EDITORIAL : THE DAILY OUTLOOK, AFGANISTAN

              

 

Militants will not be Cajoled into Being Our “Brothers”

Is Afghanistan going on the right direction or wrong direction? This should be a common question asked by the Afghan people. But the answer to it may be a bit tricky.
After ten years of international presence, this should have been easy to answer. But unfortunately the world of expectation is different from the ground reality in the country. The Afghans wanted and expected to be better-off after the Taliban militants were overthrown in late 2001 but the existing realities show that their dream of a stable and prosperous Afghanistan is yet to come true and the realization of this dream appears to remain very elusive and sugar-coated.

The answer to the above-mentioned question is difficult in a sense that the politicians and leadership continue to pursue the policy of deceit. Afghans lose their lives in insurgent activities on a daily basis but the leadership or the president continues to define "good Taliban" and "bad Taliban" for them. The president continues to say naively that he offers his humble hand of peace to "unhappy brothers" even if they reject it thousands of time. The explosions, roadside bombings and suicide attacks are heard in different quarters of the country almost on a day-to-day basis but the president never begins to react seriously and call upon the forces under his command to prevent Afghan people from being killed, wounded, disabled and displaced.

Corruption in the government agencies has eroded the democratic values such as public trust and tolerance. But the president has never demonstrated any real moral sense to acknowledge the persuasiveness and rampancy of the corruption in his government and his administration. Instead, he has tried to show himself as the national hero to point his finger towards international community and international organizations.

Afghan people are now "pissed off" by the ongoing ineffective leadership and the policies on dealing with the cruel and atrocious insurgents that leave no stone unturned to take innocent lives and trouble the country. President Karzai should come to terms with the fact that the lunatic fringes could not be cajoled into being our "brothers." If he persists on his position, then it is time to strip him of his carte blanche.

Tragic Stories of Afghans from Atrocious Indiscriminate Acts

Afghan people continue to receive appallingly startling news stories, which are indicative of the violence of their situation and the tragedy of their lives; they also show the inability of their government to work to save the precious lives of its citizens. The tragic stories of Afghans getting killed on a day-to-day basis also reminds us of the international failure to help secure and stabilize the country and if the ongoing negative trend of security and violence continues, it should leave a scar on the conscience of those countries involved in fight against terrorists and lunatic fringes that attach no value to human beings.

One of this heartbreaking and extremely excruciating news is falling of civilians, particularly women and children, victims to insurgent attacks, roadside bombings and other deadly activities. Witnesses and officials on Sunday, May 15, 2011 said that two children were cut into pieces beyond recognition when a bomb planted beneath a culvert went off in southern Ghazni province. According to news reports, the children saw a wire under a small bridge and started pulling it out when the bomb detonated in Karosi village of Andar district on Saturday afternoon, killing two children. The district chief, Shir Khan Yousufzai, has said the dead were of ages between 10 and 12 years.

The insurgent militants or to speak in president Karzai's language, the "disgruntled brothers" continue to destroy bridges, roads, schools and other infrastructures, which are built through begging international assistance and aid. Unfortunately, these destructions often time have the loss of human lives as the above-mentioned case of the two innocent children shows.

Unfortunately, there is no one to protest and raise their voice against these atrocious indiscriminate acts of terrorists and Taliban militants. The insurgents remain the source of violence just to serve their foreign bosses or to stick to their fain in their cruel and inhuman ideology. This source must be defeated. If the government and international community have the conscience, they have to begin to act to prevent these types of tragedies in the future. Their conscience must have been shaken sufficiently to be propelled towards working to put an end to the suffering of Afghan people.

Promoting Taliban Propaganda

Recently a prestigious British newspaper had a report about the online effectiveness of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. The report was about Taliban's new twitter account, being updated very regularly with news of glorifying the insurgent attacks and spreading hatred against foreign and Afghan security forces. Foreign journalists and some Afghans sharing links to Taliban's twitter account were all excited that "they are now tweeting in English."

There is nothing new in the twitter account of Taliban. But unfortunately we don't know why it is so 'interesting' for some people who are enthusiastically promoting Taliban propaganda by spreading the word out, sharing links of the tweets and source of the account. In the last two weeks, since the twitter account has been launched, some media outlets have made it a story worth writing about. With such reporting, the Taliban account has now thousands of 'followers'. Taliban is successful with the help of these media outlets who are giving unnecessary hype and promotion to Taliban propaganda unintentionally.

Twitter in its 'terms of use' has in clear words written that any account or user using violence and threats against others will not be allowed use of service. But strange is that not only groups linked to global terrorists like Al-Qaeda are using social networking tools like Facebook and twitter to promote their cause, but the Taliban twitter story being a headline in media for the past two days has yet received no attention from twitter officials. Its clear violation of its terms of use, and they should delete all such accounts that represent terror groups or promote their ideology and fear. An Afghan living in the US has said he will sue Twitter for this matter letting terror groups use the platform and violate its terms of use. We hope he will be successful in this.

We request those foreign journalists who cover Afghanistan to stop promoting Taliban propaganda by giving credibility to their lies through sharing their tweets. Comparing the Afghan Government's online effectiveness to that of Taliban is nonsense. By using twitter for spreading lies and propaganda, Taliban do not become superior online. Indeed it doesn't make a difference at all, for common Afghans, other than foreign journalists and Afghans living abroad.