open Democracy News Analysis - insurgency - Comments

markwalters on "Obama's Afghan challenge"

markwalters — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:53:23 +0100

Perhaps Washington thought (or hoped) that the overthrow of the Taliban regime would lead, sooner rather than later, to stableness and prosperity in Afghanistan.

Mark From Greece

Asias on "The resurgence of the neo-Taliban"

Asias — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:32:55 +0100

What a strange creature human being is, ah!? I just felt alone, both spiritually and physically, sunk in deep thought, and looked enquiringly into people and myself for some kind of answer to the question I had not formulated in my mind. No, no, I was not confused at all as you may have possibly been thinking now. Neither was I going crazy! I thought I just didn’t have the slightest idea or motive what to do next and how to go about it. “How to go about what?” I didn’t know myself. This was the question I had asked myself then. Maybe to go about this weird situation that I felt screamingly lonely. I switched my computer on and put some music, the best ones I usually listen when I need some relax, and, and suddenly to my own surprise I found myself clapping insanely, feeling like shouting and crying as loud as I could. “OH, WHAT IS GOING ON, SHIT?” I shouted. I realized that I didn’t shout. It was not a scream. It was just my inner sound. But I thought I did shout. Then in a low voice I whispered slowly to myself “what is indeed going on with me?” Hhmm! Ey! [breathing] Hey, come down! Everything is good! ♪Perhaps I was addicted to the dark side
Somewhere inside my childhood I missed my heart die
And even though we both came from the same places
The money and the fame made us all change places

blindfreddie on "The resurgence of the neo-Taliban"

blindfreddie — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:21:40 +0000

"for a person who believe in the only God",

which god do you mean?most people only believe in the god named MONEY.

"the future life is more important than the life of this world"

there is no future life,there is no heaven,no hell,there is only tomorrow,if you not here tomorrow then you are dead.

so he must always try to please god and rely on God for his survival.

go into an empty room lock the door and pray to your god or any of the million so called gods,stay there untill you realise that if you don't help yourself you will die in that room.

"As for the things that the west has invented and done for civilazation i'll just remind you that the only God is the creator of the universe,of the earth,of mankind and of all that existes even the air you breathe.whoever believes does this for his own good because GOD doesnt need nobody,we need Him."

people have invented everything in this world from east to west,north to south and will continue to do so,from different races,different nations.i'll just remind you that YOU need to believe because you are afraid of dying.do not say "WE" because you only speak for yourself."Religion is opium of the masses".without religion most of the problems of the world would disapear.throw the crutches of religion away and be free.

varices on "The resurgence of the neo-Taliban"

varices — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:57:53 +0100

The “War on Drugs” has been waged for many years, at huge cost in money, lives and suffering, and there is little or no evidence that the drug traffickers are losing. The Government should also be reminded that the drug trade is one of the main sources of revenue for terrorists. The Government no longer uses the phrase “War on Terror”, but there is still a power struggle to be won, and cutting the source of revenue for terrorists is surely an option worth considering. A change of policy from prohibition to legitimisation and humanitarian application would surely be seen as a statesmanlike choice. We should be pressing for this solution.

felid on "The resurgence of the neo-Taliban"

felid — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:43:57 +0100

for a person who believe in the only God,the future life is more important than the life of this world so he must always try to please god and rely on God for his survival.As for the things that the west has invented and done for civilazation i'll just remind you that the only God is the creator of the universe,of the earth,of mankind and of all that existes even the air you breathe.whoever believes does this for his own good because GOD doesnt need nobody,we need Him.

