Building a Nation
Rumsfeld, Karzai, Rashid, Santos 8/20/02, PBS NewsHour
How is the nation-building process going?
In this August 02 transcript Donald Rumsfeld
expressed general satisfaction with the Afghan military campaign.
"What a difference a year makes. The Afghan youngsters are back in
school. They’re learning to play baseball instead of cowering in fear
and hiding from the Taliban’s religious beliefs."
Rumsfeld seems easily satisfied. Other guests
told a somewhat different story. Afghan President Hamid Karzai himself
said: "If the Americans left next month, Afghanistan would be in a
shambles."
Charles Santos said: "If we focus all
about Hamid Karzai, then I think that that’s a mistake. The truth is
Afghanistan is much bigger than Hamid Karzai, and in fact, Hamid Karzai
really doesn’t have any real base of support. . . . I mean the truth
is that power exists in the regions."
On the plus side, Ahmed Rashid thought that at
this point Afghanistan was a safer place than previously. "I think
there has been widespread recognition by the warlords, by bandit groups,
by people who are armed and dangerous, if you like, that there is now a
huge consensus amongst the Afghan population for peace."
www.pbs.org/newshour,
then newshour index/search, then search for Building a
Nation.
Afghan Women Debate Country’s Future
Anne Jaclard, 11/02, News and Letters Newspaper
In this summary of a Barnard College conference
held October 2002, Helena Malikyar argued for funding for infrastructure
and the state. She said that "life is getting worse every day, with
much of the country having no water or crops and suffering
deforestation."
Reporter Anne Jaclard noted that all the Afghan
speakers "either advocated a moderate Islamic government, avoided
the issue, or assumed that was the best one could hope for."
She missed the presence of RAWA, as the US
refused to give its representative a visa. (Why we wonder?) She missed
RAWA’s "principled stand that only a secular government can
establish women’s rights."
She noted also that "One influential
Afghan woman who lives in the US told me privately that she thinks only
a secular government could assure that fundamentalism does not dominate
the treatment of women."
www.newsandletters.org,
then Back Issues, 2002 November, find under More Articles.
Afghanistan, the Taliban and pre-Taliban Years
Barnett Rubin interview, Asia Source, undated
We're told that Barnett Rubin was the man who
knew most about the Afghanistan of the 80s and 90s, when most of us were
ignoring the country. The interview below is the shortest, clearest summary
that we know of Afghan history from [the Soviet invastion of 1978] to 1998. (If you know a
better, tell us.)
Among other things, we learn how the Taliban
came into existence, its relationship to Al-Queda, the split of
attitudes within the Taliban, how the US handled its diplomatic
relations with the emerging Taliban.
www.asiasource.org/news/special
reports/rubin
