Hard News: Watching the Watchmen
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Afghan is the adjective and Afghani is the noun for people, though, no? It's like Spanish/Spaniard. You have one Spaniard, but a group of Spanish people, or Spaniards, not a group of Spaniard people.
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Bloody Lennonists...
..always throwing A Spaniard in the Works!
:- ) -
Afghan is the adjective and Afghani is the noun for people, though, no?
Yes,as in "My people are Afghan, I am an Afghani.and I speak the pashto language which is Indo-Iranian"
He never mentioned adjectives and nouns however. Bloody foreigners. ;) -
Also,
A friend just told me that, if I asked him who he was, he would say Afghani as an individual, As to the country, it is Afghan, which is the name of the people and istan is the place of living hence Afghan (people) istan (place).But only in English, right? ;-)
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Nobody is talking about the women, whose welfare is not now nor has ever been part of the strategic equation. They only get mentioned to justify the war to liberals.
You don't think this includes women's welfare?
In Afghanistan UNDP helps to strengthen local government and public administration; and undertakes many livelihood programmes, including working through communities and employing local labour to develop infrastructure such as schools and clinics.
I believe there is more scope for strategic collaboration between Japan and UNDP in Afghanistan. On this visit I have been discussing how we might scale up our already significant partnership there.
As part of its development mission, UNDP also works with its partners to strengthen human rights, justice and electoral institutions; help parliaments to develop their role of scrutiny; and support development of effective local, regional and national government.
Perhaps singling out 'women' was wrong, and it is possibly counter-productive to get drawn into a discussion of oppression on gender grounds. My bad, but I do believe humanitarian goals are part of at least some people's strategy. Well, I hope so. Naive, much? Probably.
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You don't think this includes women's welfare?
Why, do you think it's Helen Clark or UNDP that makes decisions about military strategy in Afghanistan?
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A small request: Russell/Craig, I apologise for being overly aggressive, but would you mind refraining from turning my "not much sympathy" statement into a "I wish they were dead" one?
Fair enough. And sorry in turn for my rather sharp responses.
My point is the *potential* risk to informants is far outweighed by the need for the world to know that NATO is murdering thousands of people and keeping mum about it.
That's just not a statement that can be sustained by either the Wikileaks documents or the separately researched UN reports, especially if you mean "is" in the present tense. It's a wild claim.
The leaked documents revealed 144 so-called "blue-on-white" incidents over seven years, the most evil of them being the Polish troops' revenge attack on a wedding party, which resulted in war crimes charges against the troops in a Polish court. Most of these incidents weren't investigated. They range from airstrikes gone wrong to single shootings by antsy soldiers at checkpoints.
The documents also bear out the claim that three quarters of civilian deaths come at the hands of anti-goverment forces, and illuminate the reduction in casualties at pro-government hands (and a much more responsible attitude to reporting) after McChrystal's arrival.
The UNAMA report I linked to found 596 civilian deaths last year caused by pro-goverment forces. That was a 28% reduction on the previous year, it included the actions of Afghan government forces (ie: not just NATO) and, mostly importantly, it is not "thousands".
C'mon. The information is there. We all complain about emotive language and poor reporting of data in the news media, and we shouldn't do it ourselves. We shouldn't make things up. This is not to minimise any death. But If we just shout words we're not going to learn much.
Well I for one am not demanding this. The only people who have a right to this demand are the Afghan people.
Fair enough too. There are obvious problems with determining what Afghan public opinion is -- two of the three surveys I noted upthread were conducted only among men-- but I think this is a more moral, and more practical, stance than the "fuck 'em -- we're outta here" position advanced by others in this thread.
You know, the way we the Western world act, we're not all that different from the Taliban. The key part of our culture that we share is that we think we have the right way to live and that everybody else should live like us, even if at the end of gun barrel.
I don't have the time or energy to debate that, but what you're effectively saying is that there are no absolute human rights. No amount of moral relativism is going to get you past the savage, and unique, element of gender in what the Taliban did, and would do again.
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I'm quite uncomfortable about the position (seemingly) being taken that we are there, or should stay in Afghanistan, to protect Afghani woman. By all means this is a worthy thing, however, lets be real about the motives for being there. The coalition went in to fuck shit up.
No doubt.
But I'm trying to "be real" about what happens to Afghan women if "we" now just ship out. I'm surprised at how lightly people dismiss it.
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But I'm trying to "be real" about what happens to Afghan women if "we" now just ship out.
