August 27, 2009

Hamid Karzai's road to presidential power has been
pockmarked by the Taliban.

With ten per cent of the votes in from last Thursday's
election, Karzai is virtually tied with his closest
opponent. His chances of getting the required 50 per cent
of the vote depends on how many of his follow tribesmen in
the south voted for him. But that's a big hurdle.

Potential ethnic Pashtun voters faced injury or death from
the Taliban if they voted for Karzai. Others are
disappointed in their man, the only Pashtun in government.
He failed to deliver on his promise of peace.

His government of northern warlords, with the cooperation of
NATO forces, has managed to breed the evil Taliban. Allied
troops have not been able to bomb the cancer out of Afghan
society.

More and more, it is NATO who is seen as the invading force.
While the Taliban could hardly be seen as liberators, they
are providing stability. They have the added benefit of
belonging to the Pashtun nation.

The Pashtun nation consists of 30 million people that
straddle the Afghanistan-Pakistan border says historian
Gwynne Dyer. "The border has never really existed for the
Pashtun, who freely move across it in peace and in war."

The Taliban is already running parallel administrations,
claims an Afghan reporter who goes by the alias "Khabaryal"
for fear of reprisal. In many areas people prefer the
Taliban courts rather than the Government's system. Taliban
fighters used to come from Pakistan but now they are local
Pashtun.

There is no love lost between the Taliban and their fellow
tribesman Karzai. After all, it was his government that
cooperated with NATO to push the Taliban out of power.

The bombing of innocent civilians played into the hands of
the Taliban. In one the deadliest air strikes on civilians,
U.S. forces bombed and killed more than 90 civilians, most
of them women and children, in the town of Shindand, Herat
Province, according to both the Afghan Government and the
United Nations. The scale of the casualties was at first
denied by the U.S.

The reaction to the bombing in the local and national Afghan
media was one of grief, outrage, hatred, and desire for
revenge against NATO forces.


The brutal Taliban starts looking attractive if you are
Pashtun; especially when your guy is head of a corrupt
government made up your ethnic enemies and when NATO is
bombing your friends and family. It's not an easy choice
between the devil you know and "friends" who bomb you.

To add insult to injury, northern Afghanistan is relatively
peaceful and getting rich. It's a little known fact that
private security companies from the north are prospering.
"On the ground, the force that dominates consists of either
heavily armed foreign military or armed men connected to
private security companies," explains Khabaryal.

Most of these private security companies are run by Afghan
ex-Mujahidin warlords who were first disarmed through an
ambitious Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration
program in 2003, then re-armed through financing from U.S.,
Britain, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands.

The bitter irony for Pashtun is that the very warlords named
by the United Nations as war criminals are now being paid
millions to guard the troops who are supposed to bring peace
to Afghanistan.

A commander for one of these private companies told
Khabaryal that he was paid nearly $1 million a month to
guard and supply Canadian troops and their allies while the
Afghan army is underpaid, poorly equipped, and targeted by
the Taliban.

Worse still, the money we give to war criminals is being
used to kill Canadians. The same private security companies
that guard NATO bases also sell illegal arms to the Taliban.
"So the armed groups, paid by foreign forces to provide
security, are actually smuggling arms to the south which are
used to kill foreign and Afghan troops," says the Afghan
reporter.

If we thought the rough justice of the Taliban was
intolerable, imagine what southern Afghans think of our
administration of justice by invasion and bombing, and by
the domination of their historical ethnic enemies to the
north who grow rich while the Pashtun suffer?

Due to the law of unintended consequences, NATO forces have
pushed the Taliban forward, not back, and created the
world's largest narco-economy.

I would be surprised if Karzai is re-elected without the
support of his ethnic Pashtun supporters.
 

David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca

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