Afghanistan

- a long-range modernization plan for agriculture, education, science, and agra business


- seeds and fertilizer, de-mining programs, reconstruction of canals reconstruction of prewar 


- 22 agricultural research stations


--the clearing of cluster bombs, dropped by the millions by the Soviets.


Last year, 84,900 mines and 2.5 million unexploded bombs and ordinance were cleared.


-International Committee of the Red Cross orthopedic center in Kabul,
cares for about 250 people a day — providing new limbs, wheelchairs and physical therapy for the disabled. There are an estimated 50,000 amputees in Afghanistan, mostly mine victims.


"Patients sit on benches in the buildings, trying on new limbs or resting from physical therapy. One man wraps both hands around the stump where his leg used to be, crutches by his side. He lost both legs to a mine when he was 12.
Others practice walking with their new prosthetics by placing them on footprints painted on the floor. Some are trying them on for the first time. Others, such as 78-year-old Nawab Khan, are getting replacements.
“I lost my leg a long time ago,” said Khan, whose legs blew up 10 years ago while he was working on his farm. 


-repatriation and rehab
5.6  million people ( of 6 million) returned from Soviet war , offered money for new start. In  2010 the United States has spent $43.5 million to help refugees who have returned to Afghanistan make a fresh start.




"If we accept the premise that education is the key to achieving positive, long lasting change in Afghanistan, then it is impossible to overstate how encouraging it is that this year[2009] nearly eight and a half million children will attend school in Afghanistan, with girls accounting for nearly 40% of enrollment." 

"During the 1970s, the women enjoyed a level of professional freedom and autonomy that was relatively liberal for a conservative Muslim society. " a significant percentage of the women in Kabul worked for a living-tens of thousands of them serving in medicine, law, journalism, engineering.


Taliban ended that.

..every woman was forbidden to go outside their homes, unless with a male relative, clad in a dark burka. 

Women who were ill could only be treated by female doctors, women doctors were confined to their homes, denied permission to go out, severing half the pop access to health care.


100,000 school girls and 8000 university students were forced to leave school. 

8000 teachers lost their jobs

Today, a record 2.5 million girls are enrolled in grades first through 12th, according to UNICEF, the United Nations' children's fund. That's up from 839,000 in 2002.



Some credit the increase in enrollment not just with the removal of the Taliban but a change in attitudes among Afghans.

"When I travel to the villages, even the Kuchi people (Afghan nomads) who never sent their girls to school, they ask me to build a school for their girls," says Omar.

Economic recovery

pre-Saur Revolution GDP 3.7 billion 1977

2.7 in 2000

4 billion 1n 2004

5 in 2005

10.6  in 2008  (http://devdata.worldbank.org/AAG/afg_aag.pdf)
==

CNN reports on Afghanistan's local media

Masood Farivar, manager of Salam Watandar (Hello, Countryman), Internews Network’s Afghan radio program production house, appeared on CNN International to speak about the progress and quality of the country’s young independent media.

"There is reason for optimism in the media. It is the media that have made important democratic concepts like human rights [and] rule of law part of the national vocabulary," Farivar told CNN’s Max Foster, on Connect The World.

Farivar, who spent years as a journalist in the United States, returned to Afghanistan to help rebuild his country after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. "I always wanted to go back to Afghanistan and wanted to give something back to the country, and journalism was something I knew. When I went back I found very young, enthusiastic journalists dedicated to the profession.

"At Salam Watandar, we practice what I call journalism of hope. We talk about the news agenda every day, and we ask 'Are there stories that would give people hope amidst all this war and fighting and hopelessness?' and we try to focus on some of those stories. That is not to say that we mask over the realities of war. The realities of war are tough, but there also some positive developments happening and it’s important that those stories are aired. I feel that we as journalists have a moral responsibility to air those stories, to give people hope."

Through live satellite broadcast from Kabul, Salam Watandar reaches 37 radio stations in 26 provinces of Afghanistan.

