Report: Afghanistan could implode Thursday, July 29, 2004 Posted: 10:35 PM EDT (0235 GMT) LONDON, England (CNN) -- A British parliamentary committee has warned that Afghanistan is likely to "implode, with terrible consequences" unless more troops and resources are sent to calm the country. The all-party Foreign Affairs Select Committee, in a report released Thursday, said warlord violence and the struggle between U.S.-led troops and insurgents continues to be a threat to security in Afghanistan. The wide-ranging report on the war against terrorism also said raised concerns over the failure of the UK government and its allies to limit the production of opium in Afghanistan. "There is a real danger if these resources are not provided soon that Afghanistan -- a fragile state in one of the most sensitive and volatile regions of the world -- could implode, with terrible consequences," the committee says in its report. Afghanistan, which is grappling with a growing drug trade and sporadic violence, is a key security concern for the West two years after the coalition toppled the militant Islamic Taliban regime for harboring al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. There are about 20,000 U.S.-led troops and 6,500 NATO-led peacekeepers in Afghanistan. However, warlords have yet to be disarmed and a Taliban and al Qaeda insurgency is persisting in the south and east. "We recommend that the government impress upon its NATO allies the need to deliver on their promises to help Afghanistan before it is too late, both for the credibility of the alliance and, more importantly, for the people of Afghanistan." The committee, chaired by Labour MP Donald Anderson, also stressed the need to do more to the win the war of drugs. "We conclude that there is little, if any, sign of the war on drugs being won, and every indication that the situation is likely to deteriorate, at least in the short term," the report says. "We recommend that the government, which is in the lead on the counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan, explain in its response to this report exactly how it proposes to meet the targets of reducing opium poppy cultivation by 75 percent by 2008, and eradicating it completely by 2013." The report comes one day after the international relief group Médecins Sans Frontières said it was pulling out of Afghanistan after 24 years because of security concerns and frustrations with the U.S. military. MSF -- or Doctors Without Borders -- blamed the Afghan government for failing to catch and prosecute attackers who killed five MSF workers earlier this year. The group had about 80 international volunteers and 1,400 Afghan staff working in the country before the June attack. Marine Buissonniere, MSF's international secretary, told a news conference Wednesday in Kabul that more than 30 aid workers had been killed since the beginning of the year. MSF also blamed the Taliban, who have specifically threatened its aid workers, and the U.S.-backed coalition for the unsettled situation in Afghanistan. The coalition has "blurred" the image of aid workers as it attempted to "win hearts and minds," MSF said in a statement. On Iraq, the committee concluded that Al Qaeda had turned Iraq into a "battleground" with appalling consequences for the country's people. The committee said the coalition's failure to establish law and order in parts of the country had, in addition, created a "vacuum" into which criminals and militias had poured. The MPs concluded that an insufficient number of foreign troops deployed to Iraq had contributed to the deterioration in security. At a news conference, Anderson called for the international community to work together to improve the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and "to make sure that those who wish to wreck progress do not prevail." "It's overwhelmingly important that we work together to make sure that if things can go either way, that they go the right way," he said. He warned that the consequences of not ensuring peace and normality in Iraq "may be a failed state and regional instability." "No one can pretend that everything in the country is going well," he said. Asked whether the Iraq war had increased the threat of terrorism, Anderson replied: "Clearly there are elements of al Qaeda that are there that were not there before." http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/07/29/uk.afghan.iraq/index.html
I wish I could post this entire article b/c it is excellent. (you have to be a paid subscriber, I read it in the print edition) It spells out clearly "how the war in Iraq has fueled Al Qaeda and ignited its deam of a global jihad" Forget all the differences you have with Bush over his economic, environmental or gay-marriage policies, THIS is and should be the main reason why he deserves to be fired. Invading Iraq is a mistake that will threaten every American's life. The Wrong War Backdraft: How the war in Iraq has fueled Al Qaeda and ignited its dream of global jihad. By Peter Bergen July/August 2004 Issue President Bush's May 2003 announcement aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations" had ended in Iraq has been replayed endlessly. What is less well remembered is just what the president claimed the United States had accomplished. