Nation building in Afghanistan, success or failure?

I think that it will be in favor of the USA to abandon the idea of nation building in Afghanistan; if they insist, they may share destiny of the Soviet nation builders in the area. They, IMHO, should provide a kind of peaceful coexistence of the Karzai's regime in Kabul with the powerful Pashtun tribal Sheiks, and nothing beyond this.
And, of course, to come to agreement with the tribal chiefs that they will not cooperate with Al Qaeda and other terror organizations. In fact, they are not so much interested in such a cooperation, but if the pro-American regime in Kabul attempts to restrict their power they will cooperate with any enemies of the USA in order to protect their autonomy.

>Docent P, I've come to really appreciate your various posts, but this one has me a bit puzzled - whence the suggestion that the (Muslim-fundamentalist, originally Pakistan-sponsored) Taliban was/is Marxist?

It's not a secret but rarely mentioned fact - all Taliban's member - from it's founder Mulla Borjah up to todays leader Hekmatiar - once were members of Communist movements, mostly of Khalq - pro-Chinese fraction of the Afghan Communist Party. See details here:
The Roots of Islamic Terrorism

>Qu'ran and Das Kapital are pretty hard to reconcile, you know, especially for those who, like the Taliban, want to take their holy book literally ... ;-)

I doubt whether one of them ever tried to read Koran. Despite all their pseudo-Islamic rhetoric actually their ideology is RATHER closer to Marxist than to Islam.

For example: why did Bin Laden take as a target the World Trade Center (a non-government, non state building)? He was sure (according to his own words) that he stroke the "heart of American power". These innocent commercial managers ruled the world and took the main responsibility for all disasters that happened to poor Muslims in Palestine - that was Bin Laden's logic. But it's a TOTAL SH*T from the Islamic (and Christian also)religious point of view - noone can rule the events but Allah only. All happening happens so because of Allah's will. As I remember the Bible and Koran say that once people believed that the gold controls the world and made a golden pig (or bull? - I have forgoten) but Moses (or Musa) returned from the Sinae mountain and broke this pig of their heads.

But all what Bin Laden claimed about the WTC is ideally suited to Marxism. Marx literally insisted that all countries are nothing more but "bourgeuisie (I'm damned if can ever write this stupid Marx's word correctly) organised into countries" and so on. Actually Marxism is in no way an "economical materialist science" but a stupid, primitive, cannibal, anti-human pagan religion (the guys who carried a golden pig were the first Marxists ). IMHO if even Bin Laden isn't a true Marxist (what is VEEEEERY hardly probable IMHO) he could be a very good one.

>>...What can prove American victory better?

>It doesn't necessarily prove anything except the seeming unwillingness of the Americans to achieve more than what they have achieved now

If you disagree with my logic try to check Taliban's leaders quotes issued in the beginning of the American actions - how they imagined the perspectives of their war and compare them with the current situation. Of course not the all happened in the ideal way but when we say "the Americans reached very little result..." we must remember what they were supposed to reach in the very beginning of the war.
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>I think that it will be in favor of the USA to abandon the idea of nation building in Afghanistan; if they insist, they may share destiny of the Soviet nation builders in the area.

I agree. At first the USA were never going to build any kind of paradise as the Soviets used to intent. Then the national building isn't a problem of the USA - this is the problem of Afghans. They CAN DECIDE THEMSELVES what form of ruling they would prefer - either basing on tribal system or smth that existed during King's ruling. This is not the US's problem. The problems for the Americans generally are over.

As about Karzai IMHO he proved himself as an effective and sensible politician, especially during the uprising of Doostum's Commies in Mazari-Sharif.

I agree with DocentP that the so-called Afghan fundamentalists were not so much aware of the contents of Koran. Their everyday behavior was too far from this of pious people (for example, majority of the Afghan field commanders had teenage male lovers, and homosexuality is prohibited by the "conventional" Islam) proves this. I do not think that they are devout Marxists either. Their aim is to destroy the Western society that promotes modernization and thus endangers their power and influence over their compatriots. And they believe that money and business are the core sources of the Western power.
About the idol that the ancient Jews erected in absence of Moses: this was a golden calf and not a pig. I wonder, how is DocentP that lives in the Christian country unsure on this issue.

