They hate us

There is something terribly wrong in “liberated” Afghanistan:

The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan yesterday described the situation in the country as “close to anarchy” with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.

The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato’s international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were “running out of time” if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people.

The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. “That is clearly not the case,” he said yesterday. He referred to disputes between tribes crossing the border with Pakistan, and divisions between religious and secular factions cynically manipulated by “anarcho-warlords”.

Meanwhile:

An Afghan government proposal to re-establish the notorious Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has raised concerns among U.S. human rights advocates.

Under the Taliban, the virtue and vice department enforced restrictions on women and men through public beatings and imprisonment.

Its agents “beat women publicly for wearing socks that were not sufficiently opaque; showing their wrists, hands or ankles; and not being accompanied by a close male relative,” Zama Coursin-Neff, of New York-based Human Rights Watch, told OneWorld.

It is time for a serious examination of the role being played by Australian troops in Afghanistan. Are they working with warlords? What are they achieving by being there? It’s time for them to return to Australia, before more are killed. The foreign occupation has achieved a litany of false hopes and the transfer of power from one bunch of despots to another.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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