In Afghanistan War, Government Corruption Bigger Threat Than Taliban

[tekisui]

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Over the past month in Kandahar City, Taliban death squads have killed dozens of people in drive-by shootings. Yet many living in this southern Afghan city say the insurgents are the least of their worries. Far more pernicious is the murky nexus of warlords and corrupt government officials whose rule some compare to mob bosses.

Indeed, the fear and corruption they perpetuate undermine efforts to build a stable government and help the Taliban win support among locals, say Afghan and NATO officials, private citizens, analysts, and local journalists. The trend echoes a pattern from the 1990s, when violence among competing warlords gave rise to the Taliban and their brutal ways of imposing law and order.

The concern was repeated in more than a dozen recent interviews: The biggest problem is not the Taliban; it is the gangster oligarchs looming over the city.

When it comes to Kandahar city politics, “I’m not sure whether I’m watching Godfather Part 2 or Godfather Part 3,” says Mark Sedwill, NATO’s top civilian official in Afghanistan, referring to the popular movie series about an American mafia family. “It’s very difficult to untangle, but what’s really fueling the insurgency is groups being disenfranchised, feeling oppressed by the institutions of state and criminal syndicates.”

Kandahar City serves as a microcosm for Afghanistan, with its weak, corrupt government and resurgent class of powerbrokers, derided locally as warlords. It is also a strategic area that NATO is trying to win back, home to an estimated 800,000 city residents and several hundred thousand more in the surrounding area, and an influential hub of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the insurgency is concentrated. US-led foreign forces are gearing up for a massive summer campaign in the surrounding province, which is also called Kandahar.

The city is “the cultural, spiritual, historical, political, religious center of gravity in the Pashtun belt,” says US Army Brig. Gen. Ben Hodges, referring to the south and east of the country where the Pashtun ethnic group mostly resides.

more: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2010/0412/In-Afghanistan-war-government-corruption-bigger-threat-than-Taliban

[Echo In Light]

1. k/r

[Traveling_Home]

2. Even to girls wanting an education?

You can bribe Govt officials to get a school built - what do you bribe the Taliban with to allow girls to go to the school?

[tekisui]

3. Is that worth fighting a never-ending war over?

[Traveling_Home]

4. Yes - State and Religious sanctioned misogyny are worth fighting a never ending war against.

There will always be wars between good and evil. Never Ending Wars. State and Religious sanctioned misogyny are EVIL and are worth the fight of fights. Whether through voting rights laws in the US or supporting education of women in Afganistan.

I also believe that if 2 generations of women in Afganistan were educated the the war would be over for EVAH, the country and peoples lives would be brought out of the dark ages and all lives would improve. That is probably the only lasting solution possible.

[Echo In Light]

5. No...and is this really the latest 'reason' the US is there?