Paw in the Afghan bottle

March 9, 2008

Paw in the Afghan bottle

Arguably, the blaze of publicity for British Prince Harry's front-line assignment in Afghanistan gave a tough of glamour to the war there, but the harsh reality of the struggling military campaign there remains as bitter as ever.
One wonders whether the photographs of Queen Elizabeth's grandson firing a machine gun in Afghanistan were deliberately "leaked" into the cyberspace with a view to hailing Harry, the third in line to the throne, as a "veteran" of the Afghan war at some point in time. Of course, it could be argued that the British media remained committed to an undertaking not to publicise Prince Harry's 10-week stint in Afghanistan and it was a US website which put out the pictures. It is neither here nor there when seen from a non-British perspective.
However, within Britain, the emergence of pictures, deliberate or otherwise, helped give a "the most positive and glamorous coverage" for the Afghan war, as Peter Wilby, a political commentator for the Guardian, put it. "It was a marvellous boost for army recruitment and revived the legitimacy of a war for which support has been waning."
For one thing, the Afghan conflict has drawn the US-led foreign forces present in the country into a quagmire — as indeed is the case in Iraq notwithstanding all claims to the contrary. There are no magic solutions to end the conflict becasue the issues at stake are too complex and dense for the US or for the UK for that matter to call it quits and leave the Afghans to fend for themselves. The best analogy would be that of a money who gets caught with its paw wrapped around a fruit in inside a bottle. It could withdraw its paw without the fruit but it would not because of the lure of the fruit is too strong.
The reality on the ground in Afghanistan is that the foreign forces are there for a long spell because there is no possibility of a solution that would serve the interests of the US, but Washington would not let go.
In the meantime, the billions of dollars being spent in the name of reconstruction of Afghanistan are going to waste since there is little improvement in the daily life of the ordinary people.
The same goes true for the billions that are being spent in the hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
The Taliban have staged a comeback and now control at least 10 per cent of Afghanistan, according to a US intelligence assessment, and are running their own checkpoints in one province in the south.
One of the reasons cited by the US is the lack of enough troops to fight an effective battle, but few countries are willing to contribute more since their governments have realised the folly of fighting a war that is already lost. Add to that the ongoing protests against Denmark and the Netherlands — which have troops present in the country — sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and a Dutch film in the making, and what we have in Afghanistan is a perfect recipe for more trouble for the foreign troops deployed there.