With a Little Help From Our Friends (Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan)

NY Times ^ | May 26, 2005 | SARAH CHAYES

[neverdem]

ON Saturday, May 14, several hundred people gathered in the windswept main street of Qalat, the capital of Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan. Led by local religious leaders, the crowd chanted slogans protesting the supposed desecration of the Koran by interrogators at the detention center run by the United States at Guantánamo Bay, as reported in the May 9 issue of Newsweek.

Unlike protests widely covered in the news media, this one was peaceful and broke up after about an hour. And there lies a paradox: Zabul is one of the country's most conservative and anti-Western provinces. Only a few miles away on the very road where the demonstration took place, vehicles carrying Afghan employees of international organizations are regularly ambushed.

It is inconceivable that the residents of Zabul are less pained than other Afghans by an alleged insult to what they believe is the living word of God. And yet their protest came days late and featured none of the violence, vandalism or loss of life suffered elsewhere. Why the disparity?

For me, after three years in southern Afghanistan, something felt not quite right about the more virulent demonstrations across the country. The instant tip-off was that they were initially led by university students. Afghans and Westerners living in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here. The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone come here to study from Pakistan? Our unshakable conclusion has been that the adroit Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, is planting operatives in the student body. These students can also provoke agitation at Pakistani officials' behest, while affording the government in Islamabad plausible deniability.

[Qaz_W]

An interesting read.

Can't say I am surprised about Pakistan's spy agency, ISI's, involvement in Afghanistan.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

The first half of the article was unexpectedly objective but the 2nd half was vintage NYT. I am not saying it is not accurate, there are always a few rotten apples, but to have institutionalized corruption and mistreatment by U.S. forces is not in keeping with what we see elsewhere.

[neverdem]

I am not saying it is not accurate, there are always a few rotten apples, but to have institutionalized corruption and mistreatment by U.S. forces is not in keeping with what we see elsewhere.

I don't say we are infallible like the Pope ex cathedra, but the story tells about the downside of rotation schedules from my point of view.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

I saw the part about the rotations and the Kellogg, Brown & Root deal and that is part of what I was questioning. May be true and may not be. All involved are generally smarter than that. Plus that is the NYT talking about the US military and about big business and I know their prejudices there.

[neverdem]

Plus that is the NYT talking about the US military and about big business and I know their prejudices there.

If you go back to the Times' link, you'll see that she's an Op-Ed Contributor, i.e. this is a guest Op-Ed column. I thought her story was much more undermined by the fact that she was a former NPR reporter, even though she has been doing development work in Kandahar since 2002.

Times' Op-Ed Contributors come from across the political spectrum, although a slight majority appears to lean to the left. Somehow, they included John Tierney, a recently hired, regular Op-Ed Columnist since the middle of April and not a liberal, on their list.