Insanely Foxy

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai either castigates NATO and the U.S. for its offensive military manoeuvres in his country, or he goes begging, cap in hand, for ever more billions in necessary assistance. But then, there is nothing dreadfully unusual about this. Neighbouring Pakistan is equally skilled in excoriating U.S. military missions which 'invade' the sacred territory of a country claiming to be an ally while busily supporting and shielding terrorists from detection, and the while pocketing billions in U.S. funding.

If this situation seems odd, it is not at all so, for it appears to represent a 'normal', or at least accepted state of affairs, where emerging economies and dysfunctional and most often brutal governments bleed the Western world and the United States of their assets, appealing to their better natures to share their treasury to assuage their great need, while on the other hand, they despise the West, and the U.S. in particular, terming it a world dictator, tyrannizing under-developed countries of the world.

It seems a losing battle, attempting by all means to save these countries from themselves. They seem fundamentally incapable of rising above their medieval sources, their cultural brutishness, their religion-based constraints against acknowledging their obligation toward the protection of human rights for the most vulnerable, their women and children. Tribal and sectarian aggressive reactions are so deeply ingrained they are etched in the psyche, nullifying all attempts at civilization.

So here is NATO and ISAF, anxious to see an end to their own sadly mired (historically predictable) occupation in Afghanistan, tired of mediating between it and Pakistan - intent on its destruction so it can absorb the geography itself with all its natural resources, prickly with irritated pride when their moral perversity is too obvious to be ignored, threatening retribution when their 'honour' has been tarnished by the infidels.

And as a prelude to the Bonn conference on Afghanistan's future where no fewer than 90 countries and 1000 delegates are gathering, and even while billions have been spent, foreign military lives lost, the Taliban remain as resistant and determined as ever, and Afghan officialdom as corrupt as ever, Hamid Karzai insists that the foreign military presence that he is so fond of railing at, must contemplate another ten years, until 2024. And the funding to go with it.

For the economy is on the brink of collapse. Another annual $7-billion must be provided. "Afghanistan will certainly need help for another 10 years, until around 2024. We will need training for our own troops. We will need equipment for the army and police and help to set up state institutions." Ah, state institutions. Vital to provide needed social programs, and the infrastructure to assure the Afghan people that they are secure and will prosper.

In the ten years that international humanitarian aid has been present in Afghanistan, along with over a hundred-thousand foreign troops, and civil administrators from a whole host of countries attempting to guide and educate and train Afghan officials in the niceties of public administration, not an awful lot has been accomplished. More Afghan children, particularly girls, are attending school, and women in large urban areas have been finding employment.

But this brutally archaic culture also imprisons female children who run away from arranged marriages, women who have been raped, women who have disengaged themselves from brutal beatings by their husbands, for where else is there for them to go? Women are expected to be quietly, unobtrusively obedient, submitting to their fathers, brothers, uncles and husbands, just as they submit to Allah.

And President Hamid Karzai and his parliamentarians, in a 'democratic' Afghanistan have been incapable of providing a modicum of security and social services to Afghans. His military and his national police are mired in brutality and corruption, and are incapable of protecting the country from the fierce predations of the Taliban. "If we lose this fight, we are threatened with a return to a situation like that before September 11,2001", he warns.

He is rumoured to have a mental illness, a Jekyll and Hyde personality. Nonetheless, how foxy this man is, a true conspirator and manipulator. Diabolically clever, is he not?