That article seems to me mostly a breathtaking exercise in making connections. Paragraph after paragraph one person is linked to another, to another, who is involved with this group, which is said to have been part of this alliance before, about which it is claimed that they were funded by X which of course is an ally of Y which in the end proves ... nothing much more than that there is a quagmyre of interconnecting interests and intrigues of foreign governments, secret agencies and political-military "entrepreneurs", but we knew that already.

I'm not particularly fond of this kind of analysis, as it leaves readers with a distinct feeling of one big complot, regardless of how many of the "suspicious" links were actually proven or weighted to which degree - they're just mentioned, some undoubtedly true, others just claimed or suggested, but before you go - wait a minute, but that's not wholly - it shuts you up with the next allegation you don't have info enough to immediately refute.

Even I was caught - for example I was going to write here that I was struck that Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, used to be in the Afghan Communist Party- except he wasnt. The article merely mentions that he used to be in the "Islamic Revolutionary Movement" - a movement described nor mentioned anywhere else in the article - together with Mullah Borjan - who, in his turn, some 17 (!) years before, had been in a radical maoist communist faction - which was actually deposed by the Soviets after they'd marched in in 1979. The example sums it all up, really. In a country like Afghanistan, you can link any warlord with any movement in this way - hardly the proof that "the Taliban" is "Marxist".

OK, you say, perhaps, diving into the example, but Mullah Borjan was the supreme commander of the Taliban at first! Doesnt that prove the Taliban-communist connection? Well, first off, no - Joschka Fischer used to be a revolutionary street fighter 30 years ago and now he's a Minister of Foreign Affairs, doesnt immediately link Schroeder with the RAF.

But the point is not that I picked a bad example, and that the next of the article's arguments would have been convincing. The point is that any argument that is mere suspicon should have been left out - and any remaining argument should have been tested according to the same standards as the possible counterargument. Example: is the political origin of Borjan, the original '96 Taliban leader who was quickly killed ("under unknown circumstances", of course), relevant? Not if you follow the article in dismissing the proposition that the Taliban in the same days "were a creation by Benazir Bhutto’s interior minister, Nasrullah Babar" (a proposition linked by the article to mere "Russian disinformation", neglecting to mention that the Pakistani sponsorship was pretty much standard analysis in the West too) because "even if [it was], they had soon freed themselves from any gratitude and dependence". So - the Pakistani sponsorship of the movement in 96 itself is not relevant b/c things since have chenged, but the distant political origin of its then-leader is.

Well, et cetera et cetera. You equate the Taliban with Hekmatyar - who was one of the major warlords who were actually completely routed by the Taliban, when it started marching. The article makes much of the Hekmatyar connection, too. (Unspecified) "Afghan freedom fighters recognized" him as a KGB provocateur. As proof it is said that he "gained notoriety in Afghanistan for killing more fellow Mujahideen than he did communists". This, of course, is a bit of a bromide, as it would be true for most every Mujahedeen warlord. Further proof is that the Soviets had "numerous agents in his military council" - much like everyone else, I gather from the next line, not just Soviet ally Lybia and the PLO, but the Muslim Brotherhood, too, and Iran ...

It is Iran (to whom Hekmatyar sold the Stingers he got from the US), of course, that's the link most often used in analyses of Hekmatyar's fiefdom - Iran using him to retain a measure of controlled instability on its Eastern border, an instability much preferred to, for example, the Taliban's more aggressive and unified power. But just like the Pakistan link is belittled when it comes to the Taliban, the Iranian link is simply glossed over in this article when it comes to Hekmatyar. It's not quite clear why - the logic seems to be that because Iran is anti-American, too, its involvement should just add suspicion about Russian/Soviet/communist involvement.

I am not defending Russia, or Communism here. I do have a thorough dislike of grand all-encompassing complot theories. They're what reduced Serb politics to a caricature, for one. And I definitely dislike their use in attempts to sweep everything and everyone that's for some reason anti-American together, in one big 'baddie' camp - just so that an attack on any one of them can be legitimized to the public by connecting them to any other of them.

