Monday, July 23, 2012

When We Leave Afghanistan, We Leave It to Monsters

The guys we're leaving in charge in Afghanistan are liberally peppered with butchers and mass-murderers.   An 800-page report from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission lists some 180-mass graves and the warlords responsible for the thousands of dead they contain.

Among them are First Vice President Fahim, a Tajik from the Jamiat Islami Party, and Second Vice President Karim Khalili, a Hazara leader from the Wahdat Party; Gen. Atta Mohammed Noor, a Tajik from the Jamiat Islami Party and now the governor of the important northern province of Balkh, of which Mazar-i-Sharif is capital; and Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former Uzbek warlord from the Jumbush Party who holds the honorary title of chief of staff to the supreme commander of the Afghan Armed Forces, among many others.
       
Those men gave no response to verbal and written requests for comment about their naming in the report.

In all, the researchers said, more than 500 Afghans are named in the report as responsible for mass killings, including the country’s revered national martyr, Ahmed Shah Massoud, one of the last militia leaders to hold out against the Taliban sweep to power and who was assassinated by Al Qaeda just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
       
The report also investigates killings of civilians and prisoners said to be carried out by the Taliban and other insurgents, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami insurgents.

The report, delivered to Hamid Karzai, has not been released and his office has not even acknowledged it exists.   It did, however, cause Karzai's notorious vice-president and seasoned monster Fahim to pressure Karzai into sacking the commission head, Ahmad Nader Nadery.
       
At a meeting on Dec. 21, including Mr. Karzai and other top officials, Marshal Fahim argued that dismissing Mr. Nadery would actually be too mild a punishment. “We should just shoot 30 holes in his face,” he said, according to one of those present. He later apologized to other officials for the remark, saying it was not meant in earnest. 

Some contend the report should be published and the mass-murderers cited made to stand trial for their crimes.   Otherwise, civil war is bound to ensue.   Yet Afghanistan, the country we are leaving supposedly in good shape, is nothing if not a nest of warlord vipers.   It is these brutal sociopaths who hold the reins of power who stand testament to what little we truly achieved in a decade of war against the Taliban. 

3 comments:

e.a.f. said...

so how many soliders were killed & how many billions were spent for us to get Afghanistan to this point?

People who do not study history will be condemed to repeat it. No one has been able to ever deal with Afghanistan. if the Russians couldn't no one could.

Nothing has changed in that country & it isn't going to. If the world really had wanted to help the women of Afghanistan they should have allowed them to go to other countries as refugees.

Now the western governments have spent $16B for the next 3 yrs. Nice work if you can get it.

The report should be released, the mentioned arrested, & tried in the Hague just like all the other war criminals but then Bush, Harper, Blair might have to join them in the docket.

Hopefully Anonymos will get a copy & post it.

ScruffyDan said...

I always thought the phrase "you break it; you buy it" fit the situation well.

The Mound of Sound said...

@ eaf - the report is actually redundant. The crimes of these murderous misfits have been chronicled in detail elsewhere for many years. A lot of them you can find on this blog from four or five years back.

The important point is that while we were playing whack-a-mole with the Talibs, we lacked the interest or will to clean house in Kabul and instead enshrined the dual scourges of warlordism and tribalism in post-Talib Afghanistan. With that one act alone we ensured the futility of everything we did in the ten years that followed.

As for that aid money, how much of it do you think will wind up in some offshore bank account for Karzai & Co.? Can you say "plenty"?

@Dan. Yeah, Powell tried to get that through to Bush and we know how well that sank in. Saddam's gone and now America has elevated its real adversary, Iran, as the dominant state in that region. America breaks but it doesn't buy.