Afghanistan – Holy Wars Without End

Their Only Weapon Is Their Pen – And Some Pay the Ultimate Penalty

The brutal murder of the unarmed Associated Press Photographer, Anja Niedringhaus, and the critical wounding of the AP Television News Freelance Journalist, Kathy Gannon, as they both carried out their normal duties of reporting events in this war zone, should be evident that the war in Afghanistan is far from over.

President Obama's drone war policy, the only way of hitting back at so elusive and inaccessible an enemy (surrounding itself as it always does with innocent victims – the 'collateral' or 'unintentional' targets) only serves to amplify the hopelessness and futility of this conflict.

An Educated Woman With A Pen-The Most Dangerous Of All Threats To The Talibanization of Afghanistan

I want you to think of Niedringhaus and Gannon as examples of the thousands of innocent women, mainly Afghan, whom the Taliban and Al Qaeda regularly target for murder because they both represent everything they, the Taliban, hate – including the rights of women to have an active role in Afghan Society.

Afghanistan was a broken society even before the Russian forces arrived in the country.

A neglected country where human rights were ignored until Afghanistan became the focus of a strategic significance for transit oil and gas pipelines. A country forgotten until the strategic significance of having a physical presence after the Russians was too great to resist.

Then the media went along for the ride – human rights, the rights of children, child soldiers, the rights of  women, freedom of the press; suddenly the media had 'discovered' all these human rights and, being embedded, parachuted them into Afghanistan, a country whose customs and culture had hardly changed since Islam had arrived and, in this particular part of the world, entrenched itself as a one way street, no other minority religions permitted to exist and all had long since been extinguished by the time the Russians invaded the country.

Pogroms & Tribalism -The New World Order In Europe and The Middle East-But Why?

Ethnic cleansing appears to be the order of the day - in Afghanistan, Israel, Syria, the Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Ukraine, and parts of the European Union as Israelis, Arabs and Christians (in The European Union) all assert their rights to rule as majority populations and create exclusively Jewish,Christian or Islamic States governed according to their historical or religious principles and in their own unique images. And if you don't like it, the door is always open.  Such practices are very familiar to the older generations - who sought sanctuary from such pogroms and persecution in America, 'The Promised Land', 'the land of the free and the hope of the brave' - in comparison with the horrors of racism, apartheid and discrimination-pogroms  (race, religions gender and ethnicity)  they had left behind in 18th 19th and 20th century  Europe.
(Many of the waves of immigrants to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries were, of course, economic migrants fleeing impoverishment and starvation in Europe and in search of a better life for themselves and their families in the New World.)

This is the ultimate fallout from the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Ottoman Empire and (in Africa and the Far East) the British, German, Belgian, French and Italian Empires after World War II and, more recently, the unfreezing and shattering of nearly a century of Communist enforced tribal or ethnic co-existence with the collapse of the Soviet Union Empire.

[Strictly speaking France is the last 'old' colonial power in the world today.  It never relinquished it's colonies and rules them today as a part of French Overseas Departments and Territories or, as in the case of Africa, Françafrique.]3&4

It is the ultimate fallout because with the collapse of each Empire ethnic minorities were imprisoned within alien borders, often used as indigenous minority rulers in proxy by the departing Empires to give some semblance of their continued ability to intrigue local politics; something which suited the isolated minorities and their departing colonial powers.
In the case of Europe, the most recent major bout of ethnic cleansing took place during the Second World War when races considered sub-human -The Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Jehovah Witnesses and other minorities- were 'cleansed' (or exterminated) to prepare 'Lebensraum' for what was to be the Fourth Reich, an era of re-colonization after the Third Reich.
The rise of Neo-Fascist movements today follow a long tradition since the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths which reflect Europe as a volatile collection of warring tribes more obsessed with local ethnicity than being ruled or legislated by a 'foreign' 'power'.  Today, the casus bellum is the European Union - which is forcing (by legislation) tribes to accept (integrate) others which, in past centuries would have resulted in pogroms, concentration camps, gas ovens for human extermination, and, going back a further few centuries, wholesale slaughter and putting to the sword of 'Infidels', the (Christian) sacking and putting to the sword of (Christian) men women and children  in towns, villages, cities and States refusing to accept, for example, the supremacy of the Holy Father throughout Christendom, and Holy Wars to retake Jerusalem for Christendom and the sacking of Constantinople⁵ (The Fourth Crusade.)
The European Union is, in effect, enforcing the compliance of tribes and powerful 'Warlords' (modern-day European politicians in countries which, historically, have fought to determine the economic, political and military direction of such countries on this continent - at least those having the authority to agree war or peace) to accept the supremacy of a higher authority and ideals which, as they perceive it, will 'dilute' their own (Warlord) ability to govern or rule individual 'tribes', rendering them as subjects (or Vassals) to this 'higher authority' outside the tribe, yet having the legislative authority to determine it's destiny.   This is Europe today.  That was Rwanda yesterday.  Afghanistan is no different.

'Faith'

I have just finished reading Barack Obama's book, 'The Audacity Of Hope' (I am probably the last person in the intellectual world to have read it.) I had it on my shelf for several years but only recently found the time to sit down and read it cover to cover. In Chapter 6 ('Faith') he describes the religious bookshelf (library) in his childhood homes in Kenya and Indonesia, which were not dissimilar from the ideals and values most reasonable people share.

