Posted on Sun, Sep. 10, 2006 U.S. strategy may be helping Taliban, expert says By Andrew Maykuth
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT) NEW YORK - A leading Afghanistan scholar says that America's military counterterrorism strategy has failed to eliminate the Taliban - and may actually be contributing to the growth of the insurgent Islamist group. Barnett R. Rubin, director of studies and senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, said in a recent interview that a strategy devoted to destroying Taliban remnants has diverted resources from developing a strong central government in Kabul. "There was from the beginning and still is a contradiction between the counter-terrorism or counterinsurgency mission and the mission of building a stable, sovereign Afghan national state," said Rubin, who served as an advisor to the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, in 2001. Five years after the fall of the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai's government is hampered by rampant corruption, growing insecurity, runaway opium production and widespread discontent over the slow arrival of prosperity. "There have been huge delays in building basic infrastructure," Rubin said. "Kabul city now has less electricity than it did during Soviet occupation. And no more really than it did when the U.S. came in there." The U.S. strategy to initially rely upon unpopular warlords whom the Taliban ousted and to pursue a sometimes heavy-handed military strategy is wearing thin, said Rubin. "The longer that goes on, the more people will tend to feel under occupation, even though they did initially welcome the military operation to rid them of the Taliban and to deter their neighbors from tearing their country apart further." Rubin, author of the 1995 book "The Fragmentation of Afghanistan" who has made more than 20 trips to Afghanistan since 2001, placed much of the blame on the Bush administration's focus on destroying terrorists rather than addressing the conditions under which terrorists thrive. "They didn't understand that Afghanistan was not just a terrorist base," said Rubin. "The issue there is not just are you a moderate Muslim or are you an Islamic extremist. It's one of the poorest countries in the world - literally it's one of the four or five poorest countries in the world." Though the international community helped Afghanistan create the trappings of democratic institutions - a constitution, a Parliament and an elected president - the changes are still largely cosmetic. "It's not enough to have a foreign-funded election," said Rubin. "You have to build up the apparatus of administration. You have to invest in it so that once you elect people, they can do something other than divide themselves into factions over who can steal the most foreign aid." He said the international community's strategy toward opium production is typical of the counterproductive approach. After initially ignoring the resurgence of poppy production among Afghan's poor farmers, the U.S. responded this year by sponsoring an eradication program in southern Helmand province - source of about half the world's opium supply - without first developing infrastructure or plausible alternative opportunities for farmers. "Putting the enforcement first rather than the development first, we have actually turned farmers in some areas against us and driven them into the arms of terrorists," said Rubin. Following the eradication program, the Taliban distributed notes to mosques in Helmand promising to defend the farmers. "So naturally the farmers look to the Taliban as their protectors, and of course the drug dealers contributed money to the Taliban as well," said Rubin. This summer Helmand has seen some of the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan since 2001. http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/15486565.htm Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
