I realize few want to openly call for Taliban rule. But effectively, the condemnation of the Afghan elections and the newly elected President, amounts to a condemnation of the democratic process and its result. What is the alternative to letting the Afghan people choose - the Taliban. So you are objectively pro-Taliban by opposing the democratically elected gov't.
Here are excerpts of recent news from Afghanistan:
opinionjournal.com
Efforts continue to rebuild and expand Afghanistan's justice system. In the latest initiative:
A new multi-million dollar project will promote public access to justice in rural areas of Afghanistan. According to officials at the Italian Embassy in the capital, Kabul, the initiative is to promote access to justice in selected districts of the country in the framework of human rights protection. The project aims to benefit from the traditional and communal justice systems that currently operate in remote areas of the post-conflict country.
The &euro6 million ($7.8 million) project, funded by the European Union, will run for 30 months in up to 60 districts of Afghanistan.
<<Euros now on Bush's side in Afghanistan? The anti-democratic left's isolation grows.>>
In an effort to improve the standards of public service throughout Afghanistan:
[President Hamid] Karzai last year set up a nine-member reform commission to screen all of the country's bureaucrats. Those who pass the screening test can keep their position. Those who fail are enrolled in a retraining programme and retested again after three months. If they fail again, they are dismissed. According to commission members, such a review was necessary because, over the years, the civil-service system had become rooted in nepotism, corruption and incompetence. Plans call for the testing programme to be expanded into the provinces after it is fully implemented in the capital.
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Back in Afghanistan, the United Nations is helping many returnees get back on their feet:
<<The UN too? Man, you anti-democratic leftists really are really all off by yourselves - but you've got Osama on your side.>>
A widow for 15 years, Rahima, like most of the residents of the village of Andkhoy near the Turkmenistan border, fled with her children to Pakistan five years ago to escape Afghanistan's civil war. In 2002, following the defeat of the Taliban, she returned. She had the skills to provide for herself and her dependents but lacked the money and materials needed to resume her work as a carpet weaver.
Through the local village council, or shura, Rahima's precarious position as a single mother and sole source of income was brought to the attention of a UNHCR-funded organisation which is helping returnee families to earn a living.
The income-generation programme is aimed at families who are considered particularly vulnerable. Most recipients are returning refugees with large families and no means of supporting themselves. Many, such as Rahima's, are families headed by widows.
Those selected are given the wool and tools needed to make one carpet. The package, worth around $110, allows the weavers--who are almost exclusively women--to then use the sale of the finished carpet to purchase new supplies and continue the cycle while providing for their families.
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There is also more help from overseas:
India's expertise in telemedicine will be deployed for the benefit of the sick and infirm in Kabul this year. The Indian Space Research Organisation will link Kabul with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) through the Insat satellite. The network will be extended to other cities in Afghanistan in due course for diagnosis and treatment of patients in the neighbouring country.
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And with some interesting consequences:
Local officials believe this prompted a citizen to turn in the location of a weapons cache. "This is what you see with progress; you can't stop it," said Paktika Province District Chief Haji Abdul Satir. The weapons cache consisted of 11 anti-personnel mines and a small quantity of small-arms ammunition. The cache was recovered by the Afghan National Army and later destroyed.
The reconstruction effort throughout Afghanistan is set to continue with some significant foreign assistance. Among the projects envisaged under the $81.9 billion security and aid package President Bush has requested from Congress are a law school, seven provincial hospitals and up to 210 health clinics.
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Meanwhile, a top American military commander reports on progress in securing Afghanistan:
[Col. Cardon Crawford, director of operations for the U.S. military command in Afghanistan] says al-Qaida no longer has an effective presence in Afghanistan and that the Taliban leadership is divided, with some members ready to join the political process. . . .
Crawford would not say whether U.S. forces have come close to finding bin Laden, but said his guerrilla group has become less of a threat in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida has "no effective presence" inside Afghanistan now, Crawford said.
