The news reports all concur, the new American "strategy" being unveiled with the assault on Marjah in Helmand Province consists of clearing "bad guys" from an area then "rushing in" development aid, to show folks they are better off without the Taliban than with them. Pick a dangerous spot where you can use lots of helicopter gunships, armored vehicles, and soldiers and strategize away.
Bombs slow US advance in Afghan town (AP):
NATO said it hoped to secure the area in days, set up a local government and rush in development aid in a first test of the new U.S. strategy for turning the tide of the eight-year war. The offensive is the largest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
But drive in almost any direction toward the outskirts of Kabul, the safest city in the country, and you'll see seas of tents and ghostlike inhabitants without food, water, or adequate shelter in the freezing Kabul winter, except when one organization or another swings through to drop off much-needed, and never enough, blankets, food, perhaps more tents. It wouldn't require a military operation..
to create some basic jobs sweeping streets and picking up trash for the fathers of these slowly starving children, who drop like flies due to pnuemonia and other disease brought on by malnutrition and going barefoot in freezing mud.
To paraphrase the character in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 451 as he laments his economically devastated Flint, Michigan neighborhood, Obama knows about this. I emailed him.
If the Americans really wanted to send a message to the country that their intentions were good, word of which would spread across the country like wildfire, this would be the place to start. On most days what these children will have to eat will be what they can beg or find in trash dumps.
We're not talking about fancy improvements here. Cinder blocks for basic structures against the freezing wind, shovels and picks for digging water and sanitation line, which could be paid work at $6 a day which is an excellent wage here. What would happen? Probably a lot of young "Taliban" across the country would drop their guns and beat feet for the six bucks a day that rumors say they are hiring at in Kabul. No big fancy military operation required.
As if my own instinct about this were not enough, I got word from my buddy on the battle line with an American unit in Helmand. Besides just begging him to keep his head down, I asked him, as a young line officer, what was up with the big operation in Marjah. He told me that "big operations" like this don't accomplish much in Afghanistan, and called Marjah "the flavor of the month." It's got to be long-term focus on development, said this enlightened young officer, who for obvious reasons I cannot name.
But hey, with Marjah at least we'll get a few more people hating us, which will make it harder to pull out by 2011 as President Obama, who thinks he is calling the shots, has planned. It's really the generals calling the shots, and Lockheed, and Dyncorp. Not Obama, and certainly not my young friend.
Please go to Robert Naiman's End the War in Afghanistan Action Page and send an email to your representatives. The diarist is the co-founder of Jobs for Afghans.
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Within view of a high building in Kabul, tent cities of misery and malnutrition
Nearly 70 families live in this refugee camp near downtown Kabul.
This little girl confirmed died in 2009, of malnutrition and preventable disease, months after film-maker Robert Greenwald took this image
Boy in sandstorm, just outside Kabul
Man gathers dirt to attempt to build mud house