The problem is that it's not at all clear. RAWA for one would like us to fuck right off, and I think they've earned the right to say so, although no doubt they don't represent all Afghan women. Nonetheless, I think it's something we all struggle with. But that "now" remains very problematic, and the absolute pragmatists could use being reminded of that more often. "Now" nicely obfuscates all the shit we made happen, including arming the bloody Taliban in the first place. It also puts the entire focus on the security and safety of the moment, versus a longer time-frame. Are women going to be better off next year if the NATO forces are still there? Maybe. What about in five years, when we will be most assuredly gone. Ten? Twenty? But of course nobody says that "now" it's an easy decision. Nor that turning away is the answer.
(Although to be very clear, withdrawing combat troops and turning away are in fact two very different propositions.)
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How to make Afghanistan better? I'd say legalise the drugs trade so the whole population can benefit from the crop exports, not just the Taliban.
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I thought there was a legal obligation for the first on the scene to stop at road accidents, but can't find link to substantiate it.
Not in NZ, though if you're involved in a crash you're obliged to stop and ascertain injury of other involved parties.
Where it gets tricky is if you do stop and assist, and then leave without passing care to another person. That's technically failing to provide the necessaries of life, especially if by leaving you demonstrably exacerbated the condition of the victim. If you left because your own life was endangered, or you were unable to maintain the care (such as becoming too exhausted to continue CPR), or you were going to seek assistance, that's fine. But if you left because staying was just fucking with your schedule, that's legally not cool.
Passing care doesn't just mean a paramedic can grab the nearest child who's walking to school and say "You can push on this, right?" - where "this" is a pad over an arterial bleed - so that said paramedic can go and do their shopping, either. Not that one ever would, but it works for this example. Care must be passed to someone whose competence is at least equal to the passer's competence: untrained first-aider -> trained first-aider -> ambulance officer/first responder -> paramedic -> doctor.Relatedly, how many here can, without referring to any reference material (including Google or other websites), say what the speed limit is after passing an "accident" sign until you have passed the scene of the accident?
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Why, do you think it's Helen Clark or UNDP that makes decisions about military strategy in Afghanistan?
No, but do you think the UNDP has no place in commenting on military strategies, or the role of reconstruction forces in Afghanistan? Whether anyone will listen, is another matter.
I also read the RAWA page earlier today. They are pretty militant, perhaps understandably. It sure presents an alternative view.
Let’s rise against the war crimes of US and its fundamentalist lackeys!
So I guess we are included in the 'lackeys' of whom they speak?
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No, but do you think the UNDP has no place in commenting on military strategies, or the role of reconstruction forces in Afghanistan? Whether anyone will listen, is another matter.
Well, no, it's exactly the matter. Anybody can comment, but if it doesn't make any difference then what's the relevance?
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The problem is that it's not at all clear. RAWA for one would like us to fuck right off, and I think they've earned the right to say so, although no doubt they don't represent all Afghan women.
RAWA's stance is basically a pox on all their houses -- the US, Karzai, Northern Aliiance, Taliban, jihadis -- and a call instead for "pro-independence, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights intellectuals to increase their organized efforts for a coordinated uprising of our people against all traitors to Afghanistan."
Which is perfectly understandable, and I understand the fury of their rhetoric, but it's hard to see how it might be achieved.
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So I guess we are included in the 'lackeys' of whom they speak?
No, in their view, the US and the Islamists and jihadis are in league.
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Well, no, it's exactly the matter. Anybody can comment, but if it doesn't make any difference then what's the relevance?
I'm a bit surprised by this. Are you saying even people in high profile positions like HC should say nothing about Afghanistan because nobody is listening? I would have thought they should just shout louder.
No, in their view, the US and the Islamists and jihadis are in league.
They use a lot of terms like "Northern Alliance" and "National Front", and it takes a bit of unravelling as to whom they are speaking about. But, yes perhaps we are excluded from the 'lackey' tag. Would they distinguish our 'reconstruction' forces from the US forces, when push comes to shove?
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They can shout as loud as they want, I applaud them - the issue remains that strategic decisions concerning the war in Afghanistan, which are public documents available to us without the need for Wikileaks to do a thing, tell us that the reason we are in Afghanistan, as of right now, is because we're afraid that if we leave it will destabilise Pakistan. It's got bugger all to do with the women.