==

infrastructure, improvements economy


2005 $28 million dollar pedestrian and vehicle bridge



KABUL, Afghanistan — About 150,000 people subscribe to cell phone service each month in Afghanistan and there's "no end in sight" to the growth, the country's communications minister said Tuesday.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20479899/


==

"Agriculture is very, very important. Agriculture there is very different from the U.S. In the U.S., agricultural production is about one percent of the economy," he says. "In Afghanistan, it's about one-third. In the U.S., agricultural production employs about two percent of the population. In Afghanistan, it's about 80 percent." 


"The Afghan government has put significant focus on rebuilding Afghanistan's agriculture, which has during the war been totally destroyed. From 1978 until 2001, every year 3 percent of agricultural production has gone down," says Rahimi. "And because of the drought, half of livestock has perished. So now we are rebuilding. We have some success in both rebuilding Afghanistan's agriculture and rebuilding livestock back." 


To continue that success, Rahimi has a long-range modernization plan for his department.

He is relying on a team of young Afghan agricultural officials he has hired. As efforts to redevelop the country continue, many of Afghanistan's best and brightest are recruited by high-paying international organizations. But Rahimi says he manages to hold on to his people with more than good salaries.

"Also providing them incentives, training. Capacity, building all these people, providing them opportunities. Also job satisfaction," he says. "So I'm using not only the salary as one factor, but also at the same time creating an environment where people feel they are part of a transformation, the overall ownership of the ministry. That is where all of us work as a very strong team."

Transforming Afghanistan's agriculture is also complicated work, which Rahimi acknowledges will require the help of the international community. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced a $38 million grant to assist his ministry with organization and training. But Rahimi says his team will take the lead in this cooperative venture.

"Follow our footsteps, because we know Afghanistan best," he says. "And provide us technical assistance that you are good at."
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/places/Traditional-Afghan-Farming-Gets-Modern-Twist-113024574.html



agriculture 12% usable in best of times.   Soviet deforestation and increased desertification and neglect had a devastating toll.

-redistribution of seeds and fertilizer, de mining programs, reconstruction of canals reconstruction of prewar 22 agricultural research stations

Fruits and nuts prewar was 50%

native seed varieties wiped out and brought in from abroad

-the clearing of cluster bombs, dropped by the millions by the Soviets.

Afghanistan has cleared two-thirds of the country of deadly mines over the past two decades, and had hoped to get rid of the rest by 2013. But experts fear Afghanistan can no longer meet its goals because of an increase in fighting and a drop in international funding. 


The mines in Afghanistan are a legacy from decades of Soviet occupation and subsequent civil wars. Tens of thousands of mines and unexploded bombs still pepper the rugged country. Last year, 84,900 mines and 2.5 million unexploded bombs and ordinance were cleared.

He and others also bring up the problem of not enough funding. The economic turndown means less money for all charities. There are also concerns that the renewed fighting will draw attention and funds away from mine clearing.

The United Nations says it needs $500 million over the next five years to reach its goal and has received 70 percent of the $108 million it needs this year.

“In 2001 and 2002 we were thinking that everything is over, but now again it’s happening again,” said Najmuddin, 43, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross orthopedic center in Kabul, who goes by one name only. Najmuddin himself lost both his legs to a mine 18 years ago. Today, he walks with a small limp on two prosthetic replacements.

The center, located near Kabul University, cares for about 250 people a day — providing new limbs, wheelchairs and physical therapy for the disabled. There are an estimated 50,000 amputees in Afghanistan, mostly mine victims.

Patients sit on benches in the buildings, trying on new limbs or resting from physical therapy. One man wraps both hands around the stump where his leg used to be, crutches by his side. He lost both legs to a mine when he was 12.

Others practice walking with their new prosthetics by placing them on footprints painted on the floor. Some are trying them on for the first time. Others, such as 78-year-old Nawab Khan, are getting replacements.

“I lost my leg a long time ago,” said Khan, whose legs blew up 10 years ago while he was working on his farm. “But I feel sorry for these young people that they also have to go through this.”

