Robert Fisk: 'Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government'

[JohnyCanuck]

As he leaves Afghanistan, our correspondent reflects on a failed state cursed by brutal fundamentalism and rampant corruption

SNIP

The collapse of Afghanistan is closer than the world believes. Kandahar is in Taliban hands – all but a square mile at the centre of the city – and the first Taliban checkpoints are scarcely 15 miles from Kabul. Hamid Karzai's deeply corrupted government is almost as powerless as the Iraqi cabinet in Baghdad's "Green Zone"; lorry drivers in the country now carry business permits issued by the Taliban which operate their own courts in remote areas of the country.

The Red Cross has already warned that humanitarian operations are being drastically curtailed in ever larger areas of Afghanistan; more than 4,000 people, at least a third of them civilians, have been killed in the past 11 months, along with scores of Nato troops and about 30 aid workers. Both the Taliban and Mr Karzai's government are executing their prisoners in ever greater numbers. The Afghan authorities hanged five men this month for murder, kidnap or rape – one prisoner, a distant relative of Mr Karzai, predictably had his sentence commuted – and more than 100 others are now on Kabul's death row.

This is not the democratic, peaceful, resurgent, "gender-sensitive" Afghanistan that the world promised to create after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. Outside the capital and the far north of the country, almost every woman wears the all-enshrouding burkha, while fighters are now joining the Taliban's ranks from Kashmir, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and even Turkey. More than 300 Turkish fighters are now believed to be in Afghanistan, many of them holding European passports.

SNIP

Afghans working for charitable organisations and for the UN are telling their employers that they are coming under increasing pressure to give information to the Taliban and provide them with safe houses. In the countryside, farmers live in fear of both sides in the war. A very senior NGO official in Kabul – again, anonymity was requested – says both the Taliban and the police regularly threaten villagers. "A Taliban group will arrive at a village headman's door at night – maybe 15 or 16 of them – and say they need food and shelter. And the headman tells the villagers to give them food and let them stay at the mosque. Then the police or army arrive in the day and accuse the villagers of colluding with the Taliban, detain innocent men and threaten to withhold humanitarian aid. Then there's the danger the village will be air-raided by the Americans."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-nobody-supports-the-taliban-but-people-hate-the-government-1036905.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. kick n/t

[G_j]

2. K&R !

[NNN0LHI]

3. I sure don't know what the answer is here but I don't think more bombs and bullets is it

We have been there now almost 7 years with no end in site.

Don

[babylonsister]

4. Ugh, what a mess. I have no ideas how this might be resolved. Or

if it will. :(

[bluesmail]

5. good lord, we have all the weapons and all the money that can buy

us whatever we want. I am screaming, NOT IN MY NAME. We're being robbed and we've become unwilling accessories to a crime in the Middle East.

[formercia]

6. Karzai and the neocons go way back

Karzai was a lackey of the UNOCAL pipeline project and he was rewarded. It reminds me a lot of the Diem regime in South Vietnam, also put in place by the right-wing reactionary elements in the USG. Diem was very unpopular with the locals as well.

Why do we see this same scenario repeated over and over for the last Century or so. This Manifest Destiny agenda perpetrated by a small clique of right-wingers. It never works out in the end. The dictators get overthrown and we end up spending Billions to clean up the mess.