It's been a little more than 24 hours since a brazen break-out at the prison in Kandahar and 1100 detainees escaped, after the Taliban launched a successful rocket attack. The Canadian Army and the US Marines are now in a joint operation trying to round up those who escaped from Sarposa, diverting the men in women in uniform from their job of protecting the southern part of Afghanistan from the Taliban. It's no accident that among those who broke out are 400 of the Taliban.
I certainly do wish those on the side of right all the luck that can be mustered in this emergency; but the fact is that Kabul and Kandahar among other cities in the region are far from secured as it is and the last thing Canada and the US needed was this migraine. More important, the border areas are still unsecured as well. We've been at it for seven years, and this is all we have to show for it? Little wonder why people back on the homefront are getting exasperated.
Another interesting point that should be mentioned: While I obviously am rooting for Barack Obama in this fall's elections in the States, he has said that he's looking to Canada to further increase its commitment in Afghanistan, by 1000 to 1500 troops; the price he's demanding for sending another 5000 Marines who would have otherwise been deployed to Iraq. I submit Afghanistan would have been much further along on the road to recovery if the Iraq expedition had never been fought in the first place but I also think Canadians have no appetite to top up our deployment when we've already said we're out of there in 2011.
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2 comments:
I submit Afghanistan would have been much further along on the road to recovery if the Iraq expedition had never been fought in the first place
Yes, absolutely. And in fact I think it's doomed without diverting forces from Iraq to Afghanistan.
I only wish we would all take a close look at the history of what now passes for Afghanistan. It's really a melange of hostile, suspicious and routinely violent ethnic groups. It has functioned, when it has functioned at all, as an assembly of temporary alliances among warlords that can last up to 10-years and then dissolve into the inevitable civil wars. The place has never - never - been a legitimate country as we understand nationhood. There's a reason why 2/3rds of the country is controlled by warlords while Karzai is left to share the balance with the Taliban.
You can't understand the country until you're familiar with the key players and the shifting interests of the Pashtun, Baloch, Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara peoples.
If another group (likely Uzbek and/or Tajik) begins siding with the Taliban, we're screwed.
We may never be able to broker a deal with the Taliban so long as the country itself stands as little more than a civil war waiting to resume.
Astonishing. Our leaders and NATO frame the conflict in such a hopelessly simplistic way that they assure their own failure.
By the way, the Afghan government will be arguably viable when guys like Ahmed Karzai, Hamid's bro wind up in prison. That's how close the drug barons are to the head of state. Neat, eh?
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