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/06/ap_afghanistan_mine_clearing_062709/



2002

repatriation and rehab
5 million people ( of 6 mill) returned, offered money

"  More than five million refugees have returned home to Afghanistan since 2002, but over 2.6 million registered Afghan refugees remain in neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran. The United States has provided generous levels of assistance to those refugees returning to Afghanistan, and to those remaining in Pakistan and elsewhere. In the last year, the United States, including the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development, has provided nearly $155 million to Afghans displaced by conflict or natural disasters. Of that amount, the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration provided $75 million this year to Afghan refugees in the region, both those who have returned home, and those still in countries of refuge. "


In 2010, the United States has spent $43.5 million to help refugees who have returned to Afghanistan make a fresh start.

http://kabul.usembassy.gov/remarks_1210.html
=

Soviet depopulation whole clans and tribes fled to pak.     soviet scorched earth

rebuild 140,000 homes and 8,000 wells  UNHCR

(http://www.unhcr.org/46f7dba92.html   afghans rebuild homes with pride)

Some 3,000 Afghan refugees to leave Islamabad slum for new home

News Stories, 8 December 2009

© UNHCR/A.Shahzad

One of the Afghan refugees talks to visitors by his tent at the new site in Islamabad.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, December 8 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has begun helping some 3,000 Afghan refugees move from a slum in the Pakistani capital to an undeveloped plot of land in a green belt on the edge of the city.

The relocation operation began last Saturday, when an initial group of 240 Afghan refugees were moved from their mud brick homes in southern Islamabad to a 472,000-square-feet plot of land about 10 minutes drive away.

The move, which is due to be completed by the end of this week, came after Islamabad's Capital Development Authority (CDA) –responsible for city planning, maintenance and expansion –agreed to move the Afghan refugees from their slum, which is slated for redevelopment as a residential area in a growing city.

UNHCR will initially provide winter tents and has been helping to instal basic services, including water and sanitation. The CDA will level the ground at the new site so that the Afghans can build houses with shelter materials provided by UNHCR. The refugees will not have title to their homes.

The CDA initially served an eviction notice on the Afghans, but agreed to find them land elsewhere after discussions with UNHCR. "The decision to provide an alternative location to the Afghan refugees shows that Pakistan . . . cares about them," said Mengesha Kebede, UNHCR's representative in Pakistan, who praised the host country for its generosity over the years to millions of refugees.

Many of the beneficiaries of the scheme are daily wage labourers, such as 29-year-old Gul Khan. Like others interviewed, he welcomed the move, noting that the refugees were worried when they originally received orders to vacate their mud houses in the slum, where he had lived since the age of 10.

"But the new decision to offer us a piece of land where we are being helped to build a new shelter is a welcome step," said Khan, who works in an Islamabad fruit market. "It is very difficult to sustain a living these days," he noted.

Ghulam Nabi and his large family also moved to the new site over the weekend. "Our place [in the slum] was very crowded; imagine 15 family members living in a single tent," he said, referring to the makeshift shelter of plastic sheets and old cloths that he moved out of. "It was terrible," he said.

Pakistan is home to some 1.7 million registered Afghans and slightly more than half of them live outside refugee camps, mostly in urban centres.

By Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Pakistan

===

Education

"no sector suffered as much from the deprivations of the communists and the Taliban as education"

After Saur revolution Teachers and students were subject to interrogation, torture, and imprisonment, many left.   the one third population that left the country of war, were deprived of education.

205 5 million children attended school medical school in kabul from the united arab emirates
a university in kabul funded by US

some progress in health

Afghanistan: Two new hospitals under construction in Paktya province

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KHII-86P59H?OpenDocument

New Hospital Opens in Herat

Kabul, Afghanistan, 8 April 2006 – President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, French First Lady Mme. Bernadette Chirac and His Highness the Aga Khan, Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), today inaugurated the French Medical Institute for Children (FMIC), an international-class, paediatric hospital founded by the French charitable organisations La Chaîne de l’Espoir and Enfants Afghans.

