by Debs is Dead
lifted from a comment
The latest news that South Korean officials plan on meeting with
representatives of Afghanistan’s Taliban resistance movement doesn’t
auger well for Kabul’s mayor and city council chair Hamid Karzai.
Following the confirmation that the body of a second Korean hostage
had been found and that the Korean aid workers lives were in grave
danger, Kabul had set about ‘rescuing’ the abductees with whatever
force may be necessary. On Aug 1 reuters reported that a rescue
operation had commenced with the dropping of pamphlets by USAF aircraft
warning citizens in the area the hostages were believed to be held, to
stay out of the way.
There is no longer any sign of that bulletin on the Reuters site, however the Canadian National Post blog
has constructed a timeline of Reuters changing bulletins. Somehow it
was determined that telegraphing one’s punches by letting the Taliban
know you were coming was not such a good idea.
Of course none of that would have been of any concern to the Kabul
City Council or the US and other Nato forces who were about to ‘go in’.
Alive or dead the hostages must be rescued because as long as they were
hostages the Korean govt was under pressure to get the fuck outta Dodge
(ie pull it’s remaining troops out of Afghanistan immediately rather
than the slow withdrawal agreed to). Worst of all however was the bad
press around this issue. It means that the cardboard cut out Nato
leaders look silly claiming they are winning in Afghanistan when as
this incident clearly shows the Taliban are becoming stronger.
Maybe the Korean govt had already quietly agreed to a ‘save them by
shooting them’ scenario. There were intimations that was the case, as
long as it was a Nato operation not an Afghani one. There wasn’t much
faith in the spine that a ‘good dose of freedom’ delivers.
But as news of the rescue attempt leaked to the Korean people, in
particular relatives of the hostages, they made it plain better dead
than Taliban was a lousy option.
Somehow Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was involved,
which gives an indication of the likelihood of any survivors, since
Negroponte never seemed to mind amerikan xtians being martyrs
for the cause of corporate capitalism in central america, it is
unlikely he would demur at the notion of Korean xtians croaking.
Negroponte was bailed up at a meeting by Korea’s Foreign Minister Song Min-soon on Aug 1 just as the operation was swinging into top gear.
That meeting must have been full and frank as they say in the classics:
"The two sides ruled out the possibility of military
operations and placed a top priority on safely resolving the issue by
mobilising all means," Song said after the meeting, the official said."The United States is not preparing military operations," he quoted Song as saying.
In another development, eight senior members of South Korea’s
National Assembly left for Washington on Thursday to urge US officials
to take an "active and positive" approach to the crisis, amid
widespread perceptions that Washington is key to ending the crisis by
influencing Afghanistan’s government.Song indicated there were difficulties in ending the crisis because
of a US policy of refusing to negotiate with people it regards as
terrorists, but vowed to resolve the issue while keeping intact the
principle, the South Korean official said.
Now that the South Koreans have managed to force the US into
permitting direct contact with the Taliban Government, other nations
faced with intractable Afghani issues will insist on the same access.
Say for example you are a European state whose population were being
decimated by the availability of cheap and freely available Afghani
smack. Would you plead with the DEA to stage one of their show
operations in the few parts of the country controlled by Karzai and co
– knowing that the flow of smack into your society would not be impeded
by this? Or would you sit down with the Taliban and negotiate a deal
whereby they got paid to stop the flow?
In the end people have to deal with the entity in control, while the
coalition of the swilling had control of most of Afghanistan’s
territory for that fleeting period after the invasion, it was the US
led Nato forces one did business with, but now control of the
countryside out of Kabul has gone back to the indiginous forces of
whatever ilk, frequently incorrectly referred to as the Taliban, that
is who others must deal with.
There will be other issues like this with the eventual result the complete sidelining of Karzai and the City Council.
Leave the last word to the Nazis:
The conservative xtain blogs
condemned the liberal media for blowing the rescue, but were divided on
whether death by rescue was a workable option. Comments ranged from:
"So what’s the deal? Are we never gonna use the neutron bomb, or what?"
and
"Lord, take me under friendly fire in a rescue
operation any day, as long as my captors experience the pain of life
before they spend eternity swimming in a lake of fire."
(where do you make these people amerika?)
To:
"I cannot find it in myself to give CNN/Reuters any
shred of a benefit of the doubt. I hope the hostages and the raiders
survive the attack by the legacy media. I should think the hostages
would be safer with the Taliban than with these guys “helping”.
With allies like that is it any wonder the South Koreans have opted out of the Afghani farce?