Nicholas Laferriere
Rashid chapters 7-9
Return of the Taliban
Kill Capture
This blog covers a chapters 7-9 of Rashid’s book and the two documentaries Return of the Taliban and Kill Capture. I am going to write most of this blog through the idea that in order to build a western styled state, with a strong central government that you need to have a sense of nationalism. Throughout the readings their is case after case of where Afghanistan could have built a strong sense of nationalism following the fall of the Taliban just after 911.
Chapter seven of Rashid’s book talks about the rise of the Afghan warlords and tribal leaders following the Taliban’s fall. After the Taliban fell to the American and NA forces the American and UN forces occupied the major cities and used warlords to country the country side. The problem was that they often just as bad as the Taliban to the people in the area they controlled. Most of the warlords were also involved in black market trading of guns and drugs. The large amounts of money and aid the US gave to the warlords helped them do this and also made it next to impossible for the new central government to have control of the country. The official US support of the warlords made it impossible for Karzai as the new president to Afghanistan to actually do anything to limit the warlords power. This also made any notion of unifying the nation under sort nationalism impossible. Without a strong central government it wasn’t a feasible anymore.
Chapter 8 of the book starts to talk about some of the problems in Pakistan and the fact they lost their chance to transformer their country into more of western style democracy. Instead of taking the aid of the US an reforming their country during a time when the Islamist community in the country had a huge lack of support, the ISI decided to still help the Taliban. They provided a safe haven for the Taliban leaders and helped some of the fighters escape over the border to Pakistan. The biggest example of this was during Tora Bora when Al-Qaeda fighters and leaders escaped into Pakistan during the battle. Instead of unifying Pakistan around a sense of Nationalism they tried to unify the country under Islam. The rest of the chapter talks about how the countries in central Asia benefited from the US wanting to put bases in the area in order to support their forces in the Afghanistan. This resulted in the US allying itself with nations that have less than ideal governments. Some even of which had dictatorships.
The last chapter in this weeks reads covered the efforts of the US to rebuild Afghanistan after the the fall of the Taliban. In this chapter Rashid talks about the varies programs that were started with foreign aid to Afghanistan to try and help rebuild the nation. Some of the projects were very successful but the majority of them and the effort as whole failed horribly. For a variety of reason from lack of coordination between agencies and corruption in the area. These problems led to a divided Afghanistan. If the projects were properly handled and succeeded in the way that they were intended to them there was a much higher chance that Afghanistan would have been able to build nationalism around the central government instead of reallying on warlords or local tribal leadership.
Kill capture is a documentary about the raids the US forces have been doing against suspected Taliban targets. Over the course of the war their have been more and more raids where the US forces break into houses and search form Taliban fighters and commanders. The problem is that a significant amount of times the intelligence is wrong and they end up invading a innocent person’s house. One of the raids that was in the documentary involved an instance where they broke down the door to an elders house to find out that he didn’t support the Taliban at all. The Afghan soldiers knew this and were very reluctant to help search the house. It was considered an insult to search the house but the American troops still did. Afterwards the elder said that before he would not support the Taliban but afterwords he said that he would allow Taliban into his house. This is one the example of how things are starting to go badly for the US forces. They are losing support from the people in Afghanistan. Although the US is trying to unite Afghanistan together but from the point of view of this documentary the US might be uniting Afghanistan under hatred of the west. Some of the interviewed people in the documentary even said that if they die as a result of the US raids than there kids and kids will take up their fight. This one of the problems with fighting a truly dedicated force.
The documentary Return of the Taliban is about of the Taliban forces after 911 and how they continued to exists in the tribal areas of Pakistan, around the border of Afghanistan and the Peshawar lands. It also keeps bringing up the point that the ISI has a huge influence over Pakistan policy and more examples of double dealings inside of the Pakistan government. After being driven out of Afghanistan following 911 the Taliban fled to Pakistan and received support from the ISI inside of Pakistan and outside support from Arabs. This has led to the Taliban having a strong foothold inside of Pakistan and as a result easy access into Afghanistan and able to launch attacks and support fighters inside of Afganistan. This is one of the problems with the current war and the US can’t solve the problem without the help of Pakistan. Without Pakistan having a strong enough central government that isn’t controlled by Islamist Extremist it impossible to eliminate the Taliban from the area. If the general people of Pakistan could unite together and say enough is enough to the rule of the ISI and Taliban than they could drive them out the area with the help of the international community and the help of the US. It is impossible for the US to rebuild Afghanistan without the help of Pakistan.
