From IWPR
"It was about 8:30 in the evening," he said, "and we were having dinner outside in the courtyard. Then there was thunder, a roar, and the women and children ran into the house. ... the sky was raining red fire. My brother’s wife ran out of the house – she had been injured and was holding her baby in her arms. She fell on top of me and then died. ...My wife was lying under the walls, and her legs had been cut off. I started to pull her out, but she was gone. Later I found my little son."
Sher Gul cursed the Afghan president, Hamed Karzai, and laughed, but his laughter was unhinged.
This is a good thing he has done for us," he said. "We don’t even need to bring our dead to the graveyard. Look – everywhere is a graveyard now."
Everyone knows things are bad in Afghanistan but there seems to be a lot of disagreement on the Left as to why or what should happen next.
From Democracy Now:
AMY GOODMAN: What should the United States do right now?
MALALAI JOYA: ... First of all, they should stop the support of these fundamentalist Northern Alliance killers who are brother in creed of Taliban, and they are in power right now and they have high positions in Afghanistan. For example, every crimes that happening, they are saying Taliban did, but right now in the north of Afghanistan there is no Talib. In Jowzjan Province, Rashid Dostum is one of the wanted criminal, and also the governor of this province is Joma Khan Hamdard, a person who is one of the commander and one of the person of [inaudible] one of the Northern Alliance killers, a party that leader is Rabani, who’s enjoying in parliament. They’re fighting against each other because of their personal issues, because these black parties, they are against each other, but they shed the blood of innocent people in the situation that now they’re talking about democracy. And many more examples that these fundamentalist warlords, they are more risky than Taliban, because they are in power. And that's why our people do not support that government and they are getting distanced from this government and they do something against foreign troops in Afghanistan, because they become hopeless from the foreign troops. They support Northern Alliance killers who are friend of US and enemies of our people, and they are saying we are fighting against Taliban, who are anti-US, but both of them are enemies of the people of Afghanistan.
All experts I hear talk about Afghanistan are clear that the US shouldn't support warlords and that this is the heart of the current situation but I hear very little in support of Karzai either and an expert on tonights News Hour stressed that Afghanistan would be more stable if the government were allowed to be more representative (which he said would be more fundamentalist):
NAZIF SHAHRANI: Yes, what I was saying was that the government in Kabul needs to reflect the values of the communities who are supporting Taliban, and that is, when people look at the cabinet right now, they say they do see some Pashtuns, but they are not necessarily seeing the kind of Pashtun that they would like to see in the government, and that is practicing Muslims like themselves. And they, in fact, name various cabinet members and people in power and so forth.
So the first thing that needs to be done is the government has to reflect, to a very important measure, I think, the values of the society at large. The other issue...
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what's to stop that from happening?
NAZIF SHAHRANI: It hasn't happened simply because, from the beginning, this government has made deals with characters that are not necessarily liked by many in the country. And even if some local leaders have popularity in their own regions, they have been brought to the national level to prominence, and that they should have been tolerated at the local level and kept at the local level.
So this could be seen as somewhat in line with what Malalai Joya said since it does suggest pulling support from warlords but supporting regional leaders seems like it would just be choosing different warlords and since the current warlords were able to win the last elections... who would choose the local leaders?
What about opium Under US and NATO occupation? Afghanistan has again become the worlds major producer but there are no other major income sources for the country and any group trying to decrease opium farming will get turned against by most of the population. Encouraging other crops and the like is great but it takes a lot of time and so far hasn't been that effective in other countries where it has been promoted.
Could a purely NATO lead operation even be possible? Europe and Canada public opinion is turning against being in Afghanistan since troops loses are increasing with the troops having little effect (as the Taliban regains power and the fighting between NATO and Afghans turns more people against the West as a whole).
So What should US policy be?
My thought is that the US is the least likely country to be able to effectively solve what is going on in Afghanistan and NATO isn't much better so funding something through the UN may be best... and if that isn't possible I would go with choice two... but both dont seem that possible or great so I'm curious what others think.