On her triumphant victory tour in Karachi, Benazir Bhutto’s motorcade was attacked, killing over 130 people and injuring hundreds more. While she blames the government for inadequate security, she could perhaps also heap some blame in the other direction: not just for nominating herself the savior of Pakistani democracy, but also for her deep funding of the extremist madrassas that birthed the Taliban. Let’s be honest here: yes, Musharraf is capricious and ineffective, but so was Bhutto, who was so bad the Swiss even convicted her of money laundering.
It’s not just in Pakistan these guys are creating enormous headaches and misery. In Afghanistan, NATO has become so tired of a rearguard battle justifying its presence there there are very serious rumors of an increased use of Private Military Companies—they want to outsource the fighting, in other words. Given the recent scandal involving the alleged unprovoked shooting of innocent Iraqi civilians by Blackwater employees, I fail to see how this is a sustainable or even intelligent way of addressing the failed policies that are leading to panic and withdrawal in Europe.
Indeed, the PMCs aren’t much beloved in Afghanistan, either. Ignoring the relatively victimless incidents like the Blackwater plane crash in 2004, there are more recent, and troubling, incidents of private contractors coming into near-violent clashes with uniformed American personnel. All of which says nothing about the accusations of random shootings and murder, just as there are (perhaps with increased credulity now) in Iraq. Then there is the use of DynCorp and Blackwater teams to spray the poppy fields. It just isn’t a smart idea to involve them.
Did someone say poppies? I like Barnett Rubin’s take:
Does anyone know of any independent expert or any Afghan anywhere who believes the U.S. strategy is a good idea?
He can’t find any. I haven’t been able to, either. So if literally everyone in a position to know thinks the U.S. counternarcotics policy is not just a bad idea, but that it will actively undermine our efforts to stabilize the country, why is the U.S. pressing ahead with it? Alas, the only explanation I can think of whilst remaining civil is domestic political pressure: taking anything other than a hardline stance against heroin (the always-brave “I don’t support drug addiction!”) is seen as a crippling stance in an election cycle. Our own preening morality will doom another country to misery, in other words.
Come to think of it, maybe we have more in common with Ms. Bhutto than we realize.
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