Posted on 11/22/2001 2:50:09 PM PST by robbinsj
WASHINGTON - President Bush has said that the US role in Afghanistan will not end when our immediate military goals are achieved. What remains to be done there?
First, Afghanistan will need a government. To be acceptable, a new regime in Kabul must meet four conditions: First, it must represent the entire country and not just one or a couple of its many ethnic groups. Second, it must be out of the terrorism business. Third, it must be committed to wiping out the opium poppy crop. And fourth, it must meet some minimal international standard of human rights.
Only Afghans themselves can create such a government. The United States and other countries must stay out of the kitchen. Over the centuries, Afghans have proved to be masters at manipulating foreign powers attempting to shape their government from the outside. Besides, US (or other foreign) fingerprints on the new government could doom it. But the US must be prepared to recognize any government that meets these conditions. And it must even now provide firm assurances that it will organize and help fund major international assistance.
Such aid is not mere philanthropy. Without economic and social development, even the best Afghan government will surely fail. It is common in the West to trace the region's woes to religious and ethnic conflicts, which by definition are almost intractable. But these are effects, not causes. The root problem is poverty, the essential seed ground from which religious and ethnic strife sprout. This is true not only of Afghanistan, but of impoverished and conflict-torn mountain regions worldwide, including the Balkans, Chechnya, Chiapas in Mexico, Colombia, Kashmir, Nepal, Peru, and Tajikistan.
Can mountain poverty really be alleviated? Or is economic and social development under such onerous conditions a quixotic dream? A 20-year project in Pakistan's northern Karakorum Mountains adjoining Afghanistan provides living proof that sustainable development is possible, even under the most daunting physical circumstances. There, the Aga Khan Development Network has worked at the most local level to enable people to feed themselves, set up their own small businesses, establish communal institutions, and build schools. What was once a hotbed of drug trafficking and conflict is now a peaceful and developing region.
More recently, the Aga Khan Development Network has extended this same effort to the people of the harsh Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan's eastern territory of Badakhshan, adjoining Afghanistan on the north. Throughout the 20th century, this forbidding region imported most of its foodstuff from elsewhere. After a mere five years, Badakhshan has become self-sufficient in food. Drug trafficking and civil conflict have fallen off sharply.
Today, the Aga Khan, along with the presidents of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, is working to build a region-wide educational institution to train local men and women in the skills essential for economic and social development.
The University of Central Asia's main campus will be at the Tajik town of Khorog, situated at 9,000 feet directly on the Afghan border. Satellite campuses will be placed in Kyrgyzstan's Tien-Shan Mountains at Naryn and in the Altai and Allatau Mountains of Kazakstan, adjoining China. The university will be private, secular, and coeducational. (I am rector pro-tem until the institution is up and running and a local person can take my place.) Through undergraduate and graduate programs and through a Division of Continuing Education that will use the latest communications technology, the university will prepare entrepreneurs in sustainable development for both the private and public sectors, from village to capital.
The University of Central Asia's innovative program of development studies will eventually extend to Afghanistan. In a land from which nearly the entire educated middle class has fled, graduates of UCA will make the difference between hope and the despair that breeds religious and ethnic conflict - and terrorism.
Together, these three initiatives are proving beyond doubt that economic and social development are attainable goals, even in some of the world's most forbidding and impoverished mountain environments. Focused efforts at the grassroots level cost far less than the grando-maniac development schemes of a generation ago. Yet they bring dramatic and positive results. The price tag, under any circumstances, is far less than what inaction would eventually cost us.
S. Frederick Starr is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
For an expanded analysis on how global financial capitalism corrodes local mountain cultures see the expanded analysis: Altitude Sickness. For potential flamers: please read Ricardo's 1837 analysis on trade between nations first!
Any day now...
Even if we gave $1 million to every man, woman and child in Afghanistan, on the condition that they had to stay in the country, in 10 years Afghanistan would still be a war ravaged hell hole. The Aghans would simply be able to kill each other with fancier, more expensive weapons.
How do their emigres manage not to do it in this country, then?
HUH ?
Please revisit the posted article before going into fire aim ready mode:
"More recently, the Aga Khan Development Network has extended this same effort to the people of the harsh Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan's eastern territory of Badakhshan, adjoining Afghanistan on the north. Throughout the 20th century, this forbidding region imported most of its foodstuff from elsewhere. After a mere five years, Badakhshan has become self-sufficient in food. Drug trafficking and civil conflict have fallen off sharply."
If you have any better rational suggestions sound off!
Let's just give them money without them actually working for it or deserving it. It works great here in America. (sarcasm off)
By the way Klinton policies of supporting the KLA only strengthened the Afghanistan-Turkey-Kosovo-EU heroin pipeline. According to Interpol about 80% of the heroin in Europe is distributed by the Albanian-Kosovo mafia fares. They also control most of the sex slavery and have branched out into smuggling and bank robbery (1000+ bank robberies in Spain alone).
The only solution to drugs appears to be treatment and cultural reconstruction policies similar to those used by the Aga Khan. The military war on drugs solution will eventually fail as it is more expensive.
The Afghan people are not our enemy nor is Islam, at least that is what President Bush claims!
How do their emigres manage not to do it in this country, then?
That is the beauty of America. Some claim that America is "violent", "intolerant" and "racist" and yet individuals that would be literally killing each other back in their homeland manage to live relatively peacefully in America.
Some cultures foster and perpetuate hatred and violence. Examples in Europe are Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and Serbs and Croats in the Balkans. Examples in Africa are Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. In America, a Hutu and a Tutsi may see each other as simply fellow "African-Americans" or "Blacks". In 1994 in Rwanda, their cousins hacked each other to death with machetes and shot each other to achieve a death toll of 500,000.
America has a civilizing effect on most people as did the mere sight of the British officer in the last beach scene from "Lord of the Fies".
The one people who seem to be immune to the civilizing effect of America are those who follow Radical Islam.
I can remember how U.S. troops had to occupy black ghettos in the 1960's to quell riots. The massive transfer of wealth from the third world to the U.S. has dramatically reduced this civil strife. This economic condition also caused a reduction in Asian-Hispanic violence that was common in the 1970's.
Discounting racial strife, any U.S. law enforcement agency will tell you that crime rate increases as the unemployment rate increases. The same holds for Albania, Afghanistan, Columbia, Turkey, etc..
The civil strife in Rwanda was preceeded by a draconian IMF restructuring program that dramatically reduced the standard of living in Rwanda. All it took was a match to set off the conflict - in this case the supposed killing of the President of Rwanda in a plane crash.
Identical IMF restructuring programs and collapses of the economy also occurred in Yugoslavia in 1989 and in Albania in 1997. In the Yugoslav case the Bush (old #41) and Klinton administration used the strife to forward cynical geopolitical goals.
Just throwing money at a leadership in hopes of building a society as the IMF-world bank tride doesn't work! Actually it was never meant to work anyway. Welcome to the other side of globalism.
History shows that Afghanistan's taste for it's own blood was fully developed before the Soviets ever invaded. In fact, Aghani in-fighting is the excuse that the USSR used to occupy the country.
Afghan geopolitics: perpetual war zone
The USA helped Aghanistan throw off the yoke of the USSR in Afghanistan just as the Cold War efforts in Europe helped Poland throw off the yoke of the USSR. After the Soviets were gone, the Poles began rebuilding their country. After the Soviets were gone, the Afghans resumed killing each other.
At some point, a people has to start taking responsibility for the peace of it's own country. Increasing the wealth of a land ruled by competing warlords only increases the spoils of war gained by the winning faction.
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