Posts Tagged ‘Hamad Karzai’

Five Years To Go

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

That’s how long Afghan President Karzai says it will be before Afghan forces can secure the country on their own.

Starting a second term after a clearly fraudulent election, our guy wants to reassure us that he intends to crack down in the roughly 3 blocks of ministries in downtown Kabul he actually controls.

The rest of the country, of course, is up to us.

3 years is the NATO timetable for drawdown, but it’s also clear that little or no progress against the Taliban in the coming year will accelerate the calls for withdrawal.

Oh yes, and corruption has now replaced al-Qaeda as the next big thing to be tackled by the Afghan government. Not to mention drug trafficking. And getting the President’s brother off the CIA payroll.

Gorilla thinks: “We’ll be on the way out by next Christmas, come heroin or high mountains!”

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An Exploding 3-5 Idiot

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Richard Holbrooke again, in Kabul and worried about election fraud undertaken by President Karzai and his supporters (and of course, some others who have no chance of winning).

“Explosive” talks were held, with many denials and much shouting all round. The Idiot may have walked out, but like everything else over there that’s in denial!

Does it really matter who wins this election? Without the NATO troops, Karzai’s or anyone else’s government wouldn’t last 5 minutes.

The Afghan and related warlord armies have been fighting for more than 30 years, first against the Russkies, lately against the Taliban, yet we can’t get ‘em trained to take over militarily for at least another 3-5, despite saying we could only 3-5 ago.

Gorilla concludes: “Whatever the point was in Afghanistan, we’ve sharpened it down to the quick, and a quick getaway is what we’ll get!”

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The Barn Door Called Holbrooke

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

When you lack a strategy, but want to pretend things aren’t going south, there’s really only one man to call: Richard Holbrooke.

We’re approaching year 15 of NATO forces in Bosnia, the result of Holbrooke’s last Special Envoy “breakthrough”.

Meanwhile, in Dayton, Ohio, where Holbrooke once gave peace a chance, the unemployment rate’s gone from 3.4 to 11.5%.

I’m certain the locals wouldn’t mind having a few moderate Talibaners, a sharp-dressed man like Hamad Karzai, and the Pakistani intelligence services in town to stimulate the local economy.

Anyhow, firm and resolute, an envoy’s envoy, Holbrooke opines: We need a new task force on Taliban drug money!

And here I thought we had this already, a little thing called The US Treasury Office of Terrorism And Financial Intelligence.

Now granted, this agency’s been doing a bang-up job in places like Mexico and Colombia, you can hear the bangs outside your window most every night down there, but that’s only because we’re financing both sides of the war on drugs.

In Afghanistan it’s vastly different, there are way more than two sides and NATO’s doing its level best to finance each and every one.

Diplomatically, Gorilla is stumped: “We could make Afghan drug lords work for Big Pharma, in the same way Mexican and Colombian drug lords work for American gun dealers, but then how would we fill Holbrooke’s valuable time?”.

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