-2005 5.3 million children got polio and vitamin  A shots   Half the children immunized for whooping cough and measles

-5 million medicated for intestinal worms by 2005 couple hundred health care centers renovated or built
9000 healthcare workers trained.

-35,000 women employed by gov

=

1985 commission on human rights (p183), Soviets  deliberately bombed villages, massacred civilians, executed captured fighters,   gov, jailed 50,000 political opponents ,torture routine and mines disguised at toys laid around the country (Ewans 2002, 227

The communist Saur Revolution  of April 1978

-subjected thousands of innocents to torture, executions without trial

thousands disappeared of the Pul-e-Charkhi prison

Fear of gov kept most families from inquiring about their fate

a vast network of secret police and informers kept tabs on citizens.  Children grilled by teachers about parent's opinions

Leaving the country was a criminal act. punished by murder

The battle tactics approached genocide.   7 million displaced.   hundreds of thousands killed

M. Le Blanc (LOC)

M. Le Blanc (LOC), a photo by The Library of Congress on Flickr.

There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Brutus:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224

Larry P. Goodson on Afghan History

The war deepened some powerful centrifugal forces within Afghan society and destroyed the government institution

deepened ethnic tensions , the rising of islamist ideology. and

1997  taliban ominous and fear around women.    For first time author was approached by women on the street who were forced into begging or worse by harsh taliban policies that took away their livelihoods.

Afghanistan had become a place of petty, narrow minded intolerance.

Intolerance to degenerated into increasingly virulent ethnic hatred and cleansing.

soviets planted 30 million mines

2 million killed
50% casualties

15,000 Soviets died

soviets pumped out gas from shiberghan

education system completely disrupted

Afghanistan, a despeately underdevelped country attempting to modernize throughout the twentieth centurey, jinnally caught up to the modern world-in high-technoloty warfare.   The result has ben the ruin of the country and society and very nearly the destruction of the people and their culture."   page 5

money and its effect on afghnistan

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/14/135412691/how-the-fall-troop-surge-changed-afghanistan

Mr. EXUM: You know, Rajiv is a hundred percent correct that you have to establish security. You have to establish a degree of control over the environment. And with all due respect to the caller, the idea that we can do good works, that we can build roads, that we can build schools, and that - this is going to somehow address drivers of conflict, that's unfortunately proven to be incorrect.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the money that we're putting into Afghanistan is distorting the conflict in Afghanistan and creating perverse incentives to where none of the actors - the insurgents, the government - has an interest in the United States leaving. What we have to do is establish some degree of security which then allows us to build up local Afghan forces, and that then sets the conditions for some sort of political settlement

Mr. EXUM: Look, the Pakistanis have been pursuing a pretty logical hygiene strategy since about 2005. As soon as we started to divert resources away from Afghanistan, the Pakistanis began to quite logically plan for a post-American, post-Western Afghanistan, and that meant reconstituting a lot of the proxy groups that would represent Pakistan's interests in a post-Western Afghanistan.

Afghan Schools

Khaled Hosseini writes that "If we accept the premise that education is the key to achieving positive, long lasting change in Afghanistan, then it is impossible to overstate how encouraging it is that this year[2009] nearly eight and a half million children will attend school in Afghanistan, with girls accounting for nearly 40% of enrollment."

"During the 1970s, the women of urban Afghanistan enjoyed a level of professional freedom and autonomy that was relatively liberal for a conservative Muslim society.  According to the US-Afghan Women's Council a significant percentage of the women in Kabul worked for a living-tens of thousands of them serving in medicine, law, journalism, engineering.

 .. in Kabul , unveiled females could be seen inside factories, and offices, t.v.  and walking the street wearing Eastern European style cloths.

The Taliban ended that.

..every woman was forbidden to go outside their homes, unless with a male relative, clad in a dark burka.  Any street or town with a female name was changed.

Women who were ill could only be treated by female doctors, but all women doctors were confined to their homes, and denied permission to go out.  severing half the pop access to health care.

