Friday February 17, 2012

JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

20 dead as 11 Taliban suicide bombers attack gov't buildings

World May. 13, 2009 - 03:30AM JST ( 17 )

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

Order by Time Order by Popularity

17 Comments

0

SamuraiikiMay. 13, 2009 - 07:53AM JST

You can not take Taliban prisoners. They have to be killed, else, they keep coming back for more.
0

SamuraiikiMay. 13, 2009 - 07:54AM JST

If you have cancer, would you rather allow it to thrive and just pacify it only with medicines? No, you would erradicate it to its roots to make sure it does not return. So, the same way has to be done with the Taliban.
0

OssanAmericaMay. 13, 2009 - 08:18AM JST

But if you kill them don't you make them martyrs and help create more?
0

tkoind2May. 13, 2009 - 08:44AM JST

The key to this conflict in both Afghanistan and Pakistan is to separate Islamic conservatism from the Taliban.

The fact is that the rural people of both countries want Islamic type rule. And I think this is achievable in a way that results in rational local rule by Islamic leaders who are of a more traditional bend.

The Taliban have to be seen as enemies of peace and of Islam. With people I have talked to who live in Pakistan, this is already a widely understood notion. But the anxiety about government or foreign intervention in the affairs of tribal regions is one key reason that the locals are not fighting the Taliban too. At this point they are not yet entirely sure which enemy is the worst of two evils.

We need to make that point clear. And avoiding civilian casualties is the most important step in making that process happen.
0

graftonMay. 13, 2009 - 08:44AM JST

We talk about the Taliban as though they came from a place called Talibania, they don’t, they are Afghans or Pakistanis. So how do they come into being, is there something in the water, is it like a virus & one morning what was a normal boy yesterday wakes up a Taliban? Shooting every last one of them in the head is only half the answer, tomorrow there will just be more. But while the west is trying to operate with its hands tied behind its back by political correctness they will always lose out to the savagery of these people. They are free to operate any way they please & that is the strength they will always have over anybody that tries to oppose them. In the end the west will either have to walk away or use fire against fire & doing that in Afghanistan will mean breeding more radicals around the world. The sickness is not the Taliban, it is Islam. Islam needs to be reformed to fit in with the 21st century or be eradicated. Their choice.
0

teleprompterMay. 13, 2009 - 08:55AM JST

When they can't kill "infidels" they butcher their own. I for one am glad Obama is bombing these nutjobs back into the stone age, where they belong.
0

tkoind2May. 13, 2009 - 10:52AM JST

Grafton. If you want answers about where the Taliban come from you only need to read the history of the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

The original Taliban were born out of the Afghan refugee camps along the boarder of Pakistan and in Peshawar during the close of the war. Mostly young boys forgotten by the west and by Pakistan who were picked up and educated in hundreds of religious schools who catered to their disillusionment and hopelessness.

We helped create the Taliban by funding religious soldiers against the Soviets. Again letting cold war policy cloud common sense. But in this case the Taliban were not like their Norther Alliance competition. They went home at the end of the war angry against everyone and wanting to impose the Arab and Saudi funded ideologies of religious extremism.

Pastuns and other Afghans do not have a history of this kind of religious insanity. This is Arab born from the repressive nations like Saudi Arabia and exported to other corners of the world where it has found homes among those who feel hopeless and angry. And they do so through schools funded with oil money. Money coming from the west and our ongoing dependency on these corrupt nations and their fuels.

The neo-Taliban are divided into traditional Taliban who hold on to the radical islamic ideas of their predecessors but with the added anger over US intervention. And the thug Taliban who are in it for power and control.

Add to that a population tired of conflict and the failure of the west to deliver any real change in this aging conflict and you get the kind of rabid extremism that now threatens both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Of course they are not from Talibania. They are Afghans, Pakistanis, foreign fighters and thugs.

I stand by my position that we can only win by defeating the Taliban claim of the Islamic moral high ground. We can do this by working harder to avoid civilian casualties caused by our forces. We can do this by empowering local tribal leaders to have more autonomy and support that they need to improve living conditions. We can do this by working much harder to bring real improvements to Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan.

Then we can go on to do more by assuring rational Islamic rule and by pressing the Kobul government to do right by the people there. Finally we have to fight and destroy this insurgency where that is practical. Like the Pakistani effort now. But it MUST be followed by support for local leaders to fill the power gap and to provide order.

An Afghan once told me that Afghans are loving and welcoming people if they invite you. And equally harsh fighters if they are invaded. But most of all he said they just want to be left alone. Our solution must be able to empower these tribes and local regions to do better for themselves so that we can comply and leave them alone.
0

graftonMay. 13, 2009 - 11:08AM JST

tkoind2 at 10:52 AM JST - 13th May

Thank you for your answer, though I suspect you realised there was a large degree of sarcasm in my post aimed at so many simplistic posts on this subject. I find it frustrating reading that the answer is to kill all the Taliban as though they are a race on to themselves. As you rightly say, they are not, they are a mixture of different people. I also suspect that you would disagree with my answer, the eradication of Islam, it is simplistic because it is impossible, but I do see Islam in its present form as the root of all these problems. The majority of Muslims are just people trying to get on with their lives like the rest of us. But it is their religion that has been high-jacked & it is for them to bring back into a civilised world. The west can never do that without making even more enemies along the way. Whatever we do we will fail. Only Muslims can solve this problem. Thank you again for an extremely well written answer.
0

adaydreamMay. 13, 2009 - 11:21AM JST

The Taliban have gotten the word that there will be more troops. They are starting an offensive before we get our additional troops in country. < :-)
0

nandakandamandaMay. 13, 2009 - 11:39AM JST

tkoind's reply above is one of the best comments I have read here on JT, ie well-informed and balanced. Although there are different elements in the Taliban, they are generally Pashtun from both sides of the border; Pashtun race, language and culture tend to be their social glue. For this reason they will never really be able to ligitimately represent the rest of Afghanistan, unless they give up fighting, and study politics and human relations. A recognition of the real meaning of the Qu'ran would not go amiss either...

