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On Women, War & The Elections In Afghanistan
The Truth Might Not Be Pretty, But Obama Makes You Like It Anyway

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That_little_attention_whore
08/20/09

In reply to On Women, War & The Elections In Afghanistan
"Development or aid workers are there to stop the suffering of people and improve their livelihoods. They are independent of politics and policies. The military is not."

I dunno, I feel like USAID has been plenty politicized. Plus, the current administration has included development as a component of foreign policy....
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bluebears
08/20/09

In reply to On Women, War & The Elections In Afghanistan
I have a question. Why exactly does the Taliban view themselves as the legitimate government? meaning what justifications would they give to support this? if any.
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Hiroine Protagonist
08/20/09

@bluebears: The Taliban took over Afghanistan at a time when all infrastructure and government had broken down. An intra-Afghani war was raging fought with the skills and weapons honed against the Soviets. The Taliban are mostly Pashtun, originating in the south, that murky border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan where most of the madrassas that teach Wahhibist Islamic principles of jihad (the political, not the personal) are operated. The Pashtun are a pretty large ethnic clan/tribal group and so the Taliban had a big base of potential support from the beginning. Once the Soviets were driven out, those who had fought them (the mujahideen) fought among themselves for control of Afghanistan. It was the harshest kind of warfare - I think Afghanistan is still the most heavily mined country in the world? Or Cambodia? Anyway, the Taliban movement initially stressed order and adherence to traditional Afghani values, to wit, the extreme austerity of veiling women and banning kite-flying and music. In my opinion, this acceptance of the Taliban by Afghans came from two sources - a weariness with war and resignation that accepted any peace; and a backlash against any values held by the Soviets - the most important, of course, being the "atheism" of Communism. See what you have wrought, Cold War!
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Edited by Hiroine Protagonist at 08/20/09 4:01 PM

CherriSpryte
08/20/09

In reply to On Women, War & The Elections In Afghanistan
Fantastic interview. Its depressing to hear that the foreign aid flow into Afghanistan is encountering the same challenges that foreign aid has been dealing with for decades. I'm at school for International Development, and we constantly get drilled into us the importance of paying attention to the recipients' needs, and that aid needs to be directed from the bottom up, not the top-down. And these are schools of thought that have been around for awhile! Its also, you know, common sense. One of my profs, who is working on education projects in Afghanistan, has said exactly the same thing you did about the lack of coordination between NGOs, non-profits, and other organizations.
The West has been trying to effectively administer aid for a LONG time. You'd think we'd be better at it by now.
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That_little_attention_whore
08/20/09

@CherriSpryte: My measly two years in the field made me NOT want to study international development for that very reason. It's a total catastrofuck out there. and it's not like there aren't effective models of distributing aid out there (i.e. the Marshall Plan....)

anyway, Afghanistan is a particularly sad case. I had the opportunity to hear an Afghan official speak recently, and he said something like "well, if we could just get rid of the security threat of Pakistan supporting the Taliban, then we'd just be like the rest of the bottom billion." when, on a good day, you are aspiring to be like the Central African Republic, that is almost too depressing for words.
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