__________________
Submited by : Caballos

dominikwach on "Hamas: talk to them"

dominikwach — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:36:26 +0100

This article is a very good and comprehensive analysis. It contains most important elements and arguments which are unfortunately missed (on purpose or accidentally) by most authors. It's good that some people can look at Hamas objectively, not only as a terrorist organisation. If Israel wants peace, it must deal with Hamas, but in my opinion Israel is not interested in final settlement with Palestinians now, and in the nearest future.

john problem on "Hamas: talk to them"

john problem — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:38:12 +0100

Britain had a long haul with Northern Ireland. It was only when the leaders of the two Northern Irish factions realised that they were getting old and might never enjoy the delights of internationally accepted power that they decided to get together - and peace prevailed. Perhaps the same applies to Hamas and Fatah. If so, we'd better get a move on helping them to get there. This article is to be applauded - there is never any rationale for not talking. Better to have them in the tent than outside kicking the guy rope.

KVB Tharoor on "Europe’s Afghan test "

KVB Tharoor — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:07:16 +0000

In the last year, Karzai has frequently called for negotiations with elements of the Taliban, recognising that they're not simply a monolithic militant group, but an assemblage of factions, even to some extent a social movement. Yet, Washington has been reluctant to sanction this. Would negotiation with the Taliban in some way compromise American positions of non-engagement elsewhere (for e.g. with Hamas)?

Missing in this strategy is any mention of Pakistan. Is that because the author thinks the turmoil in Afghanistan's neighbour is somehow unlinked to Afghanistan's own problems? Or is it because EU foreign policy is toothless regarding the influence it can exert in Pakistan?

richard on "The resurgence of the neo-Taliban"

richard — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:36:34 +0000

British troops in Afghanistan are being killed and injured in a useless attempt to stop farmers there from growing opium. In effect, we are asking the farmers to starve, or at least to plunge themselves and their families into deep poverty, by refraining from planting opium. The chances of success are not high, and the leaders of the army there are giving signals that confirm this. At the same time, the incidence of cancer in Africa is rising according to a recent report in the BMJ, and people there are dying of cancer without having access to morphine or heroin. Two problems, one solution: instead of burning the Afghan opium crops, we could purchase it from the farmers, process it, and make it available in Africa. A think tank, the Senlis Council, http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/Opium licensing are proposing poppy licensing. This will decriminalise poppy growing, and allow UN agencies to buy up the whole crop and turn it into medicine. I have asked the Ministry of Defence why they will not consider this as an option. The Government is concerned about diversion of the purchased opium from government agencies to the black market. This is seen as a meaningful objection by NuLabour ministers, despite the fact that at the moment 100% of the trafficked crop finds its way onto the black market. Government complains that the Afghan Government does not have the necessary resources, institutional capacity and control mechanisms in place to ensure that they are the sole purchaser of opiate raw materials. This begs the question of what tiny fraction of the cost of military action would be needed. They are spending £270 million over three years in support of the Afghan government’s National Drug Control Strategy (NDCS). The “War on Drugs” has been waged for many years, at huge cost in money, lives and suffering, and there is little or no evidence that the drug traffickers are losing. The Government should also be reminded that the drug trade is one of the main sources of revenue for terrorists. The Government no longer uses the phrase “War on Terror”, but there is still a power struggle to be won, and cutting the source of revenue for terrorists is surely an option worth considering. A change of policy from prohibition to legitimisation and humanitarian application would surely be seen as a statesmanlike choice. We should be pressing for this solution.

Bartosz Wasilewski on "Turkey and the Kurds: everybody's problem"

Bartosz Wasilewski — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:42:46 +0000

Hello, I absolutely agree with you, there's a need of cooperate. But everybody knows, how difficult it is. Well we will see how things will go on :) www.ego.wot.pl a new Internet newspaper

policzer on "Al-Qaida: from centre to periphery"