Sounds like another failed attack this time. Desperate to take attention away from the Swat Valley conflict, I think the Taliban are hurting on many fronts now.
0

bushloverMay. 13, 2009 - 11:59AM JST

The Taliban love killing civilians because they know that the Western powers will be blamed. They have absolutely nothing to lose. They kill themselves so why would they worry about civilians? This is a no win situation for us unless we get a bit drastic but I can't see that happening with these kiddie gloves the west likes to use as not to offend. I'm offended by these extreme murderers. But I can't say what I'd like done to them.... That's only allowed by some privileged posters.
0

smithinjapanMay. 13, 2009 - 12:57PM JST

Geez... where are all the people on the US soldier's murderous rampage post claiming that, "You cannot judge the man until you have all the facts" and why aren't they defending the Taliban as such? hahaha. Case in point -- quick to judge when it's the enemy, demanding patience and understanding when it's one of your own. In both cases the people are downright, cold-blooded murders, and both need to be punished as such.

The Taliban, sadly, are gaining more and more footing and committing more and more violent acts in Afghanistan, confirming what many said since the beginning of the war there -- that bush never should have gone off on an adventure in Iraq and should have focussed on the job in Afghanistan. As it is Obama inherited an unwinnable disaster, and it's getting worse.
0

tkoind2May. 13, 2009 - 02:04PM JST

smithinjapan. The reason you won't hear a lot of support for the Taliban from those of us who usually side the the underdog, is that the underdog in both Afghanistan and Pakistan are the ordinary people living in these tribal regions who are caught between.

Of course we can have some empathy for how the Taliban were created. After all we hold a lot of that blame in our American hands. Imagine growing up in a hopeless refugee camp with most of your loved ones dead and no hope for your future. It isn't at all surprising that these religious schools were so able to radicalize these young men.

That said, we still have to look at the result of former Taliban rule and their treatment of the Afghan people. When that is taken in balance, it is diffult to retain any sympathy for the Taliban as a movement. While we can still hope that some of the less extreme members will assimilate into post Taliban society in the future.

We have already seen that there are more moderate Taliban who also want peace. But they are not running things. So we have to deal with those who are to allow the opportunity for peace to come to both sides of the border.

Patience will be required. Understanding will be required. But what is needed right now is a moral, psychological, economic and military policy to combat and defeat the Taliban or to force them into submission.

I don't agree that Afghanistan is unwinnable. Maybe unwinnable for our agenda. But certainly winnable for the local population. If we practice the right policies we can defeat the insurgency, replace the current government with a better one and open the doors of the country to economic development. But we have to bring wanted change and opportunity and step out of the way for what the locals want once they feel empowered to take the lead.
0

timorborderMay. 13, 2009 - 02:56PM JST

I would like to pick up on this quote by tkoind:

Imagine growing up in a hopeless refugee camp with most of your loved ones dead and no hope for your future.

Isn't there a similar phenomenon in Palestinian refugee camps?
0

teleprompterMay. 13, 2009 - 03:17PM JST

"Imagine growing up in a hopeless refugee camp with most of your loved ones dead and no hope for your future."

Imagine belonging to a religious cult that lionizes teenaged and adult suicide martyrs and brainwashes even women and children to follow their example.
0

tkoind2May. 13, 2009 - 03:35PM JST

timorborder. The sad fact is that this kind of psychological endoctrintion is common place in the history of most conflicts. Of course we've seen this in Palestine.

But if you look at the history of armed conflict in Afghanistan you don't see this kind of madness until we see the introduction of Arabic extremists. Afghan culture, and I am referring to many of the ethnic groups there, have no history of this kind of religious and suicidal insanity.

Historically they are hospitable and wonderful people, yet deeply devided and deeply independent. When invaded they come together, force out their enemies and go back to their divided lifestyle.

But the cold war and our support brought in the Bin Laden's and other Arabic influenced religious zealots and that is where we get the roots of the Taliban.

Teleprompter. It is easy for those of us who grew up with families, ambitions for our future, hobbies and things we enjoy to try to sit in judgement over others. It is a hell of a lot harder to be one of these kids who has seen everything they know destroyed with no hope for anything but more suffering. And it is impossible for us to truly understand the vulnerability these people would have when presented with a mysticism that promises reward for the same destruction they already feel they are destined for.

It is also arguable that we lionize our own young people with flag waving propaganda and dreams of how a military career will improve their lives, offer opportunities to education and make them in to real men and women.

They then are sent off to countries to kill people they know nothing about, often in anonymous ways that end up being called collateral damage. And all with zeal of nationalism and confidence that God is on their side.

While I am not saying our troops are terrorists. Because they are not. I think we must admit that we endoctrinate our people to do our political bidding just as our enemies do. And understanding this will help us understand how to win this conflict.