Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Afghanistan businesses plan their own exits as Afghans fear what will happen when troops leave


Bombs kill 46 across Afghanistan: Suicide bombers launched multiple attacks in a remote corner of southwestern Afghanistan near the Iranian border Tuesday, killing dozens of people including shoppers buying sweets for a Muslim holiday and leaving charred and smoldering bits of cookies and dried fruit among the bodies on the ground.

A separate market bombing, this one in northern Afghanistan, brought the overall death toll to 46, most of whom were civilians. It was the deadliest day for Afghan civilians this year. The attacks in provinces on opposite ends of the country — Nimroz in the southwest and Kunduz in the north — come as Taliban insurgents and their allies step up their assaults in a display of force that often results in civilian carnage.

Afghans fear what will happen when troops leave: Among Afghans around the country interviewed by The Associated Press, the worry is pervasive. Many are deeply skeptical that Afghan police and security forces, which the U.S.-led coalition has spent years trying to build, will be able to fight insurgents and militants without American and NATO fighting alongside. Worse-case scenarios that some fear:

The Afghan forces could splinter along ethnic line and prompt civil war, the nation could plunge into a deep recession, or the Kabul government — plagued with corruption and still fragile despite efforts to establish its authority — would remain too weak to hold off a Taliban takeover. Just a 45-minute drive south of Kabul, residents of Wardak province directly feel the tenuousness. The province is a battleground for Afghan and coalition forces trying to squash hotbeds of the Taliban. Residents quickly warn visitors that it’s dangerous just to go past a checkpoint less a kilometer (half-mile) outside the provincial capital, Maidan Shahr.


In Afghanistan, Businesses Plan Their Own Exits: America may be struggling to come up with a viable exit plan for Afghanistan, but Abdul Wasay Manani is sure of his. This month, Mr. Manani, 38, flew to India for 14 days to scout out a new business, and a new home, ready to leave Afghanistan and everything he worked to build here, just in case things fall apart when most Americans and other foreign troops leave in 2014. “If the Taliban come like last time, ordering people around with whips, I can’t stay here,” he said. “I have to leave this country to keep my family safe.”

Many Afghans share his concern. In this environment, troubling indicators are not hard to find. More than 30,400 Afghans applied for asylum in industrialized nations in 2011, the highest level in 10 years and four times the number seeking asylum in 2005. The only Western bank operating here said on Wednesday that it would be leaving. Piles of cash equaling about a quarter of Afghanistan’s annual economic output were physically carried out of Afghanistan last year.


I just do not get it. If those people know how bad their life is going to be under the Taliban then why do they not fight to defeat them? *Vietnam all over again regardless of what they say. They are now offering the Taliban to join in the Government.

I really do not care what they do. Our soldiers did their job. We should get them out now with heads held high for a job well done. They have performed magnificently.The Taliban are going to take over again regardless and the people know it that is why everyone who can is making preparations to get out now.


James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
http://httpanaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com

No comments: