EDITORIAL : THE DAILY OUTLOOK, AFGANISTAN

              

 

Civilians Need to Act Responsibly

One of the most critical as well as complicated issues in the current anti-insurgency struggle in the country has been the issue of civilian casualties during Afghan or NATO military operations. Afghan government frequently has complained about operations which left misfortunate dead and injuries for innocent people. President Karzai himself on numerous ocassions alarmed foreign allies about counterproductive effect of military struggle in which civilians lose their lives.

Such pressures made top foreign allies, sometimes, to formally apologize but generally they avoided to do. Many domestic analysts maintain that the continuance of such misguided operations is the main recruitment bank of Taliban-led militants. They are potentially dangerous to alienate civilians and spark insurgency further in the country.

However, there is no available data to approve or disapprove the allegation or at least allow us to draw a graph and compare the civilians casualties and its relation with spiraling insurgency, but what can be understood from a mere theoretical analysis, indubitably, civilians casualties prove costly both in the political and military spheres. If civilians who lost their family members and the culprits were to walk out and justice was not tried, they would, if not join militants, help them to hide or provide information about whereabouts of foreign militaries.

Such sympathy can be more dangerous rather than joining militants directly. Because here numbers of people under coverage of what we call as a family, like the rest of countries with tribal culture, is quite large, in comparison to what we define as family in modern time. Militants are exploiting from such circumstances. Many of them just hide among civilians and people provide safety, when they come under real danger from Afghan and foreign military operations. Any nobody can at all differentiate them without accurate information, which is hard to arrange for each and every one who holds arm against government.

With expressing condolence to all those families who lost their family members in such a misguided operation, it should be noticed that why a collective action is not taken against militants who are the root cause of every misery here.

We Afghan people need, more than any time in the history, to tolerate foreign presence and give up our traditional anti-foreign sentiments in order to strengthen our political establishment. Keeping sympathy with insurgency and bursting in anger against foreign miss-shot cannot end our miseries. We, as civilians, have to act more responsibly and understand the vital period under which we leave in order to avoid recurrence of circular historical violence and bloodshed.

Time of Confusion and Turbulence

Afghanistan is going through a time of confusion and turbulence. Confusion on the part of the government and international community, which are responsible for developing an effective strategy to move the country out of the ongoing violence and insurgency and ensure a durable peace for the Afghans. It is also a time of confusion for Afghan people.

Unfortunately, the recent violent demonstrations in different provinces showed that the nonviolence is yet to take root as culture in the country. On April 01, the violent protest in Mazar-e-Sharif against Quran-burning claimed at least eight foreign UN employees. On Wednesday last week, furious anti-American protesters poured into the streets of Taloqan city of northern province of Takhar, shouting out objections to an overnight U.S. led military raid that killed four people, including two women. Subsequent clashes with security forces trying to quell the demonstration killed 12 people.

Ironically saying, the bitter fact is that Afghans get killed both in their own hands and in the hands of terrorists and insurgents. It should be an excruciating period for the country; a tragedy that is going down in the history because the violence in protests and violence by the Taliban militants produce no positive result for the country and for the future of peace to be established to replace the troubles of today.

One cannot expect the terrorists and Taliban militants not to resort to violence. It is their intrinsic and inherent feature. But Afghan people must not follow violence as a channel to pour out their grievances. Here we are reminded of the U.S. President Barak Obama's words as on Thursday last week he said in his sweeping speech on the Middle East, "Those shouts of human dignity are being heard across the region. And through the moral force of nonviolence, the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades."

Afghan people must not allow the miscreants to infiltrate them when waging peaceful demonstration to express their dissatisfaction with the Government's continued failures or to pour out their outrage against civilian killings. If the government and international community continue to fail, people must not fail. They must rise up to demand an end to the ordeals they have been put to.

Storming Government Buildings Gaining Currency

Violence continues to rankle Afghan people across the country. Taliban's announced spring offensive seems to be carried out unchecked and the militants are targeting those whom they had set as their targets. In Zabul province, the militants had kidnapped about nine tribal elders, influential people and educators of schools and they have killed three of the abductees, including head of a district council. Usually, the Taliban insurgents target the tribal leaders that support the government and champion peace talks. Over the last few weeks, the militants have also been able to storm highly protected government buildings in capital Kabul, Kandahar province and some other provinces of the country.

Roadside bombings and suicide attacks were common but the Taliban militants have added the organized storming of government buildings to their tactics to terrify and spread fear among people.

On Early Sunday, May 22, 2011, gunmen wearing police uniforms and suicide vests stormed a government building in eastern province of Khost, starting a running shootout with Afghan security forces that surrounded the compound. Reports were indicative that at least five people were killed in the fighting. The assault came a day after a Taliban suicide bomber infiltrated the capital's main military hospital and killed at least six Afghan medical students.

The government has lost its mobilizing power and these deadly incidents, which are caused by the Taliban and other insurgent outfits on a daily basis, will have psychological impact on Afghan people. Taliban have claimed responsibility for the Sunday's attack, in which the fighting lasted for hours.

Ten years after the Taliban were ousted from power in a US led international intervention, they have managed to step up attacks as part of their spring offensive against NATO, Afghan government installations and officials as foreign forces are slated to begin drawdown in July of this year. Their increased terrorist activities should be taken seriously and effective measures should be taken to address them.

Otherwise, the terrorists would seep into large swathes of the country before even the international forces begin to leave. Insurgents also have promised revenge attacks after the killing of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in Pakistan earlier this month.

Afghan government must review its reconciliation plan because these terrorists do not abandon violence and continue to take innocent Afghan lives who even do not know when Osama was killed and it shows that the Taliban are the terrorists and enemies of Afghan people and must be tackled with iron fist.