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Originally posted by Aseer Jaan
Aseer Jan Wrorre, for those of us born here it is not about comfy arm chairs and Taliban alone. It becomes more complex in the eyes of an American born Pashtoon. We grow up with guys like Matthew Hoh, a decorated vet and an ardent secularist and pro American and according to this Nation article here are his credentials:
He has impeccable establishment credentials. From 2004 to 2007 he served first as a Defense Department civilian on a reconstruction team and then as a Marine company commander in Iraq. In 2009 he was the State Department’s senior representative in Afghanistan’s Zabul province and political officer in Nangarhar province, areas of fierce fighting against the Taliban insurgency. But in September 2009 he resigned his post to protest the war.
He, a non-Pashtoon and a non Afghan, with no interest to stake in terms of secularists vs religionists vs Pashtoons vs Tajiks, states the following:
"Question: What about your second issue, about the Taliban being the only cause of instability and conflict in Afghanistan?
Matthew Hoh: History tells a different story. The conflict is very complex, multi-dimensional and goes back three decades. In 2001–02 we installed a government in Kabul headed by Karzai. In doing this, we backed one side in a long civil war—the more progressive-secular and urban camp, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, and some Pashtuns and those who live in the north and west. But it excluded one-third of Afghans, the rural, religious, traditional camp, who are Pashtuns in the south and east—which include the Taliban—whose forerunners we backed in 1980s, against the Soviets.
So we create a government that rewards one side and excludes the other."
The rest of the article is here:
http://www.thenation.com/article/157...talks?page=0,0
Why is that Matthew can see this but you cannot even though you lived there? I visited there every year and it was not at all lost on me that the locals were not all pro secularists. In fact the majority were simple farmers and village folks who had lived the same way their ancestors did for centuries with a view modern conveniences introduced.
Can you explain to us where Matthew is wrong and where you disagree with him?
He even addresses the bogey about how the war must be fought to protect Americans and their interests and the presence of Al Qaeda:
"Question: You say the war is misguided. Why?
Mathew Hoh: Americans always see what’s happening in a first-person story—how it affects our national interests—not underlying causes, who the players are, or why a country is unstable. We think the problem in Afghanistan is Al Qaeda or the Taliban. But they’re not the reasons why Afghans are fighting each other. The old, real issues must be resolved."
Moreover 2/3 of our fellow Americans are chafing and no longer support the war in Afghanistan. People like Hilary Clinton attempted to reverse this trend by stating that people heard the question in a way that biases it and it ought to be: "what if this war was about protecting you and your loved ones, would you still want in?" However, as Hoh points out this meandering line of reasoning is even more misguided.
It is unethical for us to support our fellow Americans' foreign prescence there because that would make us fifth column citizens, with loyalties not to our adopted country, but to an outside cause that may not bear good sweet fruit for the US.
Our fellow Pashtoons back home, be they secularists, communists, agnostics, atheists, Taliban, sufis, wahaabis should have to solve their own problems and not get a simple town guy named Bob from Arkanasas involved in his lengthy historical dilemmas.
I am not at all trying to antagonize you, but how ethical do you feel about having some poor American born and raised boy having to leave his wife and family go and die for a war that you should be fighting in instead of him?
We, as American born Pashtoons cannot do that to Matthew Hoh. We grew up with him and do not want to see him die in some foreign land to solve the problems that others ought to be solving themselves.
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