The cities war widows, 50 thousand, had no way to earn a living, prostitution or begging and stealing, which if caught meant stoning or amputations

100,000 school girls were kicked out , and 8000 university students,  8000 teachers lost their jobs

“Andersonville! Andersonville!”

Henry Wirz, a Swiss doctor from Louisiana, served as prison commandant during the last few months of the camp’s existence after its original commandant, Brigadier General John Winder, died in February 1865. For his efforts, such as they were, Wirtz was hanged in November 1865. His last fourteen minutes of life were spent at the end of a rope that was too short, listening to Union soldiers taunt him with cries of “Andersonville! Andersonville!” as he slowly choked to death. Remarkably, he was the only Confederate official to be executed for war crimes.

Edge of the West

Dr. Watson Fights the Taliban (Sherlock Holmes)

    In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy's country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.

    The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a packhorse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.

Ghazis;   Muslims who fight non-Muslims.

"a Jezail bullet"


“The Jezailchis are so called from their jezails or long rifles. The Afghans are said to be among the best marksmen in the world. They are accustomed to arms from early boyhood, live in a chronic state of warfare with their neighbors, and are most skilful in taking advantage of cover. An Afghan will throw himself flat, behind a stone barely big enough to cover his head, and scoop a hollow in the ground with his left elbow as he loads. Men like these only require training to make first-rate irregular troops.” — General Colin Mackenzie 


The Battle of Maiwand was one of the principal battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The battle ended in defeat for the British Army and victory for the Afghan followers of Ayub Khan. The Afghan victory at Maiwand was at a cost of anywhere between 2,050 to 2,750 Afghan warriors killed and probably about 1,500 wounded.^[1] On the other side, about 969 British/Indian soldiers were killed and 177 more wounded. It is however one of the few instances in the 19th century of an Asian power defeating a Western one.  Wikipedia

Petraeus, Kilcullen, and OBL

KNOWING THE ENEMY
Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?
by George Packer New Yorker

Just before the 2004 American elections, Kilcullen was doing intelligence work for the Australian government, sifting through Osama bin Laden’s public statements, including transcripts of a video that offered a list of grievances against America: Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, global warming. The last item brought Kilcullen up short. “I thought, Hang on! What kind of jihadist are you?” he recalled. The odd inclusion of environmentalist rhetoric, he said, made clear that “this wasn’t a list of genuine grievances. This was an Al Qaeda information strategy.” Ron Suskind, in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” claims that analysts at the C.I.A. watched a similar video, released in 2004, and concluded that “bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reëlection.” Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance. Indeed, in the years after September 11th Al Qaeda’s core leadership had become a propaganda hub. “If bin Laden didn’t have access to global media, satellite communications, and the Internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave,” Kilcullen said.

David Kilcullen, Ph.D. (born 1967) is a leading contemporary practitioner and theorist of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. A former Australian Army officer, he left the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2005 and is now a senior civil servant, seconded to the United States State Department. He is currently serving as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force - Iraq, a civilian position on the personal staff of American General David Howell Petraeus. wiki

++Playing into Bin Laden's hand
" analysts at the C.I.A. watched a similar video, released in 2004, and concluded that “bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reëlection.” Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance. Indeed, in the years after September 11th Al Qaeda’s core leadership had become a propaganda hub. “If bin Laden didn’t have access to global media, satellite communications, and the Internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave,” Kilcullen said."

To be blunt..

"Aside from its miserable record of extracting information, American security agencies shouldn't torture people because Osama bin Laden almost certainly want them to.



The strategists of al Qaeda reportedly took this theory a step further: they apparently noted that many of the Arab regimes they detested relied on American support, and concluded that if they provoked the Americans to kill, torture, and humiliate large numbers of Arabs and Muslims, the people of Arab counties that depended on American support would overthrow their own governments, and let al Qaeda allies in."

StoneWall

"Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees"

Antebellum

Antebellum
Originally uploaded by gustaf wallen

Slalom skiing on the Tigris at Baghdad.

Quote

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
Marcus Aurelius