AFGHANISTAN
MIRED IN NARCO-TERRORISM, POVERTY, FACTIONALISM
13 June 2004
The
question of "the other war" has been raised
more and more this week, obscured as it was not only
by Iraq, the prison scandal, and now the national
mourning of President Reagan. There is very little
reliable news about Afghanistan filtering through
to the American public over the mainstream airwaves,
or indeed through cable.
Last
Monday, Rep. Kucinich, campaigning in New Jersey,
told a group of supporters: "We are seeing in
Afghanistan the creation of a narco-terrorist state."He
noted that poverty is still spreading and deepening,
that warlords are consolidating power by brutality
and drug-trafficking, and people are being driven
to desperation, even as Taliban factions seeks to
reclaim its hold on the chaotic country.
Today,
on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked President Hamid
Karzai whether such an extreme descent into violence
and corruption could take over his country. Karzai
said it was in fact very much a possibility, and stated
that without international assistance, primarily a
concentration of American military security strategies,
his government would not be able to hold on to power.
It
is now feared that the opium trade has spread so fast,
and is supported by such indiscriminate violence,
that its corrupting tentacles will soon reach into
every corner of Afghan society and undermine every
proto-democratic institution in the country. Mr. Karzai
noted that this possibility had been exacerbated by
attempts to pay farmers to destroy opium, thus stimulating
the desire to grow opium in order to be paid the market
rate to destroy it.
Original, Graphic Content © 2003-4 Sentido