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001," he declared. The defeat of Saddam Hussein, he told the American people, was "a crucial advance in the campaign against terror." In fact, the consensus now emerging among a wide range of intelligence and counterterrorism professionals is that the opposite is true: The invasion of Iraq not only failed to help the war on terrorism, but it represented a substantial setback. In more than a dozen interviews, experts both within and outside the U.S. government laid out a stark analysis of how the war has hampered the campaign against Al Qaeda. Not only, they point out, did the war divert resources and attention away from Afghanistan, seriously damaging the prospects of capturing Al Qaeda leaders, but it has also opened a new front for terrorists in Iraq and created a new justification for attacking Westerners around the world. Perhaps most important, it has dramatically speeded up the process by which Al Qaeda the organization has morphed into a broad-based ideological movement—a shift, in effect, from bin Laden to bin Ladenism. "If Osama believed in Christmas, this is what he'd want under his Christmas tree," one senior intelligence official told me. Another counterterrorism official suggests that Iraq might begin to resemble "Afghanistan 1996," a reference to the year that bin Laden seized on Afghanistan, a chaotic failed state, as his new base of operations. Even Kenneth Pollack, one of the nation's leading experts on Iraq, whose book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq made the most authoritative case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, says, "My instinct tells me that the Iraq war has hindered the war on terrorism. You had to deal with Al Qaeda first, not Saddam. We had not crippled the Al Qaeda organization when we embarked on the Iraq war." The damage to U.S. interests is hard to overestimate. Rohan Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan academic who is regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on Al Qaeda, points out that "sadness and anger about Iraq, even among moderate Muslims, is being harnessed and exploited by terrorist and extremist groups worldwide to grow in strength, size, and influence." Similarly, Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of counterterrorism at the CIA under presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, says the Iraq war "accelerated terrorism" by "metastasizing" Al Qaeda. Today, Al Qaeda is more than the narrowly defined group that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001; it is a growing global movement that has been energized by the war in Iraq. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/07/07_401.html
$5.95 at your local bookstore I will type up the last paragraph which sums it up in a nut-shell what a mistake the Iraqi War is IMO "What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams: We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure that bin Laden has long predicted was the United States' long-term goal in the region. We deposed the secular socialist Saddam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited Sunni and Shia fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, and have now provoked a "defensive" jihad that has galvanized jihad-minded Muslims around the world. It's hard to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terrorism"
So invading Iraq pissed off Bin Laden and other fundamentalists and THAT is why the war was wrong? So are we going to gear our entire policy to appeasing these people so we can limit the aggression and resolve of terrorists. Sounds like an appeasement policy that history has proven just leads to more dire consequences in the long run. This is probably the worst argument against war I have heard.
When Afghanistan is on the brink of imploding after our initial success there and we've given OBL another recruiting tool, yeah, I'd say that's a pretty good reason why the war in Iraq at that time and now was a bad idea.
maybe you just read it wrong ? I am saying that our actions (invading Iraq, diverting money, intelligence assets and manpower away from the hunt for bin Laden) HAVE been exactly what bin Laden wants.
You have no idea what would have happened if we had not started the war in Iraq. Al Qaeda could have had even more members join. I'm sure if Hitler had been taken out well in advance of what we all know happen, that would have been the most 'unjust' war ever and it would be cited as something that divided the world more. It's a lot better than what really happened allowing him to do what he did, but no one had the vision to do what was necessary just as taking out Sadaam was necessary. In this case we don't know what would have happened if we just did nothing(especially if the faulty intelligence that was out there from the US, Britain, and Russia was actually true). If there is a black eye in this, it is the intelligence community ... Not Bush. I know you guys will never agree to that, but if we all thought the same way then it would be a pretty boring world.
Hmmm.....I learnt that teaching from my parents when I was still a teen. Seemed pretty simply and reasonable to me then and now.
Let's put the Saddam/Hitler comparison to rest once and for all. Saddam was not Hitler. Saddam was not a threat to become Hitler. Hitler never had no-fly zones in the northern and Southern thirds of Germany. Hitler had a powerful army with modernized tanks, and sophisticated weaponry. Saddam had a broken army that would have been lucky to hold off any internal rebellions. Hitler didn't have sophisticated satellites and nearby armies that were ready to take him out if he invaded anyone. Hitler was not hemmed in and contained. Hitler and Saddam were not similar threats, and with the way that Saddam was contained there was no chance of him ever becoming a Hitler like threat.
