Rumsfeld welcomes Nato role in Afghanistan
In what can only be described as a significant change of tune, Donald Rumsfeld, the man who implied that the US could fight two wars with or without allies, has welcomed the arrival of Nato forces in Afghanistan.
Nato will now take charge of security in the southern region which is currently being commanded by US forces.
It is in this southern region that the Taliban have recently experienced a resurgence with beatings and beheadings being used to keep children from attending school.
The US and UK forces are being given the same historical lesson that many former invaders have learned to their cost. Afghanistan is easy to invade and almost impossible to occupy.The letter pinned overnight to the wall of the mosque in Kandahar was succinct. "Girls going to school need to be careful for their safety. If we put acid on their faces or they are murdered then the blame will be on their parents."
Today the local school stands empty, victim of what amounts to a Taliban war on knowledge. The liberal wind of change that swept the country in 2001 is being reversed. By the conservative estimate of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, 100,000 students have been terrorised out of schools in the past year. The number is certainly far higher and many teachers have been murdered, some beheaded.
The fate of the mixed-sex Sheikh Zai Middle School, on the outskirts of a community in the mountains of Maruf district is sadly not atypical. A local witness told Human Rights Watch what happened when the Taliban came: "They went to each class, took out their long knives .... locked the children in two rooms, where the children were severely beaten with sticks and asked, 'will you come to school now?'"
The six teachers later told residents what happened to them. They were taken out of school and blindfolded, then they were continually hit and were taken to nearby mountains on foot.
All six were separated and nobody knew where the other was. The Taliban asked them individually, "Why are you working for Mr Bush and Karzai?" They said, "We are educating our children with books -we know nothing about Bush or Karzai, we are just educating our children." After that they were beaten and let go.
At least the US have the claim of ignorance, the British have no such excuse. In the nineteenth century the British twice tried to hold the country, which in both cases ended in humiliating routs.
However, one would have hoped that the US might have learned from the Soviet attempts to take the country. The Soviet Union managed to take Kabul in a matter of days, and spent the next nine years trying hold on to it. Eventually, even they scuttled away with their tail between their legs.
Failure to hold on to Afghanistan seems to come from the western concept that if you hold the cities you control the country. In Afghanistan it is usually those outside the cities that rise up and force occupiers to leave.
The cost and the effort that would be needed to rebuild and establish a viable democracy in Afghanistan would be immeasurable.
The people of Afghanistan may have gone out to vote, but that alone, does not a democracy make.
And George Bush's quick side-step from Afghanistan into Iraq says that he is either not serious about establishing a secure, functioning, regime there, or he simply does not understand the sheer scale of the task that he has set himself.
It's the problem with most of Bush's foreign policy. It's all window dressing and false claims. He's like some deluded quack, placing sticking plasters on gaping wounds and declaring the operation a success.
Who the Hell is going to be insane enough to run for President in 2008 and take on the task of cleaning up after this guy? I can't think of any US President who has left his successor such a self made and colossal mess.
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