Rashid chapters 7-9
Return of the Taliban
Kill Capture
This blog covers a chapters 7-9 of Rashid’s book and the two documentaries Return of the Taliban and Kill Capture. I am going to write most of this blog through the idea that in order to build a western styled state, with a strong central government that you need to have a sense of nationalism. Throughout the readings their is case after case of where Afghanistan could have built a strong sense of nationalism following the fall of the Taliban just after 911.
Chapter seven of Rashid’s book talks about the rise of the Afghan warlords and tribal leaders following the Taliban’s fall. After the Taliban fell to the American and NA forces the American and UN forces occupied the major cities and used warlords to country the country side. The problem was that they often just as bad as the Taliban to the people in the area they controlled. Most of the warlords were also involved in black market trading of guns and drugs. The large amounts of money and aid the US gave to the warlords helped them do this and also made it next to impossible for the new central government to have control of the country. The official US support of the warlords made it impossible for Karzai as the new president to Afghanistan to actually do anything to limit the warlords power. This also made any notion of unifying the nation under sort nationalism impossible. Without a strong central government it wasn’t a feasible anymore.
Chapter 8 of the book starts to talk about some of the problems in Pakistan and the fact they lost their chance to transformer their country into more of western style democracy. Instead of taking the aid of the US an reforming their country during a time when the Islamist community in the country had a huge lack of support, the ISI decided to still help the Taliban. They provided a safe haven for the Taliban leaders and helped some of the fighters escape over the border to Pakistan. The biggest example of this was during Tora Bora when Al-Qaeda fighters and leaders escaped into Pakistan during the battle. Instead of unifying Pakistan around a sense of Nationalism they tried to unify the country under Islam. The rest of the chapter talks about how the countries in central Asia benefited from the US wanting to put bases in the area in order to support their forces in the Afghanistan. This resulted in the US allying itself with nations that have less than ideal governments. Some even of which had dictatorships.
The last chapter in this weeks reads covered the efforts of the US to rebuild Afghanistan after the the fall of the Taliban. In this chapter Rashid talks about the varies programs that were started with foreign aid to Afghanistan to try and help rebuild the nation. Some of the projects were very successful but the majority of them and the effort as whole failed horribly. For a variety of reason from lack of coordination between agencies and corruption in the area. These problems led to a divided Afghanistan. If the projects were properly handled and succeeded in the way that they were intended to them there was a much higher chance that Afghanistan would have been able to build nationalism around the central government instead of reallying on warlords or local tribal leadership.
Kill capture is a documentary about the raids the US forces have been doing against suspected Taliban targets. Over the course of the war their have been more and more raids where the US forces break into houses and search form Taliban fighters and commanders. The problem is that a significant amount of times the intelligence is wrong and they end up invading a innocent person’s house. One of the raids that was in the documentary involved an instance where they broke down the door to an elders house to find out that he didn’t support the Taliban at all. The Afghan soldiers knew this and were very reluctant to help search the house. It was considered an insult to search the house but the American troops still did. Afterwards the elder said that before he would not support the Taliban but afterwords he said that he would allow Taliban into his house. This is one the example of how things are starting to go badly for the US forces. They are losing support from the people in Afghanistan. Although the US is trying to unite Afghanistan together but from the point of view of this documentary the US might be uniting Afghanistan under hatred of the west. Some of the interviewed people in the documentary even said that if they die as a result of the US raids than there kids and kids will take up their fight. This one of the problems with fighting a truly dedicated force.
The documentary Return of the Taliban is about of the Taliban forces after 911 and how they continued to exists in the tribal areas of Pakistan, around the border of Afghanistan and the Peshawar lands. It also keeps bringing up the point that the ISI has a huge influence over Pakistan policy and more examples of double dealings inside of the Pakistan government. After being driven out of Afghanistan following 911 the Taliban fled to Pakistan and received support from the ISI inside of Pakistan and outside support from Arabs. This has led to the Taliban having a strong foothold inside of Pakistan and as a result easy access into Afghanistan and able to launch attacks and support fighters inside of Afganistan. This is one of the problems with the current war and the US can’t solve the problem without the help of Pakistan. Without Pakistan having a strong enough central government that isn’t controlled by Islamist Extremist it impossible to eliminate the Taliban from the area. If the general people of Pakistan could unite together and say enough is enough to the rule of the ISI and Taliban than they could drive them out the area with the help of the international community and the help of the US. It is impossible for the US to rebuild Afghanistan without the help of Pakistan.
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