South Asia: Ten Years After September 11 and Terrorism Is as Strong as Ever
Afghanistan was the place where the September 11 attacks were planned. Ten years later, terrorism is still a daily fact of life not only in Afghanistan but in neighboring Pakistan and also India. Many of these attacks have their origin in the same forces that struck New York and Washington on that terrible day. While al-Qaeda, which lacks a local base, is merely surviving, its partner, the Taliban, is thriving.
South Asia is in the midst of a full-scale terrorism war that has no sign of abating. During this last decade, thousands of people in all three countries have been murdered in the struggle to impose radical Islamist regimes, with no end in sight. And many of these deaths have been caused by the Taliban and local al-Qaeda-oriented groups. As President Barack Obama declares that al-Qaeda is on the run and close to being destroyed, that idea is daily disproved in this part of the world.
One would expect that few places in South Asia would be more secure than the Delhi High Court in India’s capital. But at 10:30 on the morning of September 7, a powerful explosion ripped through a crowd at the court, just outside Gate No. 5 and close to the country’s most important modern monument, the India Gate. Eleven were killed and more than 70 injured. Bad as that was, this bombing was only one of the four worst attacks over the last three years.
Despite the fact that the court is located in a high-security area — equivalent to a bomb on the grounds of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington — this was the second attack inside the premises in four months.
The Pakistan-based, al-Qaeda connected Harkat-ul-jihad al-islami (HuJI) said it did the attack to demand cancellation of the death sentence of one of its men for having attacked India’s parliament in 2001. In the last decade the group has committed many bloody assaults in India.
Meanwhile, in Quetta, Pakistan, 25 were killed and 55 injured by suicide bombers at a government office and a general’s home, where the officer’s wife was killed and he was wounded. This was done by the Pakistani Taliban to avenge the arrests of al-Qaeda agents.
And yet, and yet, you would think that after the general population in Afghanistan had already seen what the Taliban could do to people, they would flock, literally run, to the United States after we got there. After all, what’s not to love? We offered them freedom from the Taliban, their own elected government, rights for women, and we literally showered them with billions of dollars in aid to fix up their miserable “country.” And after TEN YEARS what do we have to show for it? Not much. Oh, we have a lot of dead American soldiers and we’re hundreds of billions of dollars poorer, but what, exactly, have we won?
It would be too harsh to say “nothing,” and it wouldn’t really be true. There are some tribes in Afghanistan that actually like us (mostly from the Northern Alliance). But the rest of the country either hates us or, at the very least, isn’t helping us to win against the Taliban. They seem to love the guys. And please, PLEASE, don’t use that tired old argument that the Taliban is intimidating those poor Afghan people. Stop it. America and NATO is offering them everything under the sun to work with us, but we always seem to get the cold shoulder. If they wanted to, Afghans could be flocking to our support, they could stop joining the Taliban to fight western troops, or, at the very least, they could INFORM on the Taliban to make our job a lot easier. They could tell us where the IEDs are planted and where the Taliban is hiding. The Afghans could make life so hard for the Taliban that their safe havens would dry up, making them vulnerable to NATO air or land attacks. If we had the complete cooperation of the Afghan people, the Taliban wouldn’t stand a chance.
But we don’t. And, after TEN YEARS of this, that is very depressing. So much so that I think we should be thinking about what WE want out of Afghanistan, rather than always thinking about what’s best for the Afghan people.
Perhaps it’s about time we build a few bases in the friendlier parts of the country, keep them there like we do Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, and let the rest of the country fend for itself? Do we really expect Afghanistan to be a model of Western democracy? Do we think the Afghan government will ever, really, function properly, so much so that the Afghans will support it over the Taliban?
I really think it’s about time we consider our options regarding what we can get out of this mess, rather than hoping that, somehow, Afghans will “See the light” and magically come over to our side in this war. It’s time to decide what we want, not what they can do anymore. And time is running out. Americans are NOT going to support this for much longer, let alone another ten years.
“Americans are NOT going to support this for much longer, let alone another ten years” -Yes. The Americans don’t know what “this” is. -Nobody explains that we want to build an give Afghanistan an Air Force for example-Nobody explains why US doesn’t mess with the poppy growers-in fact production is booming there.
Nobody explains the Chinese companies coming in to harvest minerals.
