Tony Hatfield's Retired Ramblings

Our Afghanistan difficulties have their roots in Iraq. Don't let Brown and Milliband fool you!

One thing that  irritates me when our politicians-both Labour and Tory- are asked about the deepening difficulties in Afghanistan, is their  unwillingness  to link those problems with our devastating policy failure in Iraq.

We are being constantly told, not only by our politicians but our military, that the reason we are  fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is so we don't have to on the streets of London, Edinburgh or Newcastle. This is reminiscent of the nonsense of the  Bush/Blair excuse for the invasion of Iraq!

 Now that may or may not be true. After all, as RUSI's  Michael Clarke  emphasised on the Today progamme this morning, even if we were to clear out the Taliban from Afghanistan and Pakistan, there are many other failed or failing states al Qaeda could use as training camps. He suggested Somalia, Yemen or Southern Mali. 

But even if the politicians are right about this, what is clear is  that the the Iraqi debacle distracted both the US and UK from the real problem of Afghanistan. The cost of that disaster in both  men an materials  is the main cause of the problems we are experiencing in Afghanistan today. 

Had we not followed Bush  into Iraq in 2003, and dealt with the real  threat in Afghanistan-for which there was a UN Resolution-the problem of the Afghanistan as a potential training ground for al Qaeda would have probably  been resolved by now.

And it gets worse. Iraq provided an effective training for the Taliban who are using it to deadly effect in Helmand province today. Does anyone think that the   improvised explosive devises being used so effectively today did not have their gestation in post 2001 Iraq?

Obama-You must not let Bush/Cheney off the Hook!

Last November, I blogged here  about dragging Bush and his cronies into the dock to face punishment for the crimes they certainly committed during the time they all had their hands on the levers of power.

  I found this part of Obama's inaugural address  so disappointing.; "

 Paul Krugman in the New York Times interpreted this in the only possible way.

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Mark Anderson at Bright Fire takes Krugman's point much further.

I want to say one quick thing about Obama’s comments on this, echoing Paul Krugman in today’s NYTimes: a) Obama would be making a huge mistake, despite the short-term advice being given him by inside counselors (the top one the son of an Israeli terrorist) about letting the Neocons and other criminals get off the hook; and, b) it isn’t up to him. 

Krugman tally of  crimes  reaches six, but Anderson manages to add a few more, but both agree the biggie is this one. 

Here is a simple question: who is responsible for nearly a million civilian deaths in a faked war? There was never, ever a need for an Iraq war; and that statement will stand the test of history. Given its truth, we should not be talking about the few thousand GI deaths as the cost of the war, but should recognize that the United States, without cause or any particular aggression on Iraq’s part, and without any proven concern for its own safety, did cause the deaths of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 civilians in that country.

Obama has  now sworn to "preseve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States". By allowing Bush and his pals to walk away with no investigation into their behaviour, Obama's  first mistake is not far away.

Bush in the Dock?

Peter Harvey's  Lavengro blog pointed me to this New York Times spoof. The "original" can be found here.

 One of the articles  is headed " Court Indicts Bush on High Treason Charge.  Clicking on  that headline takes you to a  piece written by Bart Garzon.
 Garzon writes,

“In this case, high treason has been interpreted to include pursuing an illegal and devastating war that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of over 4,000 Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis, for essentially insane ends,” said Vincent Bugliosi, a former federal prosecutor....... . “In effect, the Iraq War amounted to a war against America,” added Bugliosi, who is also the author of the book, The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder."

And then

A friend of Mr. Bush, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that Mr. Bush would attempt to move the case to the International Criminal Court, which does not have a death penalty, and was quietly pressing Secretary of State Naomi Klein to bring the U.S. under the court’s jurisdiction. In 2002, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected the I.C.C.’s jurisdiction, saying it was “unaccountable to the American people.”

All quite amusing, but Bush and the other war mongers may be facing  more serious charges.

