Afghanistan – Truths and Lies

When discussing the presence of US and UK troops in Afghanistan, Islamists will invoke the dogma of jihad as the expression of resistence against Western occupation. Front groups for Jamaati Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood operating and spreading their poison in the west will pump up their chests and use “Jihad” as a rallying call against “soldiers of kufaar” and the “forces of colonialism”. Before you know it, they have appointed themselves the proxy of 32 million Afghans.

When you believe in your own moral infallibility to the extent western-based Islamists do, what Afghans living in Afghanistan think about their quality of life, how to fight back a resurgent Taliban, dealing with the presence of US military forces, the massive corruption in Kabul and their future and welfare is immaterial.

Let’s just look past their fiction for a second: According to a poll conducted in December 2008 and January 2009 for broadcasters ABC, ARD German TV and the BBC, the question was asked

From today’s perspective, do you think it was very good, mostly good, mostly bad or very bad that U.S. military forces came into our country to bring down the Taliban government in 2001?

Here, the combined “very good” or “mostly good” answers totalled 69%.

Here is another one:

Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the presence of the following groups in Afghanistan today?

Net support for US military force and Foreign organisations is shown to be 63% and 73% respectively. Whereas 60% of Afghans are strongly opposed to “Jihadi fighters from other countries” while 70% strongly opposed “fighters from the Taliban”.

When asked the biggest danger to Afghanistan, top of the list came the Taliban at 58% followed by Drug traffickers and the United States at 13% and 8% respectively.

Opinions of the US presence were also unexpected. In 2005, 83% of Afghan expressed a favourable opinion of the United States. Today 47% still hold that view, down 36 points. For the first time slightly more Afghans now see the US unfavourably than favourably.

And yet when asked what they thought of of groups or nations, in terms of ‘very favourable’, ‘somewhat favourable’, ‘somewhat unfavourable’ or ‘very unfavourable’ to Afghanistan, the results were very interesting:

The Taliban – Net Favourable 7%, Net Unfavourable 91%
Osama bin Laden – Net Favourable 6%, Net Unfavourable 92%
The United States - Net Favourable 47%, Net Unfavourable 52%
Pakistan – Net Favourable 8%, Net Unfavourable 91%
Great Britain – Net Favourable 39%, Net Unfavourable 26%
Iran – Net Favourable 57%, Net Unfavourable 22%
Germany – Net Favourable 61%, Net Unfavourable 31%
India – Net Favourable 74%, Net Unfavourable 21%

The survey was conducted in late December and early January 2009 via face-to-face interviews with a random national sample of 1,534 Afghan adults in all 34 of the country’s provinces, with field work by the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research in Kabul.

What this survey shows is that attitudes held by ordinary Afghans of the West vs Talibanism narrative and Afghani hopes for self-determination is dissimulated into simplistic drivel by Islamists and Far Left groups for their own agendas. And I’m being generous here.

The Islamists include British jihadi fantasists who head to Afghanistan to join their mujahideen “brothers”. And from the Far Left, is the usual round of Stalinists and Trotsykists who would would have us believe the hoary old lie that they represent nothing less than the only post-colonial saviours fighting for the interests of failed Muslim states like Afghanistan. Of the latter bunch, we have the likes of Seumas Milne who has propagandised for the Taliban on the pages of the Guardian often. Here is one of his extrapolations:

A large majority of Afghans say they back negotiations with the Taliban, even in western-conducted opinion polls. The Taliban themselves insist they will only talk once foreign troops have withdrawn.

Milne is correct in saying a large majority of Afghans favour negotiations with the Taliban, but there is also a degree of obfuscation in his statement that begs a little prodding. Because if this survey is to be believed, 64% of Afghans say the government should negotiate a settlement with the Taliban in which they’re allowed to hold political offices if they agree to stop fighting. But among those who support negotiations, most by far, seven in 10, say talks should occur only if the Taliban stop fighting first. And Afghans are the first to recognise that the only way the newly resurgent Taliban will lay down arms is by warfare. That is why they grudgingly accept the presence of the US and UK forces – to get rid of the Taliban. No more and no less

Finally, for more idiotic infantilisation of Afghans, as plied by Islamists, here is Abdurrahman Jafar of the Muslim Security Forum, who spoke at last Friday’s launch of the latest incarnation of a British Far Left and Islamist joint venture, this one calling itself ‘Kafa’.

If you move the playback timer to 5:21 you can hear Jafar make this comedic pronouncement:

“There’s a very clear linking between those who carry Islamophobic narratives and those who support war in Iraq, in Afghanistan. In other words a neoconservative agenda.”

The only thing that statement lacked, when Jafar made it, was a punchline drumroll.

With 52% of Afghans surveyed saying that they regard the Hamid Karzai government to be progressing towards providing a better life and 82% saying they prefer it to the Taliban regime, Abdurrahman Jafar shows, as if any further proof were needed, just how laughable his notions are on this matter. Who else but a British-based Islamist like Jafar would insult ordinary Afghans who oppose the Taliban and wish for a stable Afghanistan and label them neoconservatives who “carry Islamophobic narratives”?