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Wed, Jul 9th 2008, 13:01

Ilyas M. Mohsin, PPP, Platinum Contributor (296)

It' surprising that Shashi is overlooking the Afghan history despite being
an Indian.
The Afghan, generally, hates 'occupation' and that would apply to such venures under any garb if history is any guide. As the US suborned the warlords of the North with all kinds of inducements, the staus quo is limping through. The fact that the Taliban regime created considerable hatred due to its authoritarian/ doctrinaire character must also have
played a role.
When the US etc conquered Kabul and placed a surrogate regime, people welcomed it with the hope that their country would be developed as per initial slogans. The Bonn conference held out flattering prospects
in this regard. However, the whole thing crumbled due to mis-governance, corruption, lack of proper US-involvement etc.
At one stage, the Pashtuns in the South/ East were threatened with famine. Such faux pas enciuraged the Taliban to restart their war against 'occupation'. Taking a leaf out of the North' prosperity, the Pashtuns also started growing opium for sheer survival. Seeing a braekthrough, the Taliban started offering security to such operations which increased their popularity. Today Karzai remains the 'mayor of Kabul' whose own security is vested in a US contingent while the country at large, except for certain pockets in the North, remains no-go areas for the regmie and its foreignsupporters. So the US has helped the extremists in many ways.

Tue, Jul 15th 2008, 12:13

Leonie Holthaus, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Gold Contributor (148)

Shashi Tharoor blames the Bush administration for concentrating on Iraq while neglecting Afghanistan. In this context Obama’s “new strategy” is quite interesting. He wants to withdraw the forces from Iraq and increase US effort in Aghanistan. However, it is questionable if “more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering” are enough to succeed in Afghanistan. The “new strategy” needs to be elaborated!