Where Are the Afghans?

Where are the Afghans?
Gordon Adams
8 July 2009

"What I need is more Afghans,"
Says General Nicolson.

"We can't read these people; we're different,"
Said Captain Huysmans.
"They're not going to tell us the truth.
We'll never get to build and transition"
Unless we have the Afghans."

Where are the Afghans?

They don't trust us.
They won't tell us the truth?
Quelle surprise!

We have bombed their mosques,
Killed their children
Blown up their weddings,
Leveled their villages,
Destroyed their roads
Eradicated their livelihoods

Aroused the Taliban extremists
And
Failed to find Osama.

Brought them democracy
Justice, courts of law,
Legislatures,
Provincial Reconstruction Teams
Corruption, and
We "cause the price of everything to increase."

Our civilization
As we know it.

And yet,
They will not come.
And they will not tell us the truth.

"To be honest,"
Says Lt. Wallgren,
"They didn't want us here."

But the Russians
Will let us move men and equipment
Through their country.

For $60 million,
The Kyrgyz will let us
Use their bases to send our supplies
Into Afghanistan.

Maybe they know something
We don't know.

References:
Richard A. Oppel, Jr., "Allied Officers Concerned by Lack of Afghan Forces, New York Times, July 8, 2009.
Anand Gopal, "In Afghanistan Surge, Soldiers Negotiate Complex Web Of Local Loyalties," Christian Science Monitor, July 7, 2009.
Same
"President Signs U.S. Base Deal, Washington Times, July 8, 2009

Comments

[S1m0n]

The afghans are the people you're fighting, of course.

Or more accurately, the Pashtuns are people you're fighting. The Taliban is the Pashtun's political & military vehicle. There are non-Pashtun and non-taliban Afghans, but they're the warlords of the so-called 'Northern Alliance'. Trying to use them to occupy Pashtun territory is a *really* bad idea. The last time that happened, after the soviet withdrawal, the warlords engaged in a campaign of widespread looting and rapes so bad that the locals welcomed the fundamentalist Talibanis because even their severe interpretation of Shari'ah was preferrable to the lawlessness and criminality of the northerners.