Christina Lamb, of The Times of London, has provided one of the best assessments of the ground realities in Afghanistan. She should know as she has been reporting from Afghanistan for 20 years. I strongly recommend that her present analysis should be carefully read.
One has to be patient as this is a longish report where she argues why the US and the NATO forces cannot beat the Taliban.
Here are the excerpts from Lamb’s report: “Most alarming is the way Kabul has been encircled by the Taliban, prompting a sense of being under siege both among Afghans and foreigners, behind their concrete blocks and armed guards.
“Of four highways into the capital from the south, east, west and north, built with hundreds of millions of foreign aid money, only the northern route is considered safe. Even that has become prone to rocket attacks.
“Complicating matters is the fact that the Taliban are not the only source of violence. Like a franchise of the disgruntled, there are also militants from the Hezb-i-Islami of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Al-Qaeda militants from the Jala-luddin Haqqani network based in the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan, drug networks, armed criminals and corrupt elements inside and outside the government.
“With most of the population unemployed, there are plenty of people who will happily fire a rocket for a few dollars. ‘It’s not the Taliban that are winning – it’s the government who are losing,’ says Haroun Mir, deputy director of the Afghan Centre for Research and Policy Studies.
“ ‘The Taliban are mining in a sea of acquiescence, a sullen, frightened acquiescence,’ agrees a western diplomat gloomily. ‘If you ask people, they don’t want Taliban; but if it’s a choice between them and corrupt, predatory government, they prefer Taliban’. If there is one positive to be found in the mess, it is that from London to Washington all agree that the situation is critical and things have to change.
“So bad is the situation that British and American forces are indirectly funding the Taliban as they get their own fuel and water supplies through. The private contractors they use estimate that 25% of the $4,000 per truck paid for security ends up with the Taliban. To read the complete report please click here...
Photo above courtesy The Times: British soldiers in Afghanistan – The Stress shows.
Elsewhere, Amy Goodman’s article is also worth reading…Please click here…
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.