When the case of Hamdan v Rumsfeld eventually found its way to the  US Supreme Court the judgement contained, what may turn out for Bush and his colleagues, a slow burning fuse.

The US Supreme Court Blog, Scotusblog contains this comment  by Marty Lederman.

"Even more importantly for present purposes, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva applies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today’s ruling......... This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,” and that “[t]o this end,” certain specified acts “are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever”—including “cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

And as Lederman concludes.

"This almost certainly means that the CIA’s interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administration has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes)."

And in more forceful language, Dave Lindorff in Counterpoint.

 "In other words, the whole top administration, from Commander in Chief George W. Bush on down, is guilty of war crimes. The punishment for committing war crimes ranges from a lengthy jail sentence to, in the event the crimes in question caused the death of any prisoners being held, to death. And there have been many deaths among those who have been held and tortured on orders of the administration-most recently the three suicides at Guantanamo, which included on man who had only three days earlier been targeted for release (but who never learned this because government's secrecy and tight security prevented his attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights from getting the news to him)."

 Whilst Bush and his cronies still hold the levers of power in Washington, nothing will happen. After January 20th 2009 all bets are off.

Exactly how many kids are going to school in Afghanistan Mr Alexander?

One of the few boasts the UK/US governments are able to make about the slowly developing quagmire in Afghanistan is the number of kids  that are now able to attend school.

Here, a Home Office spokesman came out with  the usual government line.

....with 5.4 million children in school compared to an estimated one million children in 2001.

This was a repeat of an answer given by Douglas "Milky Bar Kid" Alexander, on behalf of DfID in the Commons on the 28th February this year.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what estimate he has made of the number of (a) schools, (b) teachers and (c) pupils in Afghanistan, in the last two years, broken down by state. [188198]

Mr. Douglas Alexander: Data are not currently available in the time frame requested. However, we estimate that there are currently around 5.4 million children now in school in Afghanistan, over a third of them girls. This is up from an estimated one million children in 2001, of whom very few were girls, who were officially denied access to education under the Taliban. 27 per cent. of girls and 44 per cent. of boys in rural areas now attend school, and 51 per cent. of girls and 55 per cent. of boys in urban areas now attend school. ( my emphasis).

So where exactly does this 5.4 Million figure come from? I suspect it comes from the Afghan Ministry of Education. After all, they should know the figures, shouldn't they?

This is what their website actually states.

More than 5.4 million children are enrolled in schools today, nearly 35% of them girls, compared to a little more than a million 5 years ago and almost no girls.

Still, half of our school-age children are estimated to be out of schools with significant gender and provincial disparities.

The word " enrolled" seems to have morphed into the phrase " in school". There may be 5.4 million kids trooping through the school gates in Afghanistan. I doubt it , but certainly that cannot be deduced from the word "enrolled".
The difficulties parents are exposed to are shown here in the  Telegraph last year.

"We always wanted our daughter to acquire education, but we are scared," said Baaz Khan, a businessman, who took his 11-year-old daughter from the school.

"It is really awful not to educate our daughters, who have the challenges of the modern world ahead of them, but for me and my friends, the very thought of having to carry the dead bodies of our young daughters out of the wreckage of a bombed school is equally unnerving."

Not only the girls, but this piece describes just how difficult it is for parents to send  all their children to school.

In the past 13 months, 226 schools, many run from tents, have been burnt down by the insurgents. A total of 110 teachers and students have been killed in incidents of indirect violence and another 52 wounded, officials say.     The Taleban also shut down 381 schools, the majority of them in provinces like Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan where they have a formidable presence.

Indeed, the Afghan Education Minister, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, tells the BBC that

I am very worried that such incidents will make parents very scared to send their children to school.

So come on DfID lets have the real figures please!

NeoCon Lickspittle?