Guilt by association, that's called, I think. There's Saddam, he's bad, there's Al-Qaeda, they're bad, if we say one helps the other because they are clearly both anti-American, we don't really need to provide any proof, because if we repeat the allegation often enough, people will think, 'where there's smoke, there's fire'. And that's just an example where the incriminated party is a baddie.

Hikmatyar, in the end, is a symbol of everything that brought Afghanistan to the brink - a notorious turncoat, unscrupulous in dealing with everyone he could use, raking in US, Russian, Iranian, even Pakistani support as he positioned himself against whomever those powers considered the biggest threat of the moment, playing them off against each other, and all merely for his own and his clique's interest as warlords.

That implies a big responsibility for those major powers. They have been stirring in Afghanistan for decades now - the Soviet Union and Russia, the US, Iran, Pakistan - with often as little scruples as Hekmatyar. They have undermined every attempt at restoring some knd of civil society there. After financing, arming and training the Mujahedeen revolt against the communist dictatorship for a decade, the US withdrew as soon as those whom they helped into power started carving up the country amongst themselves. Now they might go and make the same mistake. Bombing a country - whether to occupy it or free it - implies responsibility, per se. The international community should take it and finally do some good for Afghanistan, helping to repair some of the damage that's been done in the twenty years of turmoil they financed.

And who knows, if they do succeed in helping Karzai establish a democratic, civil society there, it can be a shining symbol of the good the West can do there - and by force of example recruit youth across the Muslim world for the good cause, instead of chasing them into Osama's ranks.

nimh if i understand you correctly, you are pointing out that a basket full of spurious correlations do not make a woven carpet.

I completely agree with nimh, but it seems to me impractical to start building a civil society in Afghanistan. It may lead to casualties among the U.S. soldiers in absence of any sufficient military operations. And when the GI bodies start returning to the USA, the public opinion will make government to disgracefully withdraw the troops. It is better to do now, without losing face.

And the examples provided by nimh, prove that the warlords do not have any ideology at all. They adopt this of their patrons. While Mullah Borjan was on Chinese paycheck, he was a Maoist; when the funds started coming from Pakistan, he became a devout Muslim. All these tribal and allegedly "spiritual" leaders are the same sh*t: immoral and corrupt thugs.

Yeh, basically, and that was very specifically re: a sub-topic that came up - Docent P spoke of the "Marxist Taliban", I replied with some question marks, and he replied with some proof - my posts above were basically to deconstruct the part of that proof I dodn't consider convincing.

I did split my lengthy post in two for a reason - the first part is all about the article he linked in, and thus about that very specific question (and perhaps not so interesting for all of you) - th second part made the general points that can be deduced, re: how we should perceive the problem and what to do.

I agree wholeheartedly with Steissd's second post, when he says "the warlords do not have any ideology at all". I just draw the opposite conclusion - considering the world powers had a big hand in creating these warlords and their power, they (or "we") have a responsibility in getting them out of the way again, too. And we have an interest - leaving the Afghans to their fate again after 'bombing them into liberation', can create a resentment good for a new Taliban in ten years' time..

>I do not think that they are devout Marxists either. Their aim is to destroy the Western society that promotes modernization and thus endangers their power and influence over their compatriots.

And this is the purest Marxism, all other Marxist demagogy is just unsufficient details.
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>That article seems to me mostly a breathtaking exercise in making connections. Paragraph after paragraph one person is linked to another, to another, who is involved with this group, which is said to have been part of this alliance before, about which it is claimed that they were funded by X which of course is an ally of Y which in the end proves ...

Particulary I must agree. Any jury court won't recognize the Talibans as Commies basing on the provided facts. At least now you see that I'm not the only crazy who think so .

I personally disagree with the author of the article in some things: at first he doesn't mention any Chinese role in supporting dear Afghan comrades although it seems not less than the Soviet one - beginning from the fact that Khalq initially was a pro-Chinese movement and finishing with two Chinese colonels decorated for 9/11. After the Soviets discovered that some pro-Chinese Communist regime is a better choice than the Soviet military occupation, their aims became very close with the China's ones - that was the moment when the Taliban began it's growth.

You are right in another thing - the history of Al-Qaeda and Taliban must be researched more and more carefully. That wasn't a very brilliant attempt but comparing with things that are widely published as a "history of terrorism" - the article can pretend to be a step forward. For example an alternative theory insists that Bin Laden was not less, not more but a CIA agent. If we ask what sources is it taken from we can hear smth like: "Bin Laden told one Pakistan paper it in 199..". What a great source! Bin Laden said himself, so who can doubt this!

