Kabul may arm militia to fight terrorists

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3db53bf2-f7dd-11da-9481-0000779e2340.html

By Rachel Morarjee in Kabul
Published: June 9 2006 22:01 | Last updated: June 9 2006 22:01

The Afghan government is considering arming tribal groups across the south of the country, where Nato is set to take command next month, in a move diplomats say would destabilise the country.

As violence in the country’s four southern provinces rises to its worst level since 2001, armed village and tribal groups would be recruited to back up the increasingly overstretched police force and fledgling national army.

Jawed Ludin, chief of staff in the government of Hamid Karzai, said: “The government wants to take measures to strengthen the security situation in the south.

“It is not so much that the terrorists are strong, but that we are weak.”

However, experts say the tribal groups to be armed are likely to be militias commanded by warlords, which would create alternative power bases and weaken an already fragile state.

One western diplomat said: “If this happens it is the beginning of the end for southern Afghanistan and has far-reaching implications for the north and west.”

. . .

need--another bunch of guys with guns.

Afganistan. In 1891 Rudyard Kipling published a collection of poems entitled The Barrack Room Ballads. It is was a poem called 'The Young British Soldier'. The last stanza goes...


When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

The British already had go-rounds with Afganistan AND Iraq. It didn't turn out well then and it's not going well now. Blair was a fool to hitch his horse up to blivet's wagon and head off on another Middle Eastern foray. As for the neocons, they'll willing to kill anyone, invade any country, for oil.

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Some call it the Soviet Union's Vietnam

"Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting U.S. policy, which, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled proudly:

"That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap..." <...>"The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire."

/snip/

Afghanistan has been Muslim since Arab migration to the entire region in 642 AD.

The country's nearly impassable mountainous and desert terrain is reflected in its ethnically and linguistically singular population. Pashtuns are the most dominant ethnic group, along with Tajiks, Hazara, Aimak, Uzbeks, Turkmen and other small groups.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Afghanistan

so

why are WE there?

with a whole lot of less firepower than the Soviets had,

and the Afghans were more than ready for another invasion . . .

Bullets and bombs ain't gonna change the attitude of a nation that is a millennium older than we are

(sigh)

What's the point of this again?