He likewise comments on the beliefs of his father, mother and stepfather. But to have such an appreciation and respect for all faiths you have to live in a tolerant society – which Afghanistan most certainly is not now nor will it be in the immediate future.

For the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Anja Niedringhaus, for example, represented everything they fear their society has the potential to become, preferring instead the comfort of  8^th century Islam and the destruction of modernity – the latter being the agent of Satan as, in their eyes, personified by the United States, Britain and Israel. So everything the United States has put in place must be demolished before an Islamic Afghanistan can be rebuilt.    There is no room for both Allah and Satan to co-exist.

Herein lies the futility of the war in Afghanistan.

All of the institutions the West has 'created' in Afghanistan will be destroyed with a 'holy zeal' the world public has yet to appreciate – because our media does such a terrible job when it comes to the preparation for bad news.   For a Police Officer to calmly walk up to their car and empty his machine gun on helpless and unarmed civilians just doing a job of work, should tell you how this Police Force will be upholding law as the country fragments into it's more comfortable tribal and clan loyalties.

It's accepted today that journalists are 'fair' game for every terrorist group they encounter.

Embedding NGOs and Journalists

Embedding journalists (in many instances offering no other choice for coverage and safety in war zones) within armed forces has, in my opinion, made them more not less vulnerable as potential targets for murder, ransom and hostage taking.

The only rule when operating in a war zone is to stay alive – at least until after you get the story.

The last thing any journalist wants to do is to be a part of the news story itself.

Likewise 'embedding' NGOs within the military-industrial complex in ways not previously undertaken, will, I believe, make them more not less vulnerable in zones of conflict throughout the world. Like journalists they will be seen as 'easy' targets – operating as they do without weapons and with very limited local protection.

So Where Will Afghanistan Go?

Afghanistan will regress to the 8^th century of tribal fanatical Islam in the absence of foreign armies 'of occupation' (as Al Qaeda and the Taliban perceive the coalition presence to be.)

The speed with which this happens will be either accelerated or slowed down depending on how fast all foreign forces exit the country

An unrelenting war of attrition will take place for so long as a single coalition ('Kafir', Kuffār or Infidel) foreign country continues to 'occupy' or has any presence in the country.

They Still Don't Get It On Capitol Hill (!)   -   Always Remote As Ever:-The Folks Who Live On The Hill

American lawmakers, even as yet, simply  'don't get it'. The United States, it's way of life, it's values, it;'s money, it's culture, it's technology are not wanted by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and for so long as a single NGO attempts to project America or the United Nations or parachute 'alien' values into Afghanistan, the war will continue.

It gets even worse. Those brave Afghan people (men and women) who trusted in what they were told about democracy, Women's  rights and free speech, the support of the United Nations and the United States for their evocation of such principles within and throughout Afghanistan will be the first to die at the hands of a merciless Taliban and Al Qaeda, after U.S. and coalition forces depart and their safety is entrusted to the Afghan State (or, to be more precise, Afghan warlords and tribal chiefs.)

As they are murdered one by one with increasing regularity and frequency, what will anger me will be that the international media will close it's eyes and ears to their plight – just as it did before it 'discovered' the absence of human rights in the country – coincidentally at the time of the Soviet invasion.

But What About The Recent Election?

Lets be clear what has just happened.   An umbrella of security was provided by foreign forces, with foreign international observers, supervising a Western-style Presidential election – none of which would have been possible in the absence of foreign forces and foreign international observers.

You simply cannot parachute 21^st century democracy into the 8^th century unless you intend to maintain a long-term (at least two hundred years) civil and military presence to support, model, re-brand, service and maintain democratic institutions as the foundations of  a new  modern, secular, civic society.

[We can see today in Turkey that even after one hundred years of support for the secular state from within, Islamists can, by stealth, legislate it's dismantling, almost overnight.]

So when foreign forces depart Afghanistan and you later read that a 'moderate' Taliban government or President and Prime Minister are 'elected' and news services' like CNN scramble to portray him as a 'moderate' don't believe a word of what they tell you. As the stoning of women, the abolition of 'Western' style schools for girls throughout the country and the enshrinement of Sharīʿah law, Taliban-Al Qaeda-style, all manifest, watch as the international media will struggle to explain to a very confused American and Western public the justification of these laws and how they are in keeping with 'traditional' Afghanistan and beneficial for the local people.

In my own opinion, an appalling betrayal of a people is taking place under the guise of leaving them, the Afghan people, with democracy – an even worse betrayal than the abandoning of our Allies in South Vietnam.   At least the victorious (atheistic) Communists showed some mercy.

The Afghan people can expect neither mercy nor forgiveness as the Taliban and their religious-military fanatical allies 'reassert ' 'Allah's Kingdom' over 'Satan'.

Patrick Emek

http://www.anjaniedringhaus.com/

http://www.worldpressphoto.org/anja-niedringhaus



3.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_departments_and_territories_of_France
4.    http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire

5.    http://latter-rain.com/crusade/curfor.htm

6.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal

7.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum

http://www.habeeb.com/Fourth.of.July.Origins.4.html

http://www.ushistory.org/documents/banner.htm


updated April 8 
an addendum on April 9 to add a section about the European Union and composite several centuries of tribal wars in Europe - with a personal interpretation and comparative analysis