On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Well, all those things are needed but don't you think you better
> make sure there is enough fresh water, food and shelter before
> you start having them watch satellite TV? [snip]
> So please, let us start with the true basics.
I agree with the providing "true basics" -- the question would be
how best to achieve that. The Afghans have farmed their land
for millennia -- in the face of the current drought, I'm unsure
*what* could be done to rapidly resolve the current crisis.
A mini-loan program for village wells, water purification
facilities and basic food crops would be a place to start.
But if people do not know these are available it does no
good. If people *cannot* read (e.g. much of the younger female
population), then "free press" doesn't do much good. You would
have to setup a massive top-down education program (this is what
The Hunger Project does) or other verbal/sight communication
systems (e.g. satellite TV).
Massive foreign "support" systems produce little in the way of
people developing sustainable economies and produce lots of
opportunities to promote corruption (as several efforts to
support Russia in the mid-'90's have shown).
> How on earth do you get that from the above? Not propping up
> mad dictators doesn't require you have to bomb anyone.
I was asking a rhetorical question to see what solution Neil
would propose. The pseudo-dictatorships in the mid-Asia former
Soviet Republics did *not* arise from U.S. political or military
actions. They arose purely as a result of the remnents of power
structures in the old Soviet communist party. How would *you*
propose to eliminate them?
> > military rescue operations can be conducted while the U.S. tries to
> > cleanup the mess in Afghanistan? I'll note that it is *highly*
> > unlikely the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan Friendship Bridge would now be
>
> What "military resuce operations" do you have in mind?
The type that took place when exiled Afghan leaders returned
to Afghanistan and were captured by the Taliban, or the kind
when the prisoners in N. Afghanistan attacked the people to
whom they had surrendered.
> Actually there were quite cleanly operating trucking operations
> into Afghanistan from Pakistan that brought in the majority of
> the food before this war iirc.
According to the reports I've read, these trucking operations
may have been reaching Kabul but they were not reaching some
of the hardest hit cities further North such as Masur-al-Sharif.
The best support lines into those countries are from the central
Asian republics.
> We shut them down on or about Sept. 16. You can't insinuate that
> we made the ability to get aid into the country better when in
> fact we have refused to let much of the aid in for most of this war.
"We" didn't shut them down for long. There may have been several
weeks during which the truck drivers thought it was too chaotic
to take the supplies in, but once it became clear that it was
safe, I believe those supplies resumed.
> It was Gen. Tommy Franks who kept the above bridge closed for so long.
Facts Samantha, not "beliefs". The Uzbek's closed the bridge over 5
years ago when the Taliban first came to power. Please cite something
other than our assisting in the overthrow of the Taliban regime that would
have induced Uzbekistan to open the bridge.
> As far as I know we still have some aid operations shut down
> for fear they might also be of aid to Al Qaeda or make our search
> for bin Laden harder.
I suspect any reluctance to resume food supplies to certain areas
may be more due to their being hijacked by local warlords (which
*has* occurred) and the inability to guarantee the safety of the
people distributing food to the people who most need it.
I hope it is clear that someone who has made significant contributions
to an organization such as The Hunger Project who are really trying
to address problems such as the sustainable reduction of world hunger
is as concerned as you with regard to the situation of the people
in Afghanistan. We may only differ in our perceptions of the best
way to achieve this.
> Dealing with and "propping up" are also not necessarily the same thing.
No doubt. And I suspect if we went through the details of "dealing with",
"propping up" and "undermining" we would find examples of U.S. foreign
policy where each strategy has failed miserably.
If you have a sure-fire policy that is going to reliably promote
human survival and increases in quality of life, I'm all ears.
I suspect we have hundreds, if not thousands of people in the
Dept. of State who have studied political history much more than
any of us on the list who can recite chapter and verse those
situations where the best strategy was "X" and it turned out
miserably wrong.
Robert
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