Let's say if you are my neighbour, and I have a pistol, sometimes I drinks, and shout at my wife, make the garden a mess. You are a model citizen, and you have a machine gun, but you firmly believe that I am a imminent threat to your family, and you just decide to take me out. Of course the reason is that I am not a good person, and you felt threatened, after you kill me, you just tell other neighbours that they should thank you for your vision and acts. Well, I am telling you this, that's just wrong. Even if I am a bad person, or threat to you, if I don't attack you, you will NEVER have rights to attack me, no matter how you spin or paint it. Not to mention that Sadam is no where near where Hitler was, but tell you the truth, if the allies took out Hitler before he invaded anyone, they were just wrong. That's how you seperate good and evil - you don't attack because you believe it's true, you only defend if others attack you. In human history, super powers come and go, no one can be on top forever. Yes, there will be sacrifices, but that's price for democracy and freedom and your values. You fight for your values and principles. Those principles are NOT just set for others to follow, but start from yourself.
I hate to get picky, but I've got to disagree here. The French and British could and should have crushed Hitler and Germany when they "re-occupied" the Rhineland... Hitler orders troops into Rhineland 3/7/1936: Hitler orders his army to send troops into the Rhineland. The area had remained demilitarized following WWI as part of the Versailles treaty. So this action is in direct violation of the Versailles treaty. (www.decades.com) When he took this action, it was against the advice of the German General Staff, who knew they stood no chance against the French and British if they went to war. Hitler took his gamble, the West stood back, and it emboldened Hitler to take the actions that followed and to even greater rearmament. Iraq was quite different.
So what is Kerry's plan to fix this? He seems to have the answers for all of the other problems of the world.
Actually, you wouldn't be a neighbor that drinks and shouts at his wife. You would have shot your wife, killed some of your kids while buying your other kids some expensive cars, invaded your other neighbors home and killed a bunch of their family. I beat you out of your other neighbors house with my machine gun and set up a system to take away all of your pistols with the whole homeowner's association in charge. Every day people from the homeowner's associate come to your house, remove some of your weapons...some knives here, some pistols there. During this whole time, I allow you to sell some of your baseball cards to buy food and medicine for some of your other kids...but instead, you keep all the food and medicine for yourself and your "friends" that like to come over and party so some more of your kids die because you don't feed them. Then you blame me for making your kids die even though I just gave you a bunch of food and medicine. One day, you throw out the homeowner's association and don't let them come back. I warn you over and over again that I'm going to come over to your house with my machine gun and kick your butt if you don't let the homeowner's association back in. In fact, I give you several weeks to comply. When you don't comply, I go in with my machine gun and take you off to prison. The homeowner's association gets mad, but they didn't have any power to do anything anyways...but at least I'm safer AND your other neighbors are safer, whether they realize it or not. That, my friend, is the anology you should be looking for.
Hitler did actually have similar restrictions. In fact, many to point to his decision to send troops into a simliar 'zone' between Germany and France, and the absence of French/Anglo reaction, as the beginning of 'appeasements' end result - a much more dangerous Hitler. I don't think you can compare the scale of Hitler's crimes with Saddam's, but if Saddam had gotten nukes...
In reality he didn't The restrictions may have been place, but the willingness of the world to enforce them weren't there. With Saddam everytime the no-fly zone was breeched Saddam was bombed. That wasn't true of Hitler.
<b>Chump</b> It is extremely difficult to <i>fix</i> Afghanistan if its neighbor (Pakistan) is still a <i>broken</i> country. The border area that is a Pahstun/Pathan stronghold in Afghanistan is also a Pahstun/Pathan stronghold in Pakistan. The tribal areas of Pakistan (<i>FATA</i>) that the Pakistani military has been fighting in past and present are probably 200 hundred miles and less from Kabul. Some of the areas that the Pakistani military is operating in are perhaps 50 miles and less across from where rebel forces are operating in Afghanistan.
