Death Trap

[RedEarth]

Death Trap

Christina Lamb has spent 20 years covering Afghan wars.

...........

Last month saw 53 “TICs” — troops in contact, in other words under Taliban attack — and last week there were two nights during which all but one of the British bases and outposts in Helmand came under attack. How did it all go so wrong? Why does a senior British military officer talk despairingly of “military and developmental anarchy”?


AFGHANISTAN was supposed to be the success story. Two months of precision bombing by American B52s — in revenge for the Taliban’s refusal to throw out Al-Qaeda after the terrorist attacks in America on September 11, 2001 — soon had the Taliban fleeing over the border into Pakistan. By August 2002 Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, was describing events in Afghanistan as “a breathtaking accomplishment”. He pointed to Afghanistan as “a successful model for what could happen to Iraq if individuals were liberated, allowed to vote freely and to work”.

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But while George W Bush and Tony Blair insisted on declaring Afghanistan a success — and a model for the pacification of Iraq — they apparently forgot one crucial lesson that the British had learnt years before. “Unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over” were the sage words of Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of North West Frontier Province.

Far from Afghanistan being a model for Iraq, Iraq has become a model for Afghanistan. There have been 41 Afghan suicide bombings in the past nine months, compared with five in the preceding five years. IEDs — improvised explosive devices — have become a fact of life. Three were left in roadside handcarts in Kabul last week to detonate as buses went past. According to United Nations officials, not a day passes without a school being burnt down or a teacher being murdered, often in front of schoolchildren.

If there is one factor most responsible for the Taliban resurgence it is the war in Iraq, which distracted the attention of London and Washington at a critical time. While US marines were toppling statues of Saddam Hussein and then finding themselves fighting a bloody insurgency, the Taliban regrouped and retrained in Pakistan

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2261727_1,00.html

[Briar]

1. Excellent reporting

More:


Just as damaging have been the continuing air raids across Afghanistan, sometimes on wedding parties or innocent villagers, which have led to the loss of thousands of civilian lives. In May this year there were an astonishing 750 bombing raids, according to American Central Command.

Karzai has repeatedly complained to the Americans about the bombers and the lack of cultural sensitivity of raids on the ground — doors kicked down in the middle of the night, male soldiers entering women’s quarters or taking in dogs which are considered unclean.

Another bitter complaint is of American convoys driving too fast and not stopping when they run someone down. It was such an incident in Kabul that provoked a six-hour riot last month — yet two weeks later a US truck ran over a child in exactly the same place.

“How can we go in offering school sets and candy to people when the Americans have just bombed someone’s family or run over their daughter?” asked an exasperated senior ISAF officer.

[Demeter]

2. If We Had More Afghani In America--Bush Would Be Toast Already

and all his people, too. Sigh. Literally toast.

[megatherium]

3. What is truly regrettable is that Afghanistan was the good war.

Any group that would kill school teachers in front of children is despicable. The Taliban sheltered the perpetrators of 9/11. We had every right to destroy them.

But Bush and his people were incompetent: it shouldn't have taken a month to initiate the war in Afghanistan, we should have been bombing on September 12 (bombing began on October 7). I remember being so glad when it was finally reported that we had "boots on the ground" -- in November! Then we bribed the warlords to do our fighting for us. We were too stupid to understand that the warlords were not to be trusted: there was a lull in the fighting, which we were told was for "negotiations," and immediately I knew we were screwed. Al Qaeda paid them more and bin Laden got away. (It was also at the behest of the Pakistanis that we held back on our efforts, to allow the Pakistanis to pull their people out. But lots of Al Qaeda got out along with them.) Then, to add insult to injury, the Bush people tried to suggest that bin Laden was not in Tora Bora by that time anyway.