It seems that we expect the Northern Alliance to help us fight this war. We are certainly rooting for them to advance on the Taliban. But will we let them rule?
The Northern Alliance certainly isn’t stable. As we all know by now it is largely an assortment of ethnic minorities that have only hatred of the Taliban in common. I can see no situation where the Northern Alliance would be able to rule a post-war Afghanistan.
What is going to happen to them when the war ends? Will they get anything for helping us out? Will we have to forcibly oust them?
I guess I am kind of puzzled over our actions and attitudes about a group who’s immediate goal coincides with ours but who’s ultimate goals don’t.
Nazi Germany vs. the Federal Republic of Germany (geez, post # 3 in the thread, and already we’re getting in to Godwin’s Law territory)
Militarist Japan vs. modern democratic Japan
You could also say we liberated almost all of South Korea from North Korea, and while it took a while and was kind of a bumpy road, there’s no question that the Republic of Korea is now a vastly better place than the “Democratic People’s Republic” of Korea.
The only hope for the next Afghan government is to give women a say in it. Lord knows they’ve suffered enough already; they’ve earned it. The men have made a godawaful mess of the country, going from bad to worse. They have to include Afghan women to bring them to their senses for once. That will be necessary to begin righting the many wrongs that have been done.
The Northern Alliance had a chance already and blew it. There has to be some fresh thinking now. Let the Afghan women participate.
I don’t think of any (native) Afghanis have much of an education (other than a fundamentalist Islam education), and I believe the literacy rate for women in the country is ~5%. It will also be tough to convince the men that have been going around with power over women for years that they should even consider treating women as equals.
We need to get rid of the Taliban, but can we really expect to get anything better than a slightly less militant group of Muslims to run the country?
How about the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan? They’re based in Pakistan now, but they’ll return if a moderate government gets put in place and they’ll kick some ass for the women of Afghanistan.
Dudes. Check out the history of Afghanistan a little further back than the recent headlines. Afghan women were guaranteed equality by the new constitution back in the 1960s. They were educated and liberated (at least in the capital and maybe some other major cities). Half of new doctors in Afghanistan during the 1970s were women. There are still plenty of educated, capable, professional Afghan women around (I imagine they’ve almost all left the country, but will be available to come back to help rebuild it). You do a severe injustice to the Afghan people by assuming that they’re all like the Taliban. I have lots of Afghan neighbors where I live, and they loathe the Taliban for turning their country into an international disgrace. Many liberated women among them. My favorite local kabab joint has pictures on the wall of every king of Afghanistan from Alexander the Great up to Zahir Shah. No fans of Taliban, that’s for sure.
The strategy looks more like defeating the Taliban as an end in itself than in actually helping anyone else come to power, or keep power. There’s so much more that could be done politically, and IMHO should be, but that’s another thread.
Anyway, the current strategy, if successful in its limited ends, looks like it’s headed for a Yugoslavia-like breakup of the country along regional ethnic lines. If the lines are pretty stable, and there’s no “ethnic cleansing” by the newly-come-to-power local warlords, maybe that’s not all bad. Most of the world lives that way. If the need for external aid, both military and humanitarian, keeps them from doing seriously obnoxious things like the isolationist Taliban, that’s probably as much as we can hope for.
But I don’t see a reason to pick an individual from the Northern Alliance and try to set him up as the new leader of the entire country. That will just make him a target of the other guys. I can see bringing back the King as a powerless figurehead, for appearance’s sake, but that wouldn’t affect the reality of internal Balkanization.
As far as bringing the king back, from what I understand, he’s actually our best choice-RAWA has stated that his rule was not unpleasant and relatively liberal-he’s no Shah Pahlavi, that’s for damn sure.
A constitutional monarchy doesn’t sound too bad-such as England, or your Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, etc etc-(Is Belgium still a monarchy?)
Guinastasia, I didn’t say the U.S. has never made a bad situation worse, but “Every time we liberate someone, the gov’t that takes over is even worse” is a very silly over-statement.
point taken, there are exceptions. It seems to me, however, that in a lot of cases we liberate someone from an oppressive gov’t, the gov’t that takes over is worse, and the citizens of said liberated country ends up blaming us. That’s an over-simplified statement, however.
I certainly hope not; my impression of the Northern Alliance is a bunch of crazy mule riding cooks living in the mountains, kind of like those creatures in Star Wars on Luke’s home planet. Although there cause is just and right, I have no reason to believe they are capable of running the country or have enough organizational and diplomatic skill to establish firm relationships with their neighbors, not to mention other countries. I think this is why we have not sent in large amounts of ground troops to fight directly alongside them.
So what would happen in the event of a US/Northern Alliance takeover of Afghanistan? How do we politly tell the Northern Alliance that their services are no longer needed, and that there is no way in hell they are getting any power? It seems like they might have something to say about that. Are we going to have to fight a war against them when we are done with this?
(a) A lasting government is Afghanistan is going to have to respond to Afghani ideas about society and politics, not ideal western forms.
(b) RAWA is all well and fine, but their vision is clearly radicalized, westernized urban Kaboul circa 1970s. RAWA, to be blunt, doesn’t matter. The warlords matter. The tribal elders matter, the tribal shoura matter.
The trouble, dear Collounsbury, is that representative governments outside of Christendom tend to be as decidedly anti-Western as non-representative governments. And we can’t have that! Democracy is not an export commodity, y’know, even though universal human rights are thus.
[sub]Sorry, I’ll stop being laconic now.[/sub]
It will be interesting to see, if indeed the Taleban can be toppled, who will replace them. It seems to me that this is the greatest factor inhibiting current military strategy right now.