Afghanistan and Pakistan -are not wars -they are exercises in -how to waste billions and create more enemies?
binLaden himself said, people will support the strong horse. The US has proven that they are not the strong horse. Our COIN strategy and rules of engangement look like they were designed by the chief of police of San Francisco. We are trying to fight a post-modern PC war against 7th century barbarians and primitives. We can’t even name our enemy. Now we want to negotiate with moderate Taliban.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, we are spilling our blood to allow Shariah Law to take hold. Do our troops now die for Uncle Shariah? Recently in Afghanistan, a man was to be put to death for converting to Christianity. Is this what we fought for? We were left grovelling to Karzai to let this man free. The libs kept screaming about Iraq: No blood for oil! We bled, China got the oil.
Would we have ever won WWII if we only declared war on Blitzkrieg and kamikaze, cried “Shintoism is a religion of peace!” and then decided to negotiate with “moderate Nazis”?
The threat is NOT terrorism. Terror is just the tactic, established as a preferred Islamic moral value by the ‘holy prophet’ of Islam, Muhammed. It is the theological central pillar of Muhammeds cult. The threat is ISLAMIC JIHAD.
Muhammed, far from being a holy man, was in truth a sadistic sociopath consumed by unquenchable sexual lust, unending material greed, and asymptotic violent bloodlust. As recorded by Muslims in the Islamic gospels “Allah’s Apostle Muhammed said ‘I have been made victorious with terror’” -Bukhari (52:220) It is the ideology of this sadistic barbarian that is the threat – the ideology of ISLAM.
What we must understand is that we are not in a ‘War on Terror’. What we are in is the 1400 year old ISLAMIC WORLD WAR. It is an existential war for global dominion. It is Islam against all non-Islamic peoples in all non-Islamic lands, inspired by Allah, mandated by Muhammed, commanded in the Koran.
It is THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Yup. This is what we are fighting about, only our leadership is too cowardly to define it and articulate it. Moreover, if this war is ever to be articulated properly, we shall only then see the division within our country between those who will stand up to fight these animals, and those who will not. Hence, the fight is also with the leftists who are joined at the hip with the islamists. Because this war is also a spiritual struggle, and ultimately, it is simply a choice between good and evil.
Liberty, I say we get out. Whatever the reasons ten years ago, the whole thing stinks.
We send drones all over the place blowing up people everywhere. And for what?
I’d like to believe we are there for Freedom but we all know there are a whole lot of agendas that not out in the open.
It is time to drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan and cease in Libya right this minute. We help Israel to the death.
We drill for oil and natural gas in the US immediatel and give our returning servicemen first chance at those new jobs.
We are being played by our politicians, other countries and the media. I am tired of being lied to about why we are there.
And the next time we go to war, we go to annihilate the enemy, not this namby pamby one arm tied behind our back war!
“We are being played by our politicians, other countries and the media. I am tired of being lied to about why we are there.” Amen, brother.
No more lies.
Calls for international
It has been many years and US military is still in Afghanistan and Iraq. To help soldiers call back to the US from military bases, we have special phone cards at http://www.zscomm.com Soldiers and military can use the phone cards like Diamond, Edge and more to call back to US from Iraq and Afghanistan for cheaper rates.
Negotiating with the Taliban? Don’t.
The source of our troubled America is that we today don’t have the same energized and unified and concentrated spirit of WWII.
Our most recent Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center, somehow has not resulted in the same fury. Immediate shock and anger…yes…but that cooled and dissipated on a national level surprisingly quickly.
Can anyone alive today remembering Pear Harbor when it happened imagine the Shinto-ists agitating to build a temple near Pearl Harbor? …or, maybe on the destroyed runway at Hickam Field?
Frankly, I wonder how many Americans thumb-clicking away on their gadgets today have even heard of Pear Harbor.
And, let’s not hear the evasion that this current war against Islamic expansion is not the same kind of warfare as that aginst Japanese Imperialism or Nazi German expansion. That’s not good enough to explain the general lack of energized “mobilization” today which we of a certain age remember so vividly during World War Two.
The author of this article is perhaps (unintentionally or intentionally) spreading wider this open wound called Afghanistan, Iraq, and Central/South/West Asia.
We Americans have given too much of ourselves in that traditionally barbaric, tribally and ethnicly divided part of the world…..inside their artifically contrived borders from colonial days….it’s past time for us to bring our massed forces home and contain that area with offshore tactics. We have those means right now….witness the howls of anger at our successful use of drones. That’s a measure of their success.
All of this assumes that there is no INDIA-”Pakistan” War. If there is, all of this changes, India wins and imposes a “Roman” Peace on the area. Problem solved for the next 1-200 years.
Dr. Shalit