Your opinion on Afghanistan

[JK1150]

I think we have made great progress in Afghanistan, and I would say it is stable and leaning towards success.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

It's great if you're into opium. I hear world prices are going down with all the new supply.

[alfador]

It's great if you're into opium.  I hear world prices are going down with all the new supply.

585318075[/snapback]

opium or terrorism, either/or.

[threetonesun]

To be fair, crack cocaine is getting cheaper too.

I honestly haven't heard anything about Afghanistan in a long, long time.

[inphlict]

Haven't heard much, so I don't really know how things are turning out.

[JK1150]

To be fair, crack cocaine is getting cheaper too.

I honestly haven't heard anything about Afghanistan in a long, long time.

585318160[/snapback]

How do you know about the prices? :shifty:

also, could not hearing about afghanistan be a good thing? very few terrorist attacks have occurred recently.

[hyperactive]

Haven't heard much, so I don't really know how things are turning out.

585318292[/snapback]

neither have I.

[neowin_hipster]

Mostly because between Iraq and a hard place there really isn't much time left for any developments in afghanistan. It's nice how Osama is still on the loose though. I always thought it was funny how iraq is where bush spent all the money and resources. Anywho afghanistan was something the world could agree on.

[b0m8er]

I think it's stable - compared to Iraq.

[hyperactive]

I think it's stable - compared to Iraq.

585318900[/snapback]

but at this point just about everything is more stable than iraq.

there goes bush lowering the world's standards again :D

[mAcOdIn Veteran]

I am still leaning towards unstable. The vote itself may have gone well enough and what we consider a decent guy is in office and generally considered in-charge.

However, while he may be in-charge on paper and by vote Warlords still officially hold the majority of the country and the Taliban does still exist. Now I think the Taliban isas close to being non-relevany now as you can get while still actually having members but the Warlords in my opinion are a much different story. Now right now the Warlords are tolerating Karzai and the government and more or less are retaining control of thier respective lands however for Afghanistan to ever truly suceed those warlords will have to be dealt with. I still have yet to see a plan to do so, and I still have yet to see any indication that Afghanistan, which might as well be renamed Kabul/Khandahar since it's all the government controls, has or will have any time soon the military force to remove the Warlords.

It has to be done, we know it, I'm sure the warlords now it, and Karzai knows it, so all this acting nicey nicey to them is just a friendly front while all sides amass thier support.

[Fotix]

Yeah, Karzai is often derided as not much more than mayor of Kabul, and not all that much else. I mused before that Karzai should have been given the tools or the cover to annihilate the cancer that is the Taliban; instead, unfortunately he had to cut deals with them--even with the so-called "moderate" ones. And the war lords (the drug lords) don't really give much of a crap about the central government which is a larger recipe for disaster later on if it aspires to actually manage the entire country instead of the area it does now, though Karzai keeps some of them around in and out of his cabinet.

[hyperactive]

here is a related article:

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displa...tory_id=3565869

Taliban welcome

Jan 13th 2005 | QUETTA

From The Economist print edition

Afghanistan's deposed clerics in exile

Get article background

BOR JAN, a wispy-bearded Afghan, whipped a scrap of paper from a pocket of his baggy trousers. ?Find any Muslims who are friends of the infidel and kill them,? he read aloud. Across the nearby border with Afghanistan, America has dispatched soldiers to deter Mr Jan and his Taliban fellows from carrying out their orders. But in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, a sprawling western province, Mr Jan could at least rant at his leisure.

Nothing irks America's men in Afghanistan more than their enemy's propensity to flee into Pakistan, there to rest and re-arm, seemingly at will. Although?at the top level, at least?a firm American ally since the September 11th attacks, Pakistan refuses to allow American boots on its soil. It has maintained that it can deal with any Taliban seeking refuge in its territory?which after all was where the movement was begun.

Afghanistan's politics, Pakistan's politics

The Taliban were formed in the early 1990s, by clerics of the ferociously devout Pushtun, a tribe of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The black-turbaned clerics' aim was to end Afghanistan's civil war, which they achieved with help from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. By 1996, the Taliban had seized Kabul. In 2001, with America's bombers circling Afghanistan, Pakistan abruptly abandoned its former friends and professed itself an enemy of terror. But quite how abandoned were they really?

Of the thousands of Taliban members who fled into Pakistan from the bombing and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan, no notable individual was arrested. Quetta's deputy police chief, Muhammad Riaz, explains this with a shrug: ?You cannot arrest everyone wearing a turban.? No, but you might arrest one or two.

