A General Redefines The Afghan Mission

The Afghan insurgency is showing disturbing parallels to the one in Iraq and also the 1979-89 Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation. Pervez Musharraf and Hamid Karzai, the most important U.S. allies on the frontlines of the war on terror, are publicly sniping at each other. Yet, true to form, Bush and his minions are blaming others. Three years ago when the Iraq operation started to go off the rails, both Baghdad and Washington began pointing fingers at "foreign terrorists" and neighbouring Iran and Syria. Now Kabul and Washington are blaming the "foreign Taliban" and Pakistan for the Afghan debacle. And Ottawa is obediently echoing the accusation. But Musharraf would have none of it. In a command performance leading up to Wednesday's White House dinner with Karzai and Bush, the usually confident Musharraf was cocky in refuting every allegation. Karzai said Pakistan is "a sanctuary of terrorists." Its madrassas, religious schools, "preach hatred." "There'll not be an end to terrorism unless we remove the hatred in the madrassas." (This, the standard narrative on Pakistan, won't do as an all-purpose explanation: the perpetrators of the Madrid and London bombings and others did not come from madrassas.) Musharraf argued that the Taliban are more Afghan than they are Pakistani. They come from the ranks of the Pushtuns who have historically lived across both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. Pakistan can no more seal the mountainous area than Afghanistan can. The Afghan Pushtuns are feeling alienated. They feel that Karzai, himself a Pushtun, is beholden to the coalition of tribes that helped the U.S. topple the Taliban in 2001. His corrupt administration and its foreign patrons also failed to establish security or bring development. When the disillusioned rural population turned, with Taliban help or under Taliban duress, to opium production for a living, the government and foreign troops cracked down, even as Karzai's warlords benefited. http://tinyurl.com/hw4fb

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