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| Afghanistan |
| Anti-Taliban vote could be a gain for Canadian troops |
| 2008-03-08 |
| It may be the best news for Canadian Forces since their arrival in Kandahar in 2005 -- yet it comes neither from inside Afghanistan, nor as a result of Canada's gruelling military efforts there. In historic elections across Pakistan on Feb. 18, voters in North-West Frontier Province threw out the fundamentalist Islamic parties that have controlled the provincial government -- and provided safe haven to the Taliban -- since 2002. In their place, voters elected a coalition of moderate, staunchly secular groups including the Awami National Party (ANP), a Pashtun movement remarkable