A Taliban commander captured in Afghanistan last year said he was travelling on his way back from a war council in Quetta, where he had collected a cache of ammunition for the insurrection back home. His satellite telephone showed evidence of contact with several other Taliban leaders; all of them had Pakistani telephone numbers.

Pakistan received America's plaudits?and cash?last year for its continuing campaign against terrorists. Having survived two assassination attempts at the end of 2003, Pervez Musharraf, the country's leader, has been cracking down on al-Qaeda's remnants, resulting in several important captures and kills. He has also waged a small war in the tribal area of Waziristan, pitting 70,000 soldiers against tribesmen he accuses of sheltering foreign Islamic militant fighters. According to official figures, the army has killed 300 militants in Waziristan, more than 100 of them foreigners, and suffered over 170 casualties. Against the Taliban, however, Pakistan is playing a murkier sort of game.

In Quetta, Mr Jan is not alone in boasting openly of his Taliban membership. Many young militants were recruited for the movement in the city's teeming mosques and Islamic schools; in Arabic, taliban means students. In the city's bazaars, a rich array of jihadi paraphernalia is on display. From the Talib Speeches Centre, audiotaped racist bilge can be acquired for 50 cents. A hawker sells posters celebrating the face of Osama bin Laden, and bumper stickers recommending the delights of martyrdom.

What do such displays mean? Not, perhaps, that the Taliban are thriving still. In October, they failed to disrupt Afghanistan's first democratic elections in a quarter of a century, as they had threatened. Afghanistan's new government has since offered an amnesty to Taliban foot-soldiers. But their radical mentors, still supported by sympathisers within the Pakistani establishment, will take more than a bombing campaign to root out.

[Boffa Jones Veteran]

Yeah Afghanistan doesnt seem to be in any shape to be considered a success. Stable maybe... but thats because the druglords are allowed to do whatever they want, no reason to be violent. Think JK all that opium and alot of it will probably end up on the streets of america.

[DaBeeeenster]

It is a failed state. You think it's stable? The last documentary I watched on Afghanistan required the reporter to travel with a permanent group of around 8 hired guns to ensure he was not kidnapped. The country is lawless, being run by warlords who care for nothing other than heroin production and power.

What sort of indicator is the fact that it is not in the news? It's not in the news because it is too dangerous to report from.

[Brutus]

It's stable considering its status of reconstruction, the economic situation is much better than two years ago--the countries GDP is growing at the fastest rate in the world, nearly 29%. I think it's a bit naive to declare it a success or failure, that is for history to decide, and three years is by no means a country's reconstruction could be measured a failure or success. The United States Reconstruction took 12 years and not all was completed that needed to be.

[DaBeeeenster]

It's stable considering its status of reconstruction, the economic situation is much better than two years ago--the countries GDP is growing at the fastest rate in the world, nearly 29%. I think it's a bit naive to declare it a success or failure, that is for history to decide, and three years is by no means a country's reconstruction could be measured a failure or success. The United States Reconstruction took 12 years and not all was completed that needed to be.

585321484[/snapback]

I'd be interested to know how much of that GDP increase is due to opium production.

[Brutus]

Well, agriculture comprises 60% of the GDP composition, so how much of that is opium isn't known. Food quantity does outweigh the opium production in terms of production and growth though.

[JK1150]

It is a failed state. You think it's stable? The last documentary I watched on Afghanistan required the reporter to travel with a permanent group of around 8 hired guns to ensure he was not kidnapped. The country is lawless, being run by warlords who care for nothing other than heroin production and power.

What sort of indicator is the fact that it is not in the news? It's not in the news because it is too dangerous to report from.

585319753[/snapback]

well beeen, most of us like to watch the news instead of documentaries, but now we see where you get your "facts" from....

[DaBeeeenster]

well beeen, most of us like to watch the news instead of documentaries, but now we see where you get your "facts" from....

585322697[/snapback]

Huh?

[xxpor]

Not Success, but not Failure

[Brutus]

well beeen, most of us like to watch the news instead of documentaries, but now we see where you get your "facts" from....

I think he's saying that documentaries can be somewhat biased.

[hyperactive]

I think he's saying that documentaries can be somewhat biased.

585323368[/snapback]

and the news isn't? look at what they choose to cover and how it is covered. look closely at the language used.

[Hupp]

hes going well and will be a stable successful country in a few years which will finally include an actual infrastructure.

[Brutus]

and the news isn't? look at what they choose to cover and how it is covered. look closely at the language used.

Well, obviously.