Thoughts of things that hit the reef…

The war in Afghanistan is controversy at best. Should “we” stay there or should we leave it? Was the war even necessary? That depends, what one sees as necessary, of cause…

The war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and on that point, the war against Afghanistan was initiated after the Terror-Attack at the World Tread Center in NY. It was called a counter-strike after the attack. This counter-strike should overthrow the Taliban regime and in some way, it did, and bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. Under the Taliban-regime, Afghanistan was economically and socially in the late medieval. That is not really the fault of the Afghans themselves, it’s more merely bad luck in its history.

So lets take a short detour in the Afghan history. In its history Afghanistan was attack and occupied by the British Empire not less then three times. The first war toke place from 1839-1842 and resulted in a ceasefire, which was immediately broken by the Afghans when the British corpse retreaded from Afghanistan. The whole British Afghanistan Expedition was attacked in an ambush and all 15.000 British and Indian soldiers and there families were killed. Driven by anger, the British again declared ware on Afghanistan and occupied it in the year 1878. As an act of vengeance, the British burned down Kabul (the capital of Afghanistan). The third British-Afghan war in 1919 lead to the independence of Afghanistan. Actually Afghanistan was called Afghanistan only by now. It was also recognized as an sovereign state. In 1933 Afghanistan became a kingdom, a republic in 1973 and in 1978 the communists took over the country with the help of the Soviet Union.

In 1979 the Soviet army marched into Afghanistan to stabilize the communist government. This resulted in a 10 year lasting proxy war between the Soviet Union and the USA. In which course the USA supported the Mujaheddin, kind of Islamic guerrilla, in the war against the Soviet Union. Really nice depicted in the move “Charlie Wilson’s war“. After the retread of the Soviets in 1989, different Mujaheddin groups turned on each other. Which resulted in a civil war, that lasted till 1995. From 1995 to 2001 the Taliban started to conquer Afghanistan out from Pakistan. In the end they proclaim the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and implanted the Sharia, the Islamic law derived from the Koran, they closed many schools, forced man to grow a beard and women to wear the Burqa.Women were also no longer allowed to visit schools or to leave there home without any male company.

After the Attack in 2001, the US suspected that Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan and invaded the country in a so called act of self defence.

They never found Bin Laden, maybe he was killed during the war, maybe he escaped, maybe he was not even there. After three years the Islamic Republic Afghanistan was instated and the first President Hamid Karzai was elected. In his first 5 years, every President is elected for 5 years and can only be elected two times, the country improved in some points. But one can not really be sure if this is because of his actions. To keeps his power, it is known, that Karzai sells positions in his country. One can buy a position as  province governor for only about 20,000 €. The outcome for the President is, that these governors will enforce Karzais agenda and to keep there power, they will “encourage” people to vote for Karzai. The governors are usually local warlords. They control there province to some point and they drain some money out of it. They also sell local positions to other people, they may profit from some smuggling here and some drug production there and so on. It is a prospering system of corruption.

On the other hand, Afghanistan has new schools and universities, women and girls are now again allowed to visit schools. Hospitals have been build, the medical care has been improved. Kilometers of streets have been build, fountains have been dug. And Afghanistan has at least some democratic system, they have actually a women quota for their parliament.

The plan of the Bundeswehr, as part of the coalition force,  was, to first secure the country by fighting the Taliban off. Then to recruit and train Afghan police and army and build up the infrastructure and during that, decrease the number ob soldiers till finally leave the country. As plans tend, they go wrong. They couldn’t fight the Taliban off. Imagine to secure a country the size of Alaska with now ~70,000 men. That doesn’t work, and it didn’t. But still they followed the infrastructure plan and started to train new police.

Till 23. August 2009 the coalition force has lost 1,331 soldiers. There are no official statistics for the number of dead civilians, but is probably somewhat higher.

In Germany some of the most discussed question about the war in Afghanistan is, whether it is a war or not. The government call it a mission or operation but no war. That is probably with regard to the public international law. Officially, the Bundeswehr is helping the Afghan government to fight insurgent, the Taliban. On the other hand, to call it a war would acknowledge the fact, that there are soldiers fighting and dieing. That soldiers after completing there mission, come home from a war, not from a foreign deployment. Soldiers who are maybe in need of mental council.

Anyway, tho whether stay or leave Afghanistan is no easy decision. It is no wrong or good, no black or white. If we would leave now, the Taliban would regain their power withing a couple of years and overthrow the government. To stay would mean that “we” will lose more men and women in this war, that more civilians will die, but also that Afghanistan maybe stabilize some day. Maybe some day…

Make your own decision.