paragraph 17:
“Whenever fundamental principles are sacrificed in the cause of expediency, danger follows. Whenever a dictator is cuddled, all democracies all over the world are weakened. Whenever human rights are abused, all of us become victims. Whenever the West sacrifices the political values that have made Western democracy a model to the developing world, the chance for democratic change in Asia and Africa is tragically diminished.” (link)
No there is no good, or easy, answer. But when allies are chosen NOT on the basis human rights or democracy, it will come back to bite us in the ass. We all know its not a perfect world, and sometimes one (or a country) has to make ugly pacts with the “enemies of your enemies”, but that policy has been implemented far too widely.
“The enemy of my enemy became my friend. The Greek junta. The Marcos dictatorship. The generals in Argentina. The Zia-ul-Haq bloodbath against democracy in Pakistan. The enemies of my enemy became my friends. And the victims of our friends became irrelevant.” (link)
NOTE: She didn’t even bother to mention Iraq…
Muslim Guy: Thank you for the post. As usual, very interesting and informative.