Yesterday on the Today Programme, I heard an American who was described as the US Ambassador to NATO. I had no idea who she was.  Her function seemed to be taking the begging bowl round   for more  European troops to assist the British, Canadian and Dutch in taking on the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan.  She looked and sounded like one of those botoxed women you see flogging perfume on some shopping channel. She was about as unconvincing.

A  couple of minutes  Googling led me to Victoria Nuland,

Victoria Nuland

and then to her entry on that wondeful site "Political Friendster"

She's married to Neocon Robert Kagan, worked for Dick Cheney

and, it seems,  spent some time discussing Ugandan Affairs with

Michael Ledeen.

Michael Ledeen

So a Neocon Lickptittle after all. Everything fell into place

Afghanistan- Five Years On

In a dismissive  observation,the  UK Foreign Office rejected a  report from SENLIS about the  state of Afghanistan in 2006. The  SENLIS paper puts into perspective the failure of the international community's efforts, led largely by the US and the UK, to get even close to achieving what they set out to achieve in 2001.

Below is the Executive Summary, but it's worth reading the entire paper. It can be downloaded in chapers (pdf) here

Collapsing security and return of Taliban 

Five years after their removal from power, the Taliban is back and has strong psychological and de facto military control over half of Afghanistan. Having assumed responsibility for the country in 2001, the United States-led international community has failed to achieve stability and security in Afghanistan. Attacks are perpetrated on a daily basis; several provinces, particularly those of the South, considered safe just weeks ago, are now experiencing regular suicide bombings, murders, and ambushes.

The international military coalitions in Afghanistan – the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – are fuelling resentment and fear among the Afghan population. The distinctions between the two are extremely blurred, with the NATO-led ISAF now constantly engaged in war operations. Afghans see the international military coalitions as taking sides in a civil war situation, and as NATO-ISAF troops retreat to their fortified military compounds in southern Afghanistan, locals perceive that the Taliban-led insurgents are once again defeating global military powers.

Failure to address Afghanistan’s extreme poverty fuelling support for Taliban

After five years of international donor pledges to provide resources and assistance to Afghanistan, Afghans are starving to death, and there is evidence that poverty is driving support for the Taliban. Prioritising military-based security, the United States’ and United Kingdom’s focus on counter-terrorism initiatives and militaristic responses to Afghanistan’s opium crisis has undermined the local and international development community’s abilities to respond to Afghanistan’s many poverty-related challenges.

US and UK counter-narcotics strategies have accelerated and compounded all of Afghanistan’s problems

By focusing aid funds away from development and poverty relief, failed counter-narcotics policies have hijacked the international community’s nation-building efforts in the country and undermined Afghanistan’s democratically elected government. Poppy cultivation is a food survival strategy for millions of Afghans, and the United States’ and United Kingdom-led poppy eradication policies are fuelling violence and insecurity.

Afghan central government legitimacy and effectiveness undermined by US-led international community’s approaches in Afghanistan

Five years of internationally lauded democracy-building achievements in Afghanistan mask the growing scepticism with which Afghans view their central government. Increasingly, Afghans perceive that their government is accountable to international donors, and not to the Afghans themselves. In establishing democratic institutions, the international community raised expectations high, yet stood back as the United States and United Kingdom undercut the Afghan government’s ability to deliver on these expectations by forcing the adoption and implementation of militaristic counter-narcotics policies. Failed counter-narcotics policies have undermined the legitimacy of the Afghan government. Nation-building sequencing in wrong order

Massive international expenditure on security illustrates that right from 2001, the international community’s priorities for Afghanistan were not in line with those of the Afghan population. Rather, for the past five years, the US-led international community has prioritised military-focused security over the relief of Afghans’ extreme poverty and economic instability. Military expenditure outpaces development and reconstruction spending by 900%. An intensive and extended focus on relieving the poverty of Afghans could have created a solid foundation on which to re-build Afghanistan. Instead, because the fight against poverty has not been prioritised, the international community’s democracy-building efforts are collapsing as Afghans starve.