policzer — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:46:56 +0100

Jamil, Good points. I don't think your comments contradict our basic argument: that we need to shift the focus away from the centre of al-Qaida, and not see bin Laden and his cohorts as the master puppeteers behind a single global organization or movement. Once we shift the focus in this way, we begin to see exactly the various kinds of grievances that you outline. But I would say that even here one has to be careful with sweeping generalizations, and not assume that one set of grievances felt or expressed in one area applies universally to all. In this sense, the analogy to Che Guevara (which I really like, by the way, thank you for pointing it out) is an interesting one. Che was and remains an inspiration for many around the world who have been treated unjustly. But Che's mistake was to think that all poor and downtrodden around the world (or even around Latin America) were more or less equivalent, and faced similar conditions. This is not the case. Some grievances that apply in some cases do not apply in others. And it's important to be sensitive to the local circumstances and dynamics, and not see each local case as yet another example of a single global phenomenon, whether it be the global war on terror (or "clash of civilizations") or the "global" fight against neo-imperialism, neo-liberalism, etc. Pablo Policzer

m.jamil on "Al-Qaida: from centre to periphery"

m.jamil — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:12:08 +0100

Would haida or other B.C. bands / first nation peoples have had a right of violent resistance against the bruital suppression of their language and culture, seizure of their lands, destruction of their ways of life, and in many cases the violent suppression and murder of their resistance leaders? Yes, Canadian injustice was not as much physical genocide as were the ethic cleansing and crimes against humanity committed by a US government that supported its white citizens to commit equal acts of genocide, not to mention slavery of blacks, and continued apartheid and suppression of their constitutional rights through the late 20th century. But we still remember Lousi Riel. We still remember Clifford Sifton and the Canadian government's disenfranchisement of Ukrainian settlers from their hard won properties across the prairies. We still remember the internment of Japanese Canadians, and theft of their property by a BC elite (Sinclair among others). What rights do the oppressed of the world have against tyranny? Read Mike Davis' latest book "Beda's Wagon: history of the car bomb" to learn how this favored CIA assassination technique continues to be a staple Mossad tool, and who were CIA-Mossad trained in Lebanon and elsewhere. You may be a professor of political science and I a professor of geopolitical history, We may both may have opposing world views. But I always ask one simple question set: "what do you do that makes you part of the problem?" We all have to answer that we do many things everyday that make us part of a global problem with local consequence. And "what do you do that makes you part of the solution?" Resistance to injustice is at thee heart of any political process. Gordon Campbell turned from a mild mannered city councilman more concerned with parks than economics, into a neo-liberal liberal premier whose concerns for the wealthy disenfranchise many ordinary british columbians, especially a white working class that finds itself priced out of the housing market, deprived of union representation, and in many cases dumped into a surplus labour market to be de-skilled and deprived. In today's BC where Asian immigrants buy citizenship for $1million per family member, & may never even reside in the country, earlier generations of immigrants find themselves dropped down the socio-economic totem pole to a position just above first nations. Civilized Canadians still have democratic processes by which to resist the Americanization of the nation, a declining health, education and social service system, and so on, but what rights and options do the global underclasses have? what rights to Iraqis have? It seems refugee status -- 2.5 million having fled to other countries and an equal number of internal refugees. Over one million Iraqis have died at US hands and means of destruction, from sanctions to invasion to occupation, and billions of dollars siphoned off to corrupt US firms while Iraq still has no clean water or dependable electric infrastructure, most of the nation's middle class professionals and businessmen have fled. Many think back to the oppression of Saddam, and remember a functional services and infrastructure, a secular society relatively safe from crime and a liberal environment for women. The British seized and reassembled the territory they created as Iraq a spoils of WWI, and occupied it into the 1930's, but keeping a hand in the security apparatus, reoccupying it and Iran during WWII. then turning both over to the US in the 1950's. Resistance has a long history, as soon as the British withdrew forces, Baghdadis hanged the foreign king and henchmen imposed on them. Afghanistan, a mosaic of mountains and valleys peopled by impoverished warrior tribes and spill over of centuries of invading armies from Aryans to Alexander, Mongols to Mughuls, was allowed to remain independent by the British as a buffer against their Indian colony and Russian expansion into Central Asia. As well they lost at least two British armies to fierce resistance by varied Afghani coalitions. How ridiculous, ironic, or tragic that the Brits are back again in their former colonial battlefields, only now as subalterns to the US. Media today avoids history as if it were a retrovirus. To know the past is to learn patterns, understand consistency and change. If more people were exposed to history they might wonder how politicians repeat the same folly over and over again, generation after generation. They might also realize patterns of oppression and exploitation, and patterns of resistance and struggle for justice.

