As the media slowly turns their lazy eye toward the
forgotten war of Afghanistan, and the NATO forces begin to realize that the "victory" declared by the United States in the country was
nothing but a myth, we are given the feel good story of the summer. Coca-Cola has
come to town!
Coca-Cola, with its distinctive red-and-white logo, has come to Kabul in what is at once a sign of economic progress and a symbol of the failure of major businesses to open up in the five years since the fall of the hardline Islamist Taliban.
[...]
Although Afghanistan is one of the world's five poorest countries, Coca-Cola's Southern Eurasia head, Selcuk Erden, said the country of about 25 million was "the missing link" in the company's global business strategy.
But the country has no economy and apart from thousands of well-paid United Nations personnel, foreign troops and aid workers, few people have money to spend.
The average income is about $200 a year. A small bottle of Coke costs about 20 cents in the shops.
Take that Taliban...you can't compete with the peace-loving, feel-good attitude that comes with buying the world a coke!
Of course, this momentous occaision wasn't enough to keep Captain Leo Docherty, the aide-de-camp to senior commander Colonel Charlie Knaggs, from resigning in protest of what he sees as the "grotesquely clumsy" handling of
security in Southern Afghanistan.
The approach is "a textbook case of how to screw up a counter-insurgency," Docherty was quoted as saying.
"All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons killed are going to turn against the British," he said.
"Weve been grotesquely clumsy. We've said well be different to the Americans who were bombing and strafing villages, then behaved exactly like them," he said.
[...]
Docherty said the plan "fell by the wayside" because of pressure from the governor of Helmand, who feared the Taliban were toppling his district chiefs in northern towns, according to The Sunday Times.
Every time the Bush administration try to achieve victory through the glory of the private sector, reality has a way of raining on their free-market parade. This is Coke we are talking about here people...how can you kill with a Coke in your hand!
Maybe it was the lack of mom's apple pie along with the Coke plant, but it is becoming clear the Taliban just aren't getting the message.
A suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his body assassinated the popular governor of eastern Paktia province Sunday, just two days after a powerful car bomb killed 16 people, including two U.S. soldiers, in downtown Kabul, the capital.
[...]
In addition to attacking with firearms, the insurgents have increasingly employed suicide bombings in recent months, once virtually unknown in Afghanistan. A U.S. military spokesman here said that a suicide cell was now believed to be operating in Kabul and attempting to target international military facilities. The Friday suicide bombing in Kabul occurred on the same block as the U.S. embassy. The driver of a white sedan crashed it into a passing U.S. military convoy, where it exploded, killing Two soldiers and 14 Afghan civilians. More than 20 other people were injured.
Of course, the connection not being made here is that the increase in suicide bombings has the look and feel of the Iraqi insurgency, and top officials are starting to notice. The Taliban were never defeated by the invasion undertaken by our military, most of all because the full might of our armed forces were focused on Iraq, rather than securing the entire Afghan countryside. With the festering wound of Iraq breeding discontent throughout the region, we are now starting to see the techniques of that insurgency make their way into Afghanistan.
Welcome to the reality of the Bush foreign policy: This is the Domino effect, and we started it.
As Iraq continues to swell the ranks of Al-Qaeda, we are going to see the entire Middle East infected with the ills that we released by opening the Pandora's Box in Baghdad. This is the same principle in work when you take anti-biotics to kill an infection: If you stop the treatment before it is complete, your illness will return stronger, more determined, and more immune than ever before.
And no amount of Coke will solve that problem.
As news begins to break that our National Guard supplies are running thin at home because of Bush's War on Terror, it appears we aren't the only ones:
British military forces in Afghanistan are using up missiles, rockets and spare parts at a faster rate than expected, a newspaper has reported.
The Daily Telegraph said Monday one unnamed officer in Afghanistan predicted that the stocks of weapons and components that were meant to last until April next year, may be depleted "well before Christmas".
All eight British Apache helicopters are being flown on a daily basis, even though it was intended that only six should fly every day, the newspaper said. A number of them have been hit by Taliban shooters, but none have been seriously damaged.
The defense ministry was given one billion pounds for the Afghanistan mission, money that is being used up at a much faster pace than expected, according to The Daily Telegraph's unnamed sources, and it may have to ask the Treasury for more money.
The government response out of London is a positively Rumsfeldian denial, but this is by no means an unexpected development. As the Taliban insurgency continues to fester in the Southern portions of the country, the demand for supplies in the "conquered" Afghanistan is going to increase rather than decrease. Just another chapter in the rapidly expanding story of Afghanistan: The Forgotten War.
(Originally posted at Deny My Freedom)