Fascinating column in the NYTimes by Sarah Chayes

[baby_bear]

First some background on Ms. Chayes:
http://www.transom.org/guests/specialguests/sarahchayes.html
<snip>
After reporting for years for National Public Radio in the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East, as well as her base in Paris, Sarah Chayes is taking a break from radio to make a direct contribution to reconstructing a post-conflict society. She is helping run an Afghan non-governmental, non-profit organization, Afghans for Civil Society. Based in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, its primary mission is to bring to Afghanistan some of the intellectual resources necessary for formulating constructive public policy.
</snip>

Her column is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/opinion/26chayes.html?pagewanted=print
I don't think I can do justice by snips; please read the article if this is a subject of interest to you. It focuses on U.S. arrogance and mistakes in Afghanistan, but it could be a treatise on the treatment of the vulnerable by the powerful here in the U.S.

May 26, 2005
With a Little Help From Our Friends
By SARAH CHAYES
Kandahar, Afghanistan

<snip>
ON Saturday, May 14, several hundred people gathered in the windswept main street of Qalat, the capital of Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan. Led by local religious leaders, the crowd chanted slogans protesting the supposed desecration of the Koran by interrogators at the detention center run by the United States at Guantánamo Bay, as reported in the May 9 issue of Newsweek. Unlike protests widely covered in the news media, this one was peaceful and broke up after about an hour. And there lies a paradox: Zabul is one of the country's most conservative and anti-Western provinces. Only a few miles away on the very road where the demonstration took place, vehicles carrying Afghan employees of international organizations are regularly ambushed.

It is inconceivable that the residents of Zabul are less pained than other Afghans by an alleged insult to what they believe is the living word of God. And yet their protest came days late and featured none of the violence, vandalism or loss of life suffered elsewhere. Why the disparity?

For me, after three years in southern Afghanistan, something felt not quite right about the more virulent demonstrations across the country. The instant tip-off was that they were initially led by university students. Afghans and Westerners living in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here. The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone come here to study from Pakistan? Our unshakable conclusion has been that the adroit Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, is planting operatives in the student body. These students can also provoke agitation at Pakistani officials' behest, while affording the government in Islamabad plausible deniability.
...
Highhanded American behavior has also contributed fuel for the fire. The 200 to 300 Afghan men who work on the American base in Kandahar, to give a mundane example, wait several hours in the sun to be admitted through increasingly stringent searches. Why not stagger the arrivals of different teams of workers, to ease their discomfort and reduce the target that such a large group of people represents? The contractor Kellogg Brown & Root initially wanted its Afghan laborers on the base to work 12-hour shifts, with a half-hour for lunch and one half-day free a week. Such sweatshop labor practices are unworthy of the values the United States claims to represent. (Afghan workers did succeed in getting the workday reduced to eight hours.)

</snip>

Much more. I highly recommend the entire article. This former NPR reporter is obviously quite an amazing woman.

b_b

[necso]

1. Great piece. /nt

[Old and In the Way]

2. Thanks for posting....very insightful.

Interesting that the Pakistani's might be working to destabilize Afghanistan. I don't doubt it though....why would they want a strong US proxy on their border?

I wonder if George knows that the ISI is working against our interests there? Anyone explain to him their role in 9/11?

[murielkane]

6. I doubt the purpose is to destabilize Afghanistan

Pakistan is in the situation of playing nice to the Americans on the surface, while actually being the strongest supporter there is of radical Islam.

The Afghans were never particularly interested in Islamicist politics until the extended war against the Russians pushed many Afghans into refugee camps in Pakistan -- where their support and the education of their sons came largely from the most militant elements in that country. The Taliban was born out of the camps and the Pakistani-supported madrassas -- it was not born on Afghan soil.

Pakistan -- and specifically the ISI -- is still up to the same tricks of infiltrating their people and their attitudes into Afghanistan. And perhaps also using Afghanistan as a surrogate for more extreme anti-US protests than they feel free to do themselves.

Of course, this quick analysis leaves out the role of the CIA in supporting the most religiously extreme of the mujeheddin against the Russians in the 80s -- as well as the continuing willingness of the US to turn a blind eye to Pakistani actions. Support of al Qaeda, the atomic program of A.Q. Khan, Pakistani-supported terrorism against India have all swept under the carpet by the US -- and it still isn't clear why.

In that part of the world, nothing is simple.

[KT2000]

3. Yes - good read

and some much needed info about the reality in Afghanistan.
Newsweek was the diversion from the problems caused by alliance Karzai formed with the US.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Excellent column - thanks for posting (n/t)

[rodeodance]

5. so Kellogg Brown is in Afgan --but the workers are not dumb

.........Highhanded American behavior has also contributed fuel for the fire. The 200 to 300 Afghan men who work on the American base in Kandahar, to give a mundane example, wait several hours in the sun to be admitted through increasingly stringent searches. Why not stagger the arrivals of different teams of workers, to ease their discomfort and reduce the target that such a large group of people represents? The contractor Kellogg Brown & Root initially wanted its Afghan laborers on the base to work 12-hour shifts, with a half-hour for lunch and one half-day free a week. Such sweatshop labor practices are unworthy of the values the United States claims to represent. (Afghan workers did succeed in getting the workday reduced to eight hours.) .........