Lords and Losers
19. November 2008 | Von atsil | Kategorie:English news2Another enemy
There is a very other enemy in Afghanistan besides the Taliban: Its the opium production the international community has to fight against.
Some remarkable figures:
- Afghanistan supplies 93 percent of the world’s heroin – selling the bulk to Europe and Russia.
- With about $4 billion the narcotics trade represents about the half of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product – strengthening the extremist forces, weakening the Afghan state to be build and poisoning the drug users around the whole of Europe.
An UN-report in July 2008 showed details about the recruitment of foreign chemists by the Afghan drug lords – namely from Turkey and Pakistan.
Further informations:
Lost Hearts
Unless the Pentagon comes up with a better strategy, America is losing the battle for hearts and minds. Although the figurs for American and NATO-caused civilian deaths were much higher in 2007, the death-tolls of 2008 are still unacceptable.
Once looked on the American troops as their liberators, the Afghans, far too many Afghans see them as enemies by now. Corruption and incompetence of the Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai, let the Afghans being driven back into the hands of an increasingly strong Taliban.
Same rumors can be heard about the Afghan people’s dwindling faith into its govvernment. The government try to bolster its legitimacy with counterinsurgency strategies, but when ordinary people don’t trust their own government anymore they increasingly mistrust foreigners who helped them coming to power, too.
But there’s still hope for a change. And a key role will be played by the new American president: He and his new administration will be able to put greater pressure on the Afghan government. On the other hand the one who strives to win the Afghan presidential election will have to secure the support of the president elected Barack Obama.
Read more:
Haroun Mir, the co-director of Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies in Kabul, compares the present military situation with that of of the 1980s. The American search for an exit out of Afghanistan looks like a carbon copy of the then Soviet escape. The consequence of the Soviet abandonment Afghanistan was the empowerment of Islamic radicalism.
Mir definitely fears that “the consequences of a premature exit from Afghanistan will certainly be worse than what Afghans experienced in the 1990s.”
Read the whole article on www.iht.com:
Another range of information about the real losers in Afghanistan – namely women and children – can be found on the website and the Youtube-channel of RAWA.ORG, an Afghan women’s NGO:
