31.05.2008
May 07, 2008 (the date of publication in Russian)
Konstantin Cheremnykh
CLOUDS OVER KABUL. Part 2
Anglo-American "international peace-keepers" looking for a substitute of Hamid Karzai
Part 1: http://www.rpmonitor.ru/en/en/detail.php?ID=9642
THE BOSNIAN RECORD IS NOT INSPIRING
The candidature of Lord Paddy Ashdown for the post of UN Special Envoy in Kabul was discussed as far back as in July 2007. However, it was exactly after the Helmand operation when this cadre initiative was okayed by Washington.
According to the "general line" of British media, the categorical protests against Ashdown's appointment was motivated solely with Karzai's "fears" that the Lord would concentrate too much power in his hands. Ashdown was really insisting on extensive credentials – from comprehensive control of funds allocated for Afghanistan to selection of government cadres. The Lord's ambitions were criticized by British observers who expressed the view that the apparatus of the Envoy could develop into a "super-institution" which would require special control of its own activities.
In the coverage of the scandal, the remarks of Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Ranjin Dadfar Spanta were left almost unnoticed. Addressing Western media in Kabul, Dr. Spanta interpreted the lack of confidence towards Lord Ashdown with the record of his earlier work in the capacity of the UN Special Envoy in Bosnia and Herzegovina where his behavior was "often doubtful".
Jeremy John ("Paddy") Ashdown, who started his career in the Royal Navy in Indonesia, Taiwan and the Persian Gulf, made diplomatic success in the Geneva headquarters of British Ambassador's Office in the United Nations. Already at that time, he had a reputation of a MI-6 officer. In the following years, he became a top functionary of the Liberal Democratic Party of Britain, gaining influence as an active participant of the Ulster reconciliation. With regard of his experience of work in a region with inter-religious tensions, he was deployed to Bosnia, where his activity looked really ambiguous. Gaining unbridled powers, he initiated a massive purge in the government of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia, under the pretext of to ministers to cooperate with the Hague Tribunal. During the Milosevic trial, he was exposed of providing false evidence on acts of ethnic cleansing ascribed to Serbs.
However, the negative record of Lord Ashdown, available for Kabul officials, could involve complaints rather from the Moslem counterparts in Bosnia. In fact, Lord Ashdown, allocating to himself a monthly salary of 30,000 euro, the average income of a Bosnian not exceeding 200 euro, managed the entrusted country so "efficiently" that its investment appeal waned from the 70th to the 82th place in the global rating within a year, while corruption in power bodies became fabulous.
Rejecting this candidature, Hamid Karzai emphasized that his diffidence does not concern the British nation generally (this bias being ascribed to him by Western press). In the role of Special Envoy, he would prefer to see General John McColl, also a British military, Deputy Chief of the NATO Command in Europe. However, Washington and the UN Secretariat preferred Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat.
The choice in favor of the Norwegian with absence of experience in military affairs was not explained by "anti-terrorist" authorities – as well as the coincidence of the invasion of unidentified guerillas into the luxurious Serena Hotel in Kabul with the visit of a top-level Norwegian delegation to the city.
During years of international "anti-terrorist" efforts, Kabul has become "a city of contrasts" where half-ruined huts of the local population neighbor to super-rich restaurants and entertainment facilities designed for the colonial administration. In his column in The Guardian, Simon Jenkins reports that the current British Ambassador, Sir Sherard Couper-Cowles is building an office comparable to the US Embassy in Baghdad, and explaining that the British military presence here is going to last for thirty years.
This presence does not prevent Afghanistan from remaining the leading center of drug production. Though the anti-drug campaign is implemented here by 15 independent organizations, local poppy crops exceed the output of coca plantations in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru taken altogether. It is noteworthy that the champion in poppy production is the province the British so strongly control – Helmand.
$800,000 FOR A FEMALE PARK
"A friend of mine working with the UN says he regularly throws away the business cards of NATO personnel ", writes Rahilla Zafar, an American student of Pashtuni origin, in her witness report for The Guardian. "Their rotations are so short, he says, that it isn't even worth remembering their names".