<<Hope you guys can live with the disappointment.>>
He also said there are signs of divisions within the Taliban leadership, and he suggested that the Afghan government is preparing a new plan that would be designed to "widen the fissures" within the Taliban leadership. He declined to provide details. Some Taliban leaders, he said, "are probably willing--literally and figuratively--to come in out of the cold" and become part of the Afghan political process.
And some are doing just that:
Four senior leaders of the Taliban have accepted a reconciliation offer from the Afghan government. . . . Under the agreement, which the official said will likely be announced within days, the men recognized the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai's government in exchange for assurances that they will not face arrest by Afghan or foreign security forces. The official identified the four as Abdul Hakim Mujahid, formerly the Taliban's envoy to the United Nations; Arsullah Rahmani, former deputy minister of higher education and a former commander in southeastern Paktika province; Rahmatullah Wahidyar, former deputy minister of refugees and returnees; and Fawzi, former charge d'affaires at the Afghan Embassy in Saudi Arabia and then first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in Pakistan.
Ineligible for the amnesty are around 150 Taliban officials associated directly with al Qaeda or known to have committed atrocities.
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The governors of Zabul and Ghazni, in southern Afghanistan, are also conducting talks with Taliban, using religious leaders and local elders as intermediaries. Read more about the talks here. As one Afghan says, "This is good news for our people, for our nation, for our brothers who had been deceived. It's a major achievement for our government. It's really time for unity, it's time to get along. We should hold each others' hands and rebuild our country."
In their negotiations, the authorities are receiving some valuable assistance from an insider:
One of the Taliban's most senior and charismatic commanders has become a key negotiator as more and more members of the Islamic militia in Afghanistan give up the fight against the Americans.
The commander, Abdul Salam, earned the nickname Mullah Rockety because he was so accurate with rocket propelled grenades against Russian troops. He later joined the Taliban as a corps commander in Jalalabad before being captured by the Americans after September 11.
Now he is a supporter of President Hamid Karzai and is tempting diehard Taliban fighters to accept an amnesty offer and reconcile themselves to Afghanistan's first directly elected leader.
"The Taliban has lost its morale," he said, speaking by satellite phone from the heartlands of Zabul province, a Taliban redoubt. "But you have to go and find the Taliban and call to them and ask them directly. If they believe they will be secure and safe they will come down from the mountains."
According to Maj. Gen. Peter Gilchrist, the British army officer who serves as deputy commander of international forces in Afghanistan, local residents are proving increasingly helpful in combating the Taliban and al Qaeda remnants. Afghan and American authorities have also been successful in their efforts to isolate and bring to the table the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan group of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, widely seen as sympathetic to the Taliban.
The terrorists and insurgents are losing their infrastructure as more arms caches continue to be found throughout the country. Four were located on Feb. 5, including one containing "82 mm mortar rounds, one 100 mm projectile, two 122 mm projectiles, eight 57 mm projectiles, one 76 mm projectile, 14 23 mm recoilless rifle rounds, two C-50 rockets, 10 anti-personnel mines, 500 fuses, 21 hand grenades and 12 VOC-25 rifle rounds."
On one day alone, Feb. 7, the troops located six caches with weapons and 2,400 pounds of hashish. In 13 days up to Feb. 12, 33 separate weapons caches were discovered throughout the country. Another large cache recovered in Herat; four caches discovered in Paktya, Kunar and Uruzgan provinces and Herat; and a huge cache discovered by the Afghan Zafar army corps in Shindad district, consisting of "600 cartons of guns, rocket missiles and 65 ballistic missiles." And two roadside bombs have been recently located and disarmed thanks to tips from local elders in Oruzgan district and Herat province.
Other security successes: the capture of the top Taliban commander in the province of Uruzgun; the arrest in a raid in Quetta, Pakistan, of 17 Taliban members, including the former deputy governor of southern Helmand province, Mullah Khush Dil, and ex-Kabul police chief Mullah Ibrahim; and the arrest of four Taliban leaders in the south.
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The authorities are reporting that the southwestern zone of the country, centered in Kandahar, has been 98% disarmed. The region around Jalalabad has been declared the second in the country to be fully disarmed. Meanwhile, "a second phase of disarmament of private militants have begun in Badakshan, Kunduz, Thakar and Baghlan provinces of Afghanistan." And there's more progress around Bamiyan.
