Back To The Past

"This whole 12 years was one of constant pleading with America to treat the lives of our civilians as lives of people"
"The money they should have paid to the police they paid to private security firms and creating militias who caused lawlessness, corruption and highway robbery. They then began systematically waging psychological warfare on our people, encouraging our money to go out of our country. What they did was create pockets of wealth and a vast countryside of deprivation and anger."
"Afghanistan is home to all Afghans now. We have a parliament where commanders, clergy, mujahids and women sit together. We have eleven candidates running for president who represent a combination of all Afghan people and thinking."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai speaking at a press conference last week. The Washington Post has reported that he believes many insurgent style attacks are masterminded by the US. Photograph: S Sabawoon/EPA

 There is nothing positive to say about the presence of Americans in Afghanistan, as far as President Karzai is concerned; he "saw no good" in any of it. "They did not work for me, they worked against me", he averred, turning to reference the Taliban as "brothers", while the Americans were "rivals". As for the British role in the southern province of Helmand, leading security forces there, it too had been flawed.

"In general the U.S.-led NATO mission in terms of bringing security has not been successful, particularly in Helmand", he pronounced with breath-taking audacity. No word of any of the other countries involved, who spent massive amounts of treasury and sacrificed the lives of their military and diplomatic personnel to aid Afghanistan and its people whose quality of life was horribly diminished under the ruling Taliban from whom the mission Mr. Karzai speaks so disparagingly of, freed the Afghans.

If Afghanistan now has a parliament and now has a fledgling civil authority, with courts and medical facilities and schools and opportunities for employment, it is precisely because of the presence of the NATO-affiliated presence of international aid, inclusive of experts in various fields of endeavour, guiding Afghans to build step by step, a civil infrastructure of its own, framed on Western models of experience and best practices.

The pockets of wealth of which Mr. Karzai speaks so dismissively, and the moral insolvency that prevailed, was a result of typical Afghan cultural graft and corruption, of war lords amassing their own treasury, and of Mr. Karzai's members of parliament and all Afghan authorities and officials raiding the international funding meant to support the needs of a new government and a nation hauling itself out of the Medieval era, into their own pockets.

Until the international aid agencies and the governments that supported them understood that it was best to sideline government agencies as far as funding was concerned and work directly with the people they were attempting to educate and to teach them how best they could prosper and aid their communities in their future aspirations. The U.S. alone spent $648-billion during the twelve years that Mr. Karzai is so dismissive of.

The U.S. Congress has cut in half development aid to the country, reducing it to $1.1-billion annually. Mr. Karzai had insisted his country required a commitment of at least $7-billion annually to allow it to function adequately, and that commitment was to come at the expense of the international community. To which Mr. Karzai owes no gratitude whatever. He exercises the usual Muslim entitlement view that the West owes him everything and the West cringes and feels immense guilt.

With the final withdrawal of an international presence in Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai and his successor as president will be enabled to embrace the joy of welcoming back to the fold the Taliban with whom they will share authority and governance. That will represent a very particular concern to the women of Afghanistan through that reconciliation which will relegate Afghan women once again to silent, unseen chattel.