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Which is perfectly understandable, and I understand the fury of their rhetoric, but it's hard to see how it might be achieved.
Get the troops out, stop buying the heroin from the Taliban, stop selling arms to the Taliban, strenghten Emergency and use their model of intervention to build infrastructure, support all pro-democracy, pro-civil rights organisations inside and outside of Afghanistan. Which is not my idea - it's Gino Strada's.
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I was talking to an Afghan friend the other day (yes, Afghan, a bit like Spanish people having the audacity to call themselves Español) who told me that when he was there, earlier this year, he was walking down the street with his cousin chewing on a stick of sugarcane, his cousin told him not to throw the end of his cane in the street as the US troops would assume it was a weapon and shoot them both. He also told me that it was not uncommon for American troops to shoot children so as to be sent home for counselling or "punishment" he wasn't sure which but suspected it was more to do with PR.
I was talking to an Afghan friend of my own a while ago, who noted that when the Taliban were in control, they would, with total impunity, steal what they wanted, kill who they wanted, and rape who they wanted (dressing it up as a 'marriage' if they needed to). He seemed to think things were (very marginally) better since 2001, and were slowly improving.
So who wins? My friend or yours?
I was a very, very reluctant supporter of the initial military action back in 2001, because if any country deserved the label 'failed state', it was Afghanistan. And the people who were nominally in control were allowing the country to be used as a base for training terrorists to attack western targets. That needed to be dealt with.
I was, and am, utterly furious at the goons in charge in the US and the UK, who seemed to think* that a stable, fully functioning democracy would magically leap out of the ground once a few rotten apples at the top were removed. It was, and is, clear that building a country takes decades of intensive work and resource. Part of the reason I was (and am) so angry about the Iraq FUBAR is that it diverted valuable resource away from Afghanistan.
A long time ago, when I was young and stupid, I expressed the opinion (in relation to what was then the civil war in the former Yugoslavia) that we should get out and leave them all to it. I was wrong.
None of the options currently on the table are in any way paletable, but like it or not, we do have a tiger by the tail. The bloodbath that would eventuate as a result of letting go is too unpleasant to contemplate.
*Or, yes, they sold us a turkey so that they could build a pipeline and/or other semi-hidden agenda items. I'm furious either way.
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To me the choice is really between 'the world' staying there and knowing that they're not doing very much, or leaving, and knowing that it's probably going to get a crapload worse.
They're both really shitty options, to me countries sending their armed forces in at tremendous expense and loss of life needs to have a higher standard than "we'll possibly keep it being less fucked up than it could be".
That all being said, if everyone pulls out and Afghanistan goes to the complete crap pot, won't we all reasonably be saying that some sort of peacekeeping force needs to be back in there to stop massacres and a dozen other crappy things going on?
Seems to me that all doors lead to "oh for fucks sake" and we really just need to choose the best way for everyone to get screwed as little as possible for as short a time as we can.
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So who wins? My friend or yours?
They both lose, They don't get to live peacefully in their own country. My friend is shit scared in his own country.That sucks no matter who wields the gun.
It is the propaganda that is spun to invade these places. Why do they spin it? Because they know it's wrong, so, bullshit baffles brains.That, makes my hair curl. If the likes of Wikileaks enlighten joe public and force change at a higher level, then I'm pro. -
Which is perfectly understandable, and I understand the fury of their rhetoric, but it's hard to see how it might be achieved.
I'd send in H2.
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Get the troops out, stop buying the heroin from the Taliban, stop selling arms to the Taliban, strenghten Emergency and use their model of intervention to build infrastructure, support all pro-democracy, pro-civil rights organisations inside and outside of Afghanistan. Which is not my idea - it's Gino Strada's.
Does he have any ideas on how all this might actually be achieved? Or is he hoping the illicit global trade in drugs and arms will just stop because those involved feel bad about Afghanistan?
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Does he have any ideas on how all this might actually be achieved?
Well, we're spending trillions of dollars fighting a war, which is a pretty complicated business. Stopping the flow of arms and drugs in and out of a country is also complicated, but doesn't have to be any less feasible. At any rate I would hesitate to dismiss out of hand the idea that we should at least give it a crack given that he was there building hospitals before this latest war even started. Qualified opinions, and all that.
In fact excuse me for saying so but I find the way you caricature said opinion pretty galling.
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If there was no black market in heroin and addicts got their supplies from pharmacies, there would be no illicit profits to be made. It'd also be way healthier for the smackheads.
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