Now about some other such notices:

1 Khalq was deposed by the Soviets so they shouldn't have been Commies. That's of course wrong. Since Lenin ordered to kill Uritsky and Volodarsky in 1918 the it became a good tradition - to kill each at any suitable moment, the most number of Commies killed in the USSR for example were butchered by their dear comrades but it didn't mean that they stopped being Commies. The same story happened when the Taliban hang 27 it's own high ranking officers for their wrong ideology - all killed persons were former Najibulla's allies. IMHO the fact that they got to the Taliban says rather more than the fact that they were executed later.

2 The Taliban's ideology contradicts to the true Marxism. For example Marx never wrote anything about the Sharia laws, Islam and so on. Furthermore first Marxists denied any God's existing. IMHO this also can't prove anything. The main base of Marxism is the dialectic or, as Orwell better said, doublethinking - when everyone can believe to two opposite things together. In our case: these "Islamists" are sure that the Americans are ruling the world by their financial resources and at the same time they can sincerely believe that everything happens due to Allah's wish. A good historical example is Hitlerism - I wonder what can be more nonsence than Hitler's anti-semitism that was based on the theory created by an ethnic Jewish. Every Marxist theory can vary very much but it is always directed against democracy, freedom, development and civilization.

3 The Talibans have never called themselves Marxists (at least openly). The explanation is very simple - the first generation of Commies in Russia so descredited themselves already in 1918 that the term "communism" itself was widely associated with nothng more but a bullet to the nape (especially in Afghanistan). So every next Commy regime carefully avoided calling it's true name. Hitler for example won the elections calling himself the main anti-Communist although now Hitlerism is recognized as a Marxist ideology. Todays Commies prefer calling themselves "anti-globalists", Pol Pot called himself "Agrarian Marxist", other terms were Stalinism, Leninism, Maoism, Neo-Bolshevism and so on. Really all of them are just other forms of Marxism. So you can call Talibans anti-globalists if you wish - it would be unsufficient for me.

>The article merely mentions that he used to be in the "Islamic Revolutionary Movement" - a movement described nor mentioned anywhere else in the article - together with Mullah Borjan - who, in his turn, some 17 (!) years before, had been in a radical maoist communist faction - which was actually deposed by the Soviets after they'd marched in in 1979.

At first the fact that Khalq was overthrown by the Soviets doesn't mean that it disappeared. As it always happens they just went underground - continued their fighting together with the Resistance Movement. Of course the difference in ideology between Khalq's members and anticommunists like Masoud was too large. That was why they were so easily recruited by the KGB and later began working as anti-Resistance provocateurs. We can reasonably suppose that Borjah's, Hekmatiar's and Omar's party membership hadn't been interrupted for these 17 years (although they changed their name to "Islamic Revolutionary Movement") - I'm sure it was so.

Now an interesting analogy: the same name ("Islamic Revolutionary Movement") belongs now to the Philippinian terrorists whose officially declared aim is creation of the "Islamic Socialist State". The center of them is Abu-Sayaf - an Al-Caeda's branch. By the way there were several Iraqi special service officers discovered among killed Abu-Sayaf members.

>Joschka Fischer used to be a revolutionary street fighter 30 years ago and now he's a Minister of Foreign Affairs, doesnt immediately link Schroeder with the RAF.

But it perfectly explain his todays anti-American position .

What is my main conclusion - todays war on international terrorism is not against "the third force" created by the foolish Americans during the Cold War or furthermore against a "hostile civilization" as Huntington and his supporters insist but just a continuation of the Cold War in other forms. The Reds had under their banners 1/3 of the all humanity when the Soviet Union collapsed and admitted it's failure. 1,5 billions - 250 millions = 1,25 billion people - what did happen to them? Did all of them surrender together with their headquarter? I am not sure. And I'm not alone. The War on Terrorism is the Cold War in another form but with the same participants. In one hand dear comrades became weaker loosing the Soviets' support, in other hand they got more possibilities after last limits issued by the Soviets were taken away.