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To understand why so many US representatives
in foreign countries are figures of fun or even derision and
contempt to their inhabitants one need look no further than a
Public Broadcasting Service item of August 7.
The report goes further than
showing that the main figure is an idiot. This cameo, this
snapshot of the mindset of an American official in Afghanistan,
demonstrates appalling lack of understanding of a country with
which the US is deeply involved. The deep ignorance of the central
character is terrifying. His rejoicing when he forces an Afghan
van driver to pay $20 in road tax is grotesque. Here's the PBS
piece:
Miranda Kennedy [anchor] :
It's a hot, grueling afternoon at the toll plaza on the Kabul-Kandahar
highway. Chris Anderson is an advisor to Afghanistan's finance
ministry. That sounds like an exalted position. Often, as today,
it means standing out on the tarmac, trying to convince Afghan
drivers to pay a toll to use the highway. [Scene shifts to
Anderson.]
Anderson: [to his interpreter]
Can you please explain to him that I understand these people
need to be somewhere, but unfortunately if he wants to use this
road, there is no choice but to pay. [Dialogue involving the
interpreter, Anderson and the van driver]
Anderson : "I understand
what you're saying sir ; unfortunately everybody wants to pay
tomorrow, and what happens is they come along tomorrow and say
let me pay tomorrow so . . ."
Kennedy: Anderson is talking
to a young guy who runs a taxi service between Kabul and some
outlying villages. His van is loaded with half a dozen villagers,
a stack of very weathered suitcases, a bicycle and a couple sheep.
Because he's driving a commercial van, he's supposed to pay $20
for a monthly pass. But he offers up every excuse in the book
not to shell out, including a sick child in the back. But Anderson
is having none of it.
Anderson: "He must make
a decision right now to either pay this money or to turn around,
and if he refuses then we will have to ask the police to come
and tell him to move."
Kennedy : "The traffic
police appear. And half an hour later, our supposedly-penniless
driver finally gives in."
Anderson : He bought it, he
bought the sticker.
Kennedy: There he is, with
his blue sticker!
Anderson : It was nothing to
him to waste 20 minutes arguing with us rather than buy the decal.
Kennedy: But he had the money.
Anderson : He had the money
the whole time.
***
Yes, the van-driver had the
money demanded by the US official. In a country where foreign
advisors get over $100,000 a year and an Afghan schoolteacher
earns $70 a month (if the money comes on time), he had a whole
twenty dollars. Here we have a fat-cat expat, about to return
to air-conditioned comfort, running water and a good dinner,
confronting a kid who is trying to make a living by driving a
van taking people and "suitcases, a bicycle and a couple
sheep" from one decrepit village to another. He and his
passengers are not just poor : they are verging on being destitute
in modern democratic Afghanistan. And a well-fed foreigner rips
him off for twenty dollars.
Is there any wonder why Afghans
hate Americans?
[To digress : it is deliciously
ironic that the American embassy in Britain refuses to pay London's
road congestion fee and now owes the city over a million dollars.
Perhaps the Mayor of London should ask Mr Anderson for advice.]
The rest of the story is equally
bizarre :
"Out on the side of the
highway [says PBS], a line of trucks has formed. It's the line
of drivers committed to not paying the toll. They know that all
they have to do is wait, stick around longer than the foreign
advisors. At 3:30 each afternoon, the advisors and toll collectors
pack it up for the day. The government hasn't yet hired enough
workers for a second shift, so the truckers start up their engines
and cross onto the highway, home free and $20 richer."
Lucky them. They haven't been
ripped off for a sum that is absurd to demand from a driver who
is trying to scrape a living in one of the poorest countries
in the world. And there is no point in saying the big guys who
own most of the trucks will be the ones who will pay the road
tax. Don't make me laugh. It will be the drivers, whether they
own the trucks or not, who shell out the cash, most of which
will be stolen by officials, anyway.
Afghanistan is a country in
which savage drug barons reap millions of dollars, where many
politicians and bureaucrats are up to their necks in corruption,
and thousands of children are dying of starvation. It is a
country in which, as the Senlis
Council makes clear in its report 'Five Years Later : the
Return of the Taliban', the occupation by foreign forces has
failed to improve the lives of any but those who are powerful,
rich, well-armed and brutally unscrupulous. And that's before
considering the resurgence of the vile and vicious Taliban who
are benefiting most of all from the stupidity of the foreigners
who occupy their country.
Which brings us to the matchbooks.
In the words of Senlis:
"The Taliban have seized
on incidents such as the US' infamous failed matchbooks information
gathering scheme as evidence of the international community's
ineptitude. Villagers in Kandahar province have matchbooks which
[were] "dropped from the sky by the Americans." These
matchbooks, of which thousands were distributed by the US Air
Force across southern Afghanistan, contain a message saying the
United States government will pay cash for information about
Osama Bin Laden. Locals are mystified as to why the Americans
made their reward offer in Dari, when everyone in Kandahar, if
they are literate, reads and speaks Pashto. Yet if someone
wants to offer information on Bin Laden in exchange for cash,
they would need to first make an international telephone call,
(having first discovered the US country telephone code), then
need to understand the English instructions on the other end
of the information lines. The matchbooks also suggest the option
of emailing information on Bin Laden from Afghans' home computers."
That disastrous campaign cost
a lot of money and made the US look even more foolish in the
eyes of the people at whom it was directed. The notion of emailing
from home computers in Kandahar is ridiculous. Only ten per
cent of Afghans have electricity, and the computer is unknown
by all but the privileged few ; perhaps a few thousand in 20-odd
million inhabitants. Over sixty per cent (80 % of women) cannot
read or write. There are almost no phone lines outside the few
major cities.
As recorded by Senlis :
"After five years of intensive
international involvement in Afghanistan, the country remains
ravaged by severe poverty and the spreading starvation of the
rural and urban poor. Despite promises from the US-led international
community guaranteeing to provide the resources and assistance
necessary for its reconstruction and development needs, Afghanistan's
people are starving to death. . . . . More than 70% of the
population is chronically malnourished, while less than a quarter
of the population has access to safe drinking water."
Three quarters of Afghans drink
filthy water - - when they can get any water at all. So what's
the international solution?
Coca Cola, of course. The
great American export.
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote
in his 'Confessions' that "I recollected the thoughtless
saying of a great princess, who, on being told that the country
people had no bread, replied : 'Let them eat cake'."
On September 10 President
Hamid Karzai opened a 25 million-dollar Coca-Cola bottling plant
in Kabul.
The charity Christian Aid reported
last week that "Most of the water has dried up in the provinces
of Herat, Badghis and Ghor, and the wheat harvest is down by
90% to 100% in parts of Faryab province." But why worry?
---- Send for Coca Cola to use up even more water. A press
report said that "Karzai praised the plant's developer,
Habibullah Gulzar, for investing US $25 million to build the
facility, which has provided 350 jobs and can annually produce
15 million 24-bottle cases [360 million bottles] of the soft
drink."
The millionaire developer lives
in Dubai, while in Kandahar :
"entire communities are
malnourished, with no clean water, food, nor medical care of
any kind."
Let them drink Coke.
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs.
He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com
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