Sept 17, 2009
'Widespread vote rigging, a beleaguered incumbent president and a mounting death toll because of NATO atrocities and the Taliban resurgence hamstring Afghanistan, writes Gamal Nkrumah
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| Two people were killed and 10 wounded including four NATO soldiers in a suicide bomb attack outside a NATO military airport in Kabul |
Dealmaking is the new buzzword among Afghanistan watchers even as peacemaking is a formidable feat facing the country, considering the fact that the already deplorable security situation in the war-battered country is fast deteriorating. The G20 leaders, scheduled to meet in two weeks time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are determined to put Afghanistan atop their agenda.
The crisis in Afghanistan is the most intractable ever handled by NATO and the post-World War II Western powers. A conference is hurriedly being set up to bring together NATO, the United Nations and the newly-elected Afghan government -- if and when the election results are announced and acknowledged. Despite the warm words about the forthcoming conference, there is little evidence that the big powers, and particularly the United States, have yet taken steps to understand what is going on in Afghanistan. Washington claims that it desires peace in Afghanistan, but it has come under increasing pressure to outline how it intends to reach its stated objective.
Why did Washington embark on a course that was bound to lead to disgrace? Because of the policy blunders of ex- president George W Bush who had, after all, his head in the clouds. So what about the current US President Barack Obama? Unlike Bush, Obama does not live in cloud- cuckooland. He is savvy and articulate, but he does have his hands tied. If Taliban doesn't actually throw the NATO forces out of Afghanistan, they are most certainly going to clout them. They already are doing just that.
In a flurry of diplomatic activity to salvage the wreckage that has become of Afghanistan, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel unveiled plans for the conference on Afghanistan. Speaking at a joint press conference in Berlin, Merkel said that she favoured a "thorough and quick" NATO investigation into the German-ordered air strike in northern Afghanistan.
"Any innocent person killed or hurt, including through German actions, I deeply regret," Merkel confessed.
In April, Merkel toured the military bases of Mazer-I- Sherif, Kunduz and Feyzabad in Afghanistan and reiterated that German troops would stay in Afghanistan until their goals were achieved.
"The goal is to hand over full control of the country as soon as possible to a democratically-elected government," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "We have a goal, and that is self-sustaining security in Afghanistan," Merkel told the German Parliament, the Bundestag. Germany currently has 4,050 troops in the NATO- led stabilisation force in Afghanistan. But what would be extremely foolish is for Washington and its allies to start imposing decrees on a puppet Afghan government.
Indeed, not all the German politicians are as penitent as Merkel. The German Defence Secretary Frank Josef Jung refused to resign over the recent incident where the Germans order the bombing of two fuel trucks, killing 107, almost all civilians, according to Abdel-Wahid Omarkhel, the Chardarah district governor in Kunduz province. Jung insisted the German air strike was "militarily necessary and correct."
The Chief of the International Forces in Afghanistan United States General Stanley McChrystal was equally uncompromising. Be that as it may, Brown and Merkel are to write, together with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon outlining their outlook on security, government and development in Afghanistan. Gregor Gysi, the parliamentary head of the radical left party called the slaughter "unjustified and inexcusable", reflecting broad public opinion.
And this raises the most shaming question of all: where were the Afghan authorities in this entire trauma? "What an error of judgement. More than 90 dead all because of a simple lorry that was moreover, immobilised in a riverbed. Why didn't they send in ground troops to recover the fuel tank," President Hamid Karzai was quoted as saying in the French daily Le Figaro. He did not even bother to embark on the most elementary probing of the disaster. He was, as always, ignored.
The West sees the problem in Afghanistan as one of Afghan incompetence. They blame all the troubles of the country on the weak and ineffectual government they hastily installed. Brown, this week for instance, urged the Germans to keep training the Afghan army. He wants to see a larger and better-trained Afghan army that could overpower Taliban forces.
So where does this leave the Afghan election results? In limbo, of course, is the concise answer. Karzai is a write off. Abdallah Abdallah is a borderline candidate for the presidency of a defunct nation-state. So the G20 might as well hold their collective breath, and yet another conference will solve nothing. Such forums dealing with Afghanistan are invariably ahistorical, ignoring Afghanistan's uniqueness and its current role as a pawn in a cynical international power game.