Past Time to Leave

The mass hysteria in Afghanistan, now spread to the good-natured folks in Pakistan, continues its lunacy. Going a long way to demonstrating how effectively social cultures are capable of communicating with one another, when those who live in the 21st Century feel responsible for the well-being of those inhabiting the 6th Century.

All the more so, when the tender sensibilities of the 6th Century dwellers are so readily irked by the presence of the 21st Century elements whose presence despoils the soil sacred to a religion's divine presence. When that religion declares itself as the world's only authentic highway to heaven, the very presence of those mildly adherent to a competing religion presents as a psychological assault.

And to compound the injury beyond endurance, the arrogance of the 21st Century in assuming that no harm will come to the relationship with the desecration of the divine. No real harm did come to the relationship, concurring that the relationship was always fraught with suspicion and hatred.

What has since resulted, with the burning of the Korans at the Bagram Air Base was a lifting of the fiction that a relationship exists.

That suspicion and hatred simply rose from a simmering state at the presence of foreigners to a fiery inferno of revenge. It hardly matters that most of the dead are Afghans themselves, for they have willingly sacrificed themselves to the protection of the divine, from the sacrilegious depredations of the Infidels who have proven how deserving they are of death absent Paradise.

The protesting 'rallies' breaking out all over the country have completely engulfed it in a state of wild exaltation of the Koran as the spoken word of Allah, commanding them to wreak vengeance. "You have not just betrayed a nation, but you have played with the faith and sentiments of 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide, and you have trampled their holy book", thundered mullah Mohammad Ayaz Niazi.

Ignorance is not forgivable by any measure; it is punishable by the most primitive of measures: death to the foreigner, the invader, the Infidels, the destroyers of Korans. A few oblivious and stupid people igniting an inferno of fiery monstrosity by their unthinking lack of vigilance to take note of the sensibilities of those with whom they are surrounded.

As though the NATO mission wasn't looking for an exit strategy in any event. Seeing it wrapped in the eventuality of adequately training the Afghan National Army and Police to the point where it could look after the security needs of Afghanistan. Refusing to admit that both would soon enough be under the control of the returning Taliban.

The problem of when to leave has now been more or less given its response. All of the sacrifices made in lives lost by foreign militaries, and the huge investments made by foreign treasuries are simply another footnote in history. In particular the history of this truly benighted country stuck in human misery, ignorance and poverty.

NATO has swiftly withdrawn all personnel from Afghan ministries. In the inner, protected confines of the Afghan Interior Ministry building in Kabul, where access is confined to only those elite who have authority and access, two senior American officers were discovered, both shot directly in the head, dead. Yet more revenge to savour the victory of the Koran over the ignorant.

General Allen, who has condemned the murders, adds: "We are committed to our partnership with the government of Afghanistan to reach our common goal of a peaceful, stable and secure Afghanistan in the near future." The stress of the job has clearly overtaken the man's good sense. He is obviously in the throes of a delusion when he speaks in the same breath of Afghanistan as "peaceful, stable and secure".