Afghan Journal
Lifting the veil on conflict, culture and politics
from Russell Boyce:
Asia – A week in pictures 14 August 2011
This week Pakistan marked its day of independence from British rule with parades, parties, face painting and bombs. Two pictures of faces covered in colour, one paint, the other blood, seems to sum up all there needs to be said about the national pride Pakistan feels while facing so many challenges. Visually the complementary colours of green and red (colours on opposite sides of the colour spectrum) make the pictures jump out of the page especially when put side by side. The angry eye staring out of the face of green in Mohsin Raza's picture engages the viewer full on while in Amir Hussain's picture the man seems oblivious of his wound as blood covers his face, again more opposites, this time not in colour but mood. India too is preparing to celebrate its independence and Dehli-based photographer Parivartan Sharma's picture of festival preparations came to mind after I put together the red-and-green combination picture from Pakistan.
(top left) A man, with his face painted depicting the colours of the Pakistan national flag, attends a ceremony to mark the country's Independence Day at the Wagah border crossing with India on the outskirts of Lahore August 14, 2011. Pakistan gained independence from British rule in 1947. REUTERS/Mohsin Raza
A man, his face bloodied by a head injury, is held by a resident as he waits to be evacuated from the site of a bomb blast in Dara Allah Yar, located in the Jaffarabad district of Pakistan's Balochistan province, August 14, 2011. A bomb ripped through the two-story building in Pakistan's restive southwest on Sunday, killing at least 11 people and wounding nearly 20, police said. REUTERS/Amir Hussain
A worker installs decorations to a tent to be used for independence day celebrations in Noida, in the outskirts of New Delhi August 14, 2011. India commemorates its independence day on August 15. REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma
A roller-coaster week in global markets kept many of the team in Asia busy illustrating one of the hardest stories to shoot pictures for, the fall and rise of stocks, currencies and markets. On news of the United States losing its triple-A rating the markets fell only to be later buoyed by good news on employment. Gold prices rose and currencies fell on more bad news from the euro-zone, the Asia market always being one of the first to react. The question in every photographers' mind was "what to take pictures of?". One minute the markets are up and the next down, currency changes are good for one part of the country's economy but bad for another. From Pakistan and India across to China, Japan, South Korea and down to Australia, the pictures the team produced are a visual feast of the turmoil.
from Russell Boyce:
Asia – A Week in Pictures September 12, 2010
As the anniversary of the 9/11 attack coincided with Eid celebrations, Florida based Pastor Terry Jones announced that he would burn the Koran as a protest to plans to site a Muslim cultural centre near Ground Zero , stoking tensions in Asia. Add into the mix millions in Pakistan suffering from lack of water, food and shelter after floods, a parliament election in Afghanistan and a U. S. -led military campaign against the Taliban around Kandahar - photographers in the region had lots of raw material to work with.
Raheb's picture of relief and joy caught in the harsh light of a direct flash seems to explode in a release of tension as news spreads that Pastor Jones had cancelled his plans to burn the Koran. It has to be said that ironically earlier in the day in Pakistan US flags were burned in protest against the planned protest.
Afghan protestors shout anti U.S slogans as they celebrate after learning that U.S. pastor Terry Jones dropped his plans to burn copies of the Koran, in Herat, western Afghanistan September 12, 2010. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi
Also in Afghanistan Raheb's haunting image of the defaced election poster of an Afghan woman parliamentary candidate and the ghostly image of a US soldier shrouded in a haze of dust by Erik, who is on an embed with US forces, both caught my eye.
A damaged campaign poster for an Afghan woman parliament candidate is seen on a wall in Herat, western Afghanistan September 8, 2010. Taliban threats, shuttered polling centres and warnings of widespread fraud are clouding hopes for Afghanistan's Sept. 18 parliamentary election, a key test of an already fragile democracy, observers have warned. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi
Can America win in Afghanistan?
Only 41 percent of likely U.S. voters believe that the country can win the war in Afghanistan, a new poll shows, down from 51 percent in December when President Barack Obama announced a new war strategy. The Rasmussen telephone poll conducted last week found that 36 percent of those surveyed didn’t think the United States could win in Afghanistan. Another 23 percent were unsure.
Doubts about the handling of the Afghan war have continuously been growing, except for that spike in hopes soon after Obama announced a surge as part of his strategy to stabilise Afghanistan and bring the troops home. Indeed, 48 percent of those polled said ending the war now was a more important goal than winning it, reflecting falling confidence in the war effort.
The poll was conducted just as U.S. casualties from the nine-year war crossed the 1,000 mark, pushed by a suicide attack on a NATO convoy in Kabul. That attack, the deadliest against foreign troops since September, was followed by assaults on heavily-fortified military bases in Bagram, north of Kabul, and in Kandahar.
