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| Afghanistan |
| Taliban suicide bombings seen as self-defeating |
| 2007-03-01 |
| A new study has concluded that the Taliban will continue to employ suicide bombings in the upcoming year as a disruptive shock tactic, with the main victims being the very people the Taliban are trying to win over. The study by Dr Brian Glyn Williams and Cathy Young at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, which is published by the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor, says as coalition troops continue to use close air support and superior artillery firepower to flush Taliban insurgents out of provinces like Kandahar, the real contest for the hearts and minds of the local population for 2007 may well hinge on the competing sides’ “collateral damage” statistics. The study covers 158 suicide bombings from 2001 to 2007 in Afghanistan, including the one during Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit to the Bagram base. It notes that US military and government sources have routinely spoken of the “Iraqification” of the Afghan conflict. Recent statistics from US and Afghan agencies seem to support this claim. While Afghanistan had 25 suicide bombings in 2005, in 2006 it experienced as many as 139 suicide attacks. It appears that the carnage that has shredded the fabric of Iraqi society has come to the so-called “Forgotten War” in Afghanistan. The study takes the view that despite the mounting evidence that the Iraqi invasion has destabilised Afghanistan via the sharing of Iraqi tactics with Afghan insurgents, the suicide bombing campaign in Afghanistan has its own specific dynamics. It is the little noticed local characteristics that distinguish suicide bombing in Afghanistan from that in the Iraqi there. An analysis of the Taliban’s 2007 suicide campaign makes some of these differences “glaringly obvious”. This year’s statistics seem to support the notion that suicide bombers are ramping up their attacks in an effort to cause as much Iraqi-style carnage as possible. While it is only seven weeks into the new year, there already have been 21 suicide bombings or attempts in Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 Sorry but there is also the military aspect: 1) Jobs will gain you nothing if the peole areen't protected against the bad guys. 2) People who help the Taliban must be punished severely. Otherwise it is: the Taliban will kill me if I don't help and the good guys will not harm me so better help the Ta&liban 3) They must be sure of America's determination. If they think America will falter then they will believe that in order to not be killed once the Taliban return they must do something against the Americans/government. And if America abandons Irak then Afgahns will doubt of her will. |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-03-01 17:15 |
| #3 Infrastructure jobs like those that you plan, 'Moose, may work in the short run, but don't work for the long term. What NATO and the US needs to do is to give the average Afghani a stake in maintaining a stable government. There are three ways to do that: education, employment, and opportunity. Washington SHOULD have commissioned several think tanks to study possible Afghani employment situations as soon as the Taliban were ousted. That should include both short-term work, and the development of local enterprises. The Coaition needs to do more to protect teachers and schools from attack, as an educated populace is more likely to want to preserve its freedoms than one fed nothing but a steady diet of Islam. Small co-ops could do a lot to increase the productivity of the average citizen of Afghanistan, as well as develop a sense of democratic activity. The US also needs to do a full geological survey of Afghanistan. From the Google Earth imagery I've looked at, there appears to be quite a number of minerals that could be successfully mined and processed in the area. A seismic survey may also find a few small oil and gas deposits - not enough for export, but capable of meeting local demands. We can't make the Afghan people rich, but we COULD do a far better job at creating a more rewarding life for the majority of them. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-03-01 14:42 |
| #2 One of America's biggest efforts in Afghanistan should be grassroots economic development. To start with, they have a 40% unemployment rate, and yet their typical wage is tiny. This is an excellent opportunity. For the relatively small sum of $1B, the US could create an enormous number of public works projects that would do two things: slash unemployment and build infrastructure for their "new" economy. This means that the vast amount of manpower would be used to create an economic boom from scratch. Everything from turning desert into canal irrigated good farmland; to tearing down and rebuilding cities and towns, redesigning them in the process for business, government and growth; improving roads everywhere, preparing them for professional road crews to finish. The emphasis is on doing it all with as much manual labor as possible, instead of with "labor saving" machines, like we're used to. We continue to fund all of these minimum wage (by Afghan standards) workers, until the economic stimulus created by their work drains them off for better jobs. For example, by rebuilding a town to have a well designed casbah marketplace, then creating micro banks to fund new small businesses (which has been a huge success in India), overnight you can make 10 or 20 new businesses, each of which needs 10 new employees right at start up. Each business also needs other businesses to provide it with horizontal and vertical support, each of which in turn creates more employment. And each successful business grows the micro bank, so it can create more business. Doing it this way avoids the problem of the Afghan people being beholden to the US for their employment. By stimulating the marketplace, wages are driven up until it is no longer worth it to work in the public works projects. The projects die out from their own success. And the bottom line is that economic development is the worst thing that can happen to both criminal gangs and fanatical movements. And they know it. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-03-01 10:49 |
| #1 You just can't find experienced suicide bombers anymore. |
| Posted by: doc 2007-03-01 10:32 |