m.jamil on "Al-Qaida: from centre to periphery"

m.jamil — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:27:36 +0100

term ... "movement" ... we talk about the feminist or environment "movements" not organizations ... dynamic affinities among individuals and groups. What the US and their "allies" -- whether bullied, bought, of just foolish -- have done is to create a resistance movement with many faces, from the fundamentalist to the progressive, from the well-educated to the underclasses. The vast overwhelming majority of Muslims are horrified by what we see daily from Palestine to Brazil, the covert and overt war, state terror and intimidation of ordinary Muslims, just because of our identity as Muslim, whether Arab or Chinese. But this new crusade does not only target Muslims, it targets Christian Arabs, and any non-Muslim from all parts of the Muslim world. Therefor, the USA faces a resistance movement not totally unlike their own origins of resistance to the regime of King George or European anti-Nazi resistance. But it is even more complex as we are also in resistance against both corrupt ruling elite that drain our resources and impoverish our nations, and global corporate dominance of local economies that further exploit our human and natural resources in a system of unequal exchange and accumulation that ever more effectively transfers wealth to the already wealthy countries and classes. Thus, we in the Muslim world are between a rock & a hard place. Few Muslims support indiscriminate killing of non-Muslims, fewer still suicide bombings of fellow Muslims by holier-than-thou fanatics, and the vast majority do not want to live under the warped version of sharia' law proposed by fanatical conservatives. But an overwhelming majority of Muslims believe that the USA has turned into the greatest evil to befall the Muslim world since the Mongol invasions of 800 years ago. Yes, the era of European conquest and colonization of most of the Muslim world was a disaster, as neo-colonialism continues to be a disaster for the Muslim world. But the US regime supports dictators who brutally control their subjects -- we are not yet citizens, but remain subjects of our own corrupt rulers. The present condition of neo-colonial, neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideology is solidly racist and totally lacking moral compassion, or even the good sense to conserve the ecosystems that support human habitat. To conclude. we also celebrate the 40th anniversary of Che Geuvarra's martyrdom. However problematic his reality, he was and remains a martyr for the cause of human justice. You can see Che's image on T-shirts throughout the Muslim world where repressive governments wold arrest anyone wearing an Osama image. No single idea has more power among Muslims than JUSTICE, which we believe was the most important mobilizing strength of the message and movement begun by Prophet Mohammed. Today, Osama Bin Ladin is a 21st century Che. However distasteful we may find his brand of Islam or advocacy of violent retribution, in the eyes of most Muslims he represents a champion for Justice against oppression. Moreover, we see that in a nominally Christian Latin America, forces that struggle for justice against more than a century of US oppression, have similar feelings. Recently, I saw in Mexico side-by-sideT-shirts with images of Che and Osama. The overriding reality here is that so-called Al-Qaida is no more than one segment of a global movement across all religions and ethnic lines against the dark history of imperialism and neo-colonialism, and the drive toward global hegemony by the US ruling elite. One struggle — many fronts!

Maxwell A. Cameron on "Al-Qaida: from centre to periphery"

Maxwell A. Cameron — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:53:18 +0100

I agree with the thrust of this analysis, and would opt for the mixed strategy implied as a possibility at the end of this thoughtful essay: engage with the periphery whilest decapitating the centre. Maxwell A. Cameron Department of Political Science University of British Columbia

paulmkane2001 on "Dropping "muqawama""

paulmkane2001 — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:30:13 +0100

r" anything. It has taken power by fiat, fiat backed by foreign occupiers and their backers. God knows, the basic plan sounds good, but unless Abbas figures out a way to include Hamas in the government, it means nothing. The problem has been the same as it's been since Hamas was elected. Some compromise has to be worked out that allows those legitimately elected, Hamas, to govern.