- It took Doctors without Borders' announcement of its
departure from Afghanistan in response to the assassination of five of
its members by the Taliban for the spotlights to turn back towards this
unhappy country. The humanitarian organization, which has been on the ground
there for twenty-four years, deemed that its teams' security could no longer
be assured.
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- The "French Doctors" do not content themselves
merely with criticizing President Karzai's government's parody of an inquiry;
they call into question the whole western strategy and America itself.
The promised economic aid has not materialized; foreign troop strength
is dramatically insufficient to prevent security from deteriorating and
to protect preparation for the upcoming elections: the presidential in
October and the legislative in April 2005.
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- Even more serious, DwB attacks an American strategy that
mixes military operations and humanitarian aid: "To erase all distinctions
between military efforts against insurgents and humanitarian work, puts
all aid workers in danger," asserted this NGO's Secretary General.
It's all the more dramatic as the Afghan population, hostage for decades
to war and destruction, and which lives in some of the worst hygienic conditions
in the world, has an urgent need of this aid.
-
- After having been the symbol of the international- and
not only American - response to al-Qaeda's terrorism right after the bloody
September 11 2001 attacks, Afghanistan now risks becoming the symbol of
the failure of the community of nations to rebuild this ravaged country.
Obsessed by Iraq, American President Bush has never deployed adequate resources
to capture Osama bin Laden and to consolidate the power of his ally, Karzai.
For a long time he preferred to capitalize on the services of the war lords,
who today are turning against the central power.
-
- But the Europeans are no better, in spite of the reinforcement
of their military presence on the ground. Security is less and less assured
outside of Kabul. And, as NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
declared during the recent Istanbul summit, it's in Afghanistan, where
the organization musters 6,400 soldiers, that "NATO's credibility
is at stake."
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- So is the European Union's. The Union's troops, with
a French general at their head, are to assume command of the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in September, when its troop strength
is supposed to go from 6,500 to 10,000 men.
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- Afghanistan's security cannot be assured without an adequate
military presence and above all without a coherent strategy. Without security,
there is no political or economic reconstruction. Without security, the
field is left open to the Taliban and every extremist movement, and a whole
side of the strategy for the war against terrorism collapses. The credibility
and the security of our world also are at stake in the Afghan Mountains.
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- Translation: Truthout French language correspondent Leslie
Thatcher.
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