In the American narrative of the war, comparisons with Vietnam keep coming back, despite strong assertions that the two wars aren’t the same. Michael Cohen, writing in Democracy Arsenal, joins a growing army of sceptics questioning the upcoming operation in Kandahar and whether the United States was underestimating the enemy in much the same way as it did the North Vietnamese back in 1965.
Cohen, picking up on a piece in The Washington Post, says the U.S. military plan for Kandahar seems to be predicated on the notion that the U.S. will bloody the Taliban, seize some level of control in the southern province and push the Taliban closer to negotiations.. But what if doesn’t happen?
“What if the Taliban undertake a guerrilla campaign against NATO forces and/or a wave of terror attacks those who collaborate with the U.S. government. What if they decide to bide their time and wait out U.S. military operations? What if local Afghans blame NATO and the U.S. for the violence that will be sure to accompany our military operations there? What if the strengthening of corrupt, government officials like Walid Karzai turns more of the population against the government? And above all, what if escalation in Kandahar makes the Taliban not more inclined to negotiate with the U.S., but less? What if military operations actually slow the move toward political reconciliation?”
Very interesting comments from several, let me add some more not covered and could give a different angle ;
. America has never won wars on their own, vietnam and korea are some examples.
. Russia has never invaded Afghanistan, the Soviet Union did and lost.
. Most of the NATO armies are from countries which suffered a defeat during the second world war, Germany is not the only one. The French and most of the European countries were overrun by the Hitler army and were practically decimated. The Brits lost two Afghan wars but the lessons of the History have never been learned.
. The USA is now on the hook, the so called talibans whom I consider the Pashtoon eagles or in western terminology the “special forces” are currently engaged with the tacit approval of the current Afghan Govt. of Mr Karzsi, to snipe on foreign armada,hit and run techniques, no different than those used against the Soviets and previously against the British army. The foreign armies can take as much time as they need, the Brits took ma century; this commodity is one thing the Afghans have, o’h apart from the Poppy scent. The foreign armies do not have that much time. Not to forget, it is the USA who claims not to occupy foreign countries, but have always set up military bases with nuclier bombs far away from their land. Should we ignore their presence in Japan and Germany far over sixty years now. My advise would be for the American administration to use their military might and close the hole in the sea which most probably the BP do not the expertise to do it. After all they are only good in digging deep holes not in closing them particularly deep in the water.
Afghanistan: neither Vietnam nor Iraq, but closer home perhaps
[Women at a cemetery in Kabul, picture by Reuters' Ahmad Masood]
As U.S. President Barack Obama makes up his mind on comitting more troops to Afghanistan, the search for analogies continues. Clearly, Afghanistan cannot be compared with Vietnam or Iraq beyond a point. The history, geography, the culture and the politics are just too different.
The best analogy to Afghanistan may well the very area in dispute – the rugged Pashtun lands straddling the border with Pakistan and where the Pakistani army is in the middle of an offensive, argues William Tobey in a piece for Foreign Policy.
Tobey, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfar Center and who served on the National Security Council staff under three U.S. presidents, takes a walk down history to the 1936 uprising against British rule in Waziristan.
The rebels were driven by radical Islam, Pashtun nationalism and armed opportunism, much the same factors firing up the modern Taliban campaign.
“The rebels improvised roadside bombs, ambushed convoys, and launched hit and run attacks on isolated outposts to drive out alien forces. They kidnapped and beheaded British soldiers and civilians. In unprotected villages, they massacred civilians who did not support them. ”
Mufaso, concerning Iraq, all America wanted is for the country to be stable enough to keep a puppet government in power who is strong enough to keep the oil flowing.
Now that this has pretty much achieved it could probably be said that they won their war, though it cost them a lot more than expected, they could care less if the entire country turned was ruined in the process..
Oil flow guarantees US reconstruction contracts in Iraq and a dependable supplier of oil for the future (no more OPEC oil leverage or embargoes).
Ricardo, Afghanistan is a geo-strategic and economic prize none the less. There has been a plan for a ‘trans-Afghan pipeline’ for many years now that will tap into the vast natural gas reserves of central Asia distribute it through the region via Afghanistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afgha nistan_Pipeline
Here’s what Obamas top political adviser has to say about central asia:
“About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.”
“exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”
“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained”
“For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan – and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan – and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea”
“That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy.”
“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”
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Afghan Journal Expert
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Assign me when you need photos of the fall and rise of stocks, currencies and markets, I am a specialist, having done it at Bloomberg News for years!
Lucas
http://www.pictobank.com/