According to Antonio Mario Costa, chair of UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the frequent rotation of the so-called "provincial reconstruction teams" deployed to Afghanistan in order to implement economic and social projects, results in "total absence of continuity". The temporary assistants do not care what was happening here before their arrival and what is going to happen afterwards, though each of changing commanders declares some initiative of his own.
"Reconstruction" commanders are especially keen in implementation of projects, destined for the "liberated women of the East". In Lashkar Gah province, 800,000 USD were officially spent for a "female park". Who could claim the idea is not "advanced" and not corresponding to the task of "export of democracy"? Meanwhile, real alternatives to opium production are not proposed by any of the numerous institutions, including the UN anti-drug office whose projects represent the same kind of bureaucratic window-dressing. The annual report of Mr. Costa's office suggests that in case opium fields are replaced with plantations of cotton and raisins, this – plus investment of $1 billion during 20 (!) years – could solve the whole problem. It is not necessary to be a specialist in finances and agriculture to realize that the professed drug-fighters are not even thinking of a real economic alternative to opium growing.
In case at least some of the numerous supervisors of Afghanistan were really committed for the country's economic and cultural transformation, they would launch construction of plants, railroads, electricity networks and the long promised but never built gas pipelines.
A TEST FOR COLONIAL THINKING
While the colonial administration consolidates it own rears, the parents of British soldiers, deployed to Afghanistan, are not much encouraged with the perspective of 30-year warfare. Activists of the rising anti-war movement are convinced that the real function of the ordinary servicemen in the area is not combating terrorism but pulling chestnuts out of the fire for the corrupted generals.
"If the Red Army couldn't subdue Afghanistan, how the hell will the West's little soldier boys be able to?" inquires a reader of Daily Mail. "The Russians were far more aggressive in their operations they were more willing to take casualties than the Brits and Yanks to get the job done. As well as this, the puppet regime in Kabul in the 80s was fairly progressive in its policies and the Russians provided much aid to build roads, schools, etc. So, with all these advantages over today's invaders/puppets, they were still given a bloody nose (with the US's help of course)".
The official propaganda of the occupying forces continues to persuade the Afghan population that the only result of the presence of "Shuravi" (the local word for Russians) was destruction of irrigation systems, and that the implications make them suffer from drought until today. Though the Russians left the place nineteen years ago, this cheap propaganda is still exploited. Ambassador Bhadrakumar reminds that the highest priority of Anglo-American supervisors is to suppress penetration of Russian, Chinese and Indian influence – political or even moral – into the region.
Afghanistan pursues diplomatic cooperation with Russia not only within the SCO framework. On April 3, a team of Afghan diplomats took part – already for the second time – in the meeting of the Inter-Parliament Assembly of Newly Independent States in Saint Petersburg. This event – unlike the April 27 anniversary – acquired inadequately strong attention from particular Russian media. Rosbusinessconsulting Agency (RBC), qualified as the most renowned Russian business medium, interviewed a little-known PR manager associated with Afghanistan.ru website, who claimed that in the coming years, Afghanistan is going to join NIS and later the Russian Federation. The sensation, based upon a single and doubtful source, is still traveling across the Russian and NIS web space.
A rumor, even spread just for considerations of sensation-making (which for a medium like RBC is quite unnecessary) sometimes irradiates a higher geopolitical wave than a statement of a colonial minister. Thus, the shooting at the Kabul stadium on April 27 could be a direct consequence of the media gossip about Russia's alleged intention to regain control over Afghanistan and expand its territory to the extent of 1979.
Responsibility for a published word, putting human lives in jeopardy, is – unfortunately – not yet prescribed by the Russian legislation on mass media. Retribution for top state officials, guilty of betrayal of the country's faithful partners, is not supposed as well. While this situation is unchanged, it is too early to report that colonial thinking in Russia has fallen away.
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