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Vertaal:
              Fisk: Afghanistan in Crisis
Maandag, 1 December, 2008
Door Robert Fisk? | De instorting van Afghanistan is dichter dan de wereld gelooft. Kandahar is in Taliban handen? alles behalve een vierkante mijl op het centrum van de stad? en de eerste Taliban controleposten zijn nauwelijks 15 mijlen van Kaboel. Hamid Karzai? s diep is de bedorven overheid bijna machteloos zo zoals het Iraakse kabinet in Bagdad? s? Groene Streek? ; de vrachtwagen bestuurders in het land dragen nu bedrijfsvergunningen die door Taliban worden uitgegeven die hun eigen hoven op afgelegen gebied van het land in werking stellen. Het rode Kruis heeft reeds ervoor gewaarschuwd dat de humanitaire verrichtingen drastisch op steeds groter gebied van Afghanistan worden ingekort; meer dan 4.000 mensen, minstens een derde hen burgers, zijn gedood in het verleden de 11 maanden, samen met scores van de troepen van de NAVO en ongeveer 30 hulparbeiders. Zowel Taliban als M. Karzai? s de overheid voert hun gevangenen in steeds grotere aantallen uit. De Afghaanse overheid hing vijf mensen deze maand voor moord, ontvoert of verkracht? één gevangene, een verre verwant van M. Karzai, voorspelbaar had zijn zin omgezet? en meer dan 100 anderen zijn nu op Kaboel? s doodsrij. Dit is niet democratisch, vreedzaam, weer oplevend? gender-sensitive? Afghanistan dattot de wereld beloofde om na de omverwerping van Taliban in 2001 te leiden. Buiten het kapitaal en het verre noorden van het land, bijna draagt elke vrouw alle-enshrouding burkha, terwijl de vechters bij zich nu Taliban aansluiten? s rangschikt van Kashmir, Oezbekistan, Tchetchenië en zelfs Turkije. Meer dan 300 Turkse vechters worden nu verondersteld om in Afghanistan, veel van hen te zijn holdings Europese paspoorten. ? Niemand weet wil ik Taliban in macht, terug zien? een directeur van Kaboel zegt? de anonimiteit wordt nu zo veel geëistn aangezien het vóór 2001? was? maar de mensen haten de overheid en het parlement die doesn? t zorg over hun veiligheid. De overheid is nutteloos. Met zo vele intern verplaatste vluchtelingen die gieten in Kaboel van het platteland, daar? s massale werkloosheid? maar natuurlijk, zijn er geen statistieken. ? ? open markt? geleide velen van ons in financiële ramp. Afghanistan is enkel een slagveld van ideologie, opium en politieke corruptie. Nu u? ve kreeg al deze commerciële uitrustingen die contracten van mensen zoals USAID ontvangen. Eerst romen zij 30 tot 50 percenten voor hun eigen winsten af? dan besteden zij en besteden aan andere bedrijven uit uit en daar? s slechts 10 percent van het originele bedrag verlaten voor de Afghanen zelf.? Afghans working for charitable organisations and for the UN are telling their employers that they are coming under increasing pressure to give information to the Taliban and provide them with safe houses. In the countryside, farmers live in fear of both sides in the war. A very senior NGO official in Kabul?again, anonymity was requested?says both the Taliban and the police regularly threaten villagers. ?A Taliban group will arrive at a village headman?s door at night?maybe 15 or 16 of them?and say they need food and shelter. And the headman tells the villagers to give them food and let them stay at the mosque. Then the police or army arrive in the day and accuse the villagers of colluding with the Taliban, detain innocent men and threaten to withhold humanitarian aid. Then there?s the danger the village will be air-raided by the Americans.? In the city of Ghazni, the Taliban ordered all mobile phones to be switched off from 5pm until 6am for fear that spies would use them to give away guerrilla locations. The mobile phone war may be one conflict the government is winning. With American help the Interior Ministry police can now track and triangulate calls. Once more, the Americans are talking about forming ?tribal militias? to combat the Taliban, much as they did in Iraq and as the Pakistani authorities have tried to do on the North West Frontier. But the tribal lashkars of the [1980s] were corrupted by the Russians and when the system was first tried out two years ago?it was called the Auxiliary Police Force?it was a fiasco. The newly-formed constabulary stopped showing up for work, stole weapons and turned themselves into private militias. ?Now every time a new Western ambassador arrives in Kabul, they dredge it all up again,? another NGO official says in near despair. ???Oh,? they proclaim, ?let?s have local militias?what a bright idea.? But that will not solve the problem. The country is subject to brigandage as well as the cruelty of the Taliban and the air raids which Afghans find so outrageous. The international community has got to stop spinning and do some fundamental thinking which should have been done four or five years ago.? What this means to those Westerners who have spent years in Kabul is simple. Is it really the overriding ambition of Afghans to have ?democracy?? Is a strong federal state possible in Afghanistan? Is the international community ready to take on the warlords and drug barons who are within Mr Karzai?s own government? And?most important of all?is development really about ?securing the country?? The tired old American adage that ?where the Tarmac ends, the Taliban begins? is untrue. The Taliban are mounting checkpoints on those very same newly-built roads. The Afghan Minister of Defence has 65,000 troops under his dubious command but says he needs 500,000 to control Afghanistan. The Soviets failed to contain the country even when they had 100,000 troops here with 150,000 Afghan soldiers in support. And as Barack Obama prepares to send another 7,000 US soldiers into the pit of Afghanistan, the Spanish and Italians are talking of leaving while the Norwegians may pull their 500 troops out of the area north of Heart. Repeatedly, Western leaders talk of the ?key??of training more and more Afghans to fight in the army. But that was the same ?key? which the Russians tried?and it did not fit the lock. ?We? are not winning in Afghanistan. Talk of crushing the Taliban seems as bleakly unrealistic as it has ever been. Indeed, when the President of Afghanistan tries to talk to Mullah Omar?one of America?s principal targets in this wretched war?you know the writing is on the wall. And even Mullah Omar didn?t want to talk to Mr Karzai. Partition is the one option that no one will discuss?giving the southern part of Afghanistan to the Taliban and keeping the rest?but that will only open another crisis with Pakistan because the Pashtuns, who form most of the Taliban, would want all of what they regard as ?Pashtunistan?; and that would have to include much of Pakistan?s own tribal territories. It will also be a return to the ?Great Game? and the redrawing of borders in south-west Asia, something which?history shows? has always been accompanied by great bloodshed. Have Your Say: Fisk: Afghanistan in Crisis Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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