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Our Mistakes Haunt Us In Afghanistan
Q: Eight years after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, fighting continues. Religious extremists in the Taliban and al-Qaeda retain significant power there. What is our moral responsibility to the people of Afghanistan? If religion is part of the problem there, how can it be part of the solution?
Religion is "very important" to 60 percent of Americans. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that makes us the most religious developed country in the world. On par with Turkey and Mexico, but less than the 90 percent found in Pakistan or Afghanistan, perhaps. Religion is not a wellspring of terror, intolerance and hate in our country. Our nationhood is not predicated on a state religion--we have an identity independent of our personal faith; it enriches our personal lives and offers a serenity and perspective with which we face the vicissitudes of daily life. Not all may subscribe individually, put it is our pluralistic ethos that grounds our acceptance of the other and nourishes the quest for the Divine--in whichever church, temple, synagogue or mosque that it may be found.
In Afghanistan and Pakistan, pluralism is dead and buried. No modern society constructed on the foundation of religious law, Sharia in this case, ever avoided the trap of intolerance, persecution and hate. Examples of this corollary dot the globe from the Middle East and North Africa to Asia.
Afghanistan has not enjoyed a civil society for decades, and Pakistan buried any pretense of multi-faith democracy at its birth once it declared Islam as a state religion. And now, we stand accused of moral culpability: The United States midwifed the Taliban and al-Qaeda in our reflexive arming of the Mujahideen to defeat the Soviets in the 1980's, and today's infernal Pakistan and Afghanistan bear witness to our own intellectual incuriosity.
Our responsibility to the people of Afghanistan is nothing more than confessing and atoning for the sins of our very near past. We created a monster directly by blindly arming the Mujahideen--al-Qaeda is a direct result, and our looking away as Pakistan diverted billions in aid to its defense and ISI spy agency arguably helped birth the Taliban.
To end the nightmare we helped create will take force, but more importantly, we must change our thinking, restructure our strategy and bring an intelligence and strategic analysis that allows us to face some real facts. Firstly, Asif Ali Zardari, the Prime Minister of Pakistan no more represents his country than does Afghan President Hamid Karzai. We do not have a reliable partner in either country.
Second, our largesse in aid for Pakistan has neither bought us any goodwill, nor has it been used for the humanitarian and domestic needs that it was meant. The defense and ISI combine are simply too dominant and divert aid routinely. The Associated Press reported only a day ago quoting two Pakistani army generals that only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid to Pakistan from 2002 to 2008 actually actually made it to the Pakistani military for its intended use. And more weapons better suited to fighting India rather than a Taliban insurgency were bought, according to the same generals.
The cause in Afghanistan is clear and just. Religious extremism that we fed two decades ago in that region, can never be satiated and has come home to roost. Religion, and people of faith have the power to transform a society. But the open question is whether a society manipulated by the demagogic forces of Islamism can be convinced to join us in an honest struggle against a global menace.
Views expressed here are the personal views of Dr. Aseem Shukla, and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Minnesota or Hindu American Foundation.
By
Aseem Shukla
|
October 7, 2009; 1:58 PM ET
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Posted by: clearthinking1 | October 8, 2009 10:18 PM
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Mr. Shukla, you make a very good case for deploying the neutron bomb on a large scale to make the world safe for the rational, or, at least, the harmless.
Posted by: edbyronadams | October 8, 2009 7:59 PM
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A. S. S.:
Nice nice very Nice-a!
Posted by: cyber-man | October 8, 2009 3:15 PM
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Mr. Shukla,
Very well said.
"But the open question is whether a society manipulated by the demagogic forces of Islamism can be convinced to join us in an honest struggle against a global menace"
I am afraid the question has been answered by Pakistan for 60 years and the answer is "no".
The SOLUTION is to break Pakistan into ethnic states - Sindhi, Punjabi, Baluchi, Pashtun. This will take away the false islamist notion of political states based on islam. This has never worked well, and in the modern world it will cause even more suffering.
There is a reason why the epicenter of terrorism in the world is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The reason is islamism and the artificial need of "Pakistan" to maintain an islamic state by promoting extremism.