Replacing militias, guerilla groups and other armed bands, the new Afghan army is developing according to plan:
Afghanistan's new army will reach full combat strength by the end of next year and training of the overall force of 70,000 should be complete by the end of 2008. . . . The army currently has 17,000 combat soldiers, with another 5,000 undergoing training, and it would reach its full combat strength of 40,000 by the end of 2006, U.S. Brigadier-General Richard Moorhead told a news conference. He said completion of training of the overall force of 70,000, including headquarters and other non-combat personnel, would take until the end of 2008.
(Update: the army level reaches 20,000 troops.)
You can also read this extensive profile of where the creation of the Afghan national army is at the moment:
More than 3,000 Afghans are in a three-step, 20-week training regimen that concludes with a unit assignment. . . .
Launched in June 2003, the task force started slowly, focused for the first year primarily on the infantry. Recruits were tested and evaluated to determine if they were junior enlisted, senior enlisted or officer material. Additionally, U.S., French and British trainers kept an eye out for recruits who would one day take over as instructors.
About a year ago, the task force turned over basic-training duties to those handpicked candidates. Moorhead said the plan is to do the same this April with the command and staff school, which the French army oversees. Later this year, the British will hand their clipboards to Afghan instructors chosen to conduct the senior noncommissioned officer school.
There's more--including building the training, logistics and communications aspect of the army. And here you can find some photos from Afghanistan's new military academy.
To speed up the process, the U.S. is now almost doubling the number of military trainers, adding 280 to the 300 currently serving. Read this article on challenges and rewards of being an American instructor of the Afghan armed forces. Police, too, are being trained by the American personnel, including "a three-man team from the 58th Military Police Company out of Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, [which] has the daunting task of training more 3,382 police officers from 31 districts spread throughout three provinces."
NATO is expanding its peacekeeping force in the west of the country. The new units will come primarily from Italy, Spain and Lithuania. Others are also contributing to building the Afghan army; most recently India has delivered another 49 out of the promised 300 vehicles (235 in total have so far been delivered).
And in the fight against drugs, Gen. Mohammad Daud, deputy minister from the Kabul-based counter-narcotics department, says that 2005 will be "the year for poppy eradication." He says: "The poppy cultivation has dishonored Afghanistan in the world and we will eradicate the illicit drug this year."
Britain is doubling its antidrug funding for Afghanistan, from $50 million to $100 million. Meanwhile, as the planting season begins, 15 teams of Afghan antinarcotics agents have set out from the capital into the provinces to ensure that the eradication programs are progressing as planned. Such verification is already underway in Herat, to confirm the local claims that "80 percent of the poppy fields have been destroyed in the regions of Herat. The remaining could not be destroyed due to the heavy snowfall and will be cleared when the weather gets warm."
Another province also reports considerable success:
Nangarhar, one of the highest poppy producing provinces of Afghanistan has eradicated 99% of its poppy cultivation, according to provincial officials. Senior security official Commander Hazrat Ali told Pajhwok Afghan News on Sunday that there were some areas in the mountainous regions of Goshta, Lalpoora and Achin districts from where poppy had not been eradicated due to bad weather.
The drop in cultivation is not an isolated phenomenon:
Across Afghanistan, government officials and foreign aid workers who monitor poppy cultivation have reached a remarkable conclusion. One year after Afghan farmers planted the largest amount of poppy in their nation's history and provided the world with nearly 90 percent of its opium supply, many of them have stopped growing it.
Poppy farming, officials said, may have declined by as much as 70 percent in three provinces that together account for more than half of Afghanistan's production: Nangahar in the east, Helmand in the south and Badakhshan in the north.
You can read this extensive report on how local farmers are coping with the switch away from opium poppies and the support they are getting from the Afghan authorities and from overseas to help them stay on the straight and narrow. In one initiative, "farmers of Nangarhar who have stopped cultivating poppy will be given loans to start poultry farming." Others are going into fish farming. You can also read about USAID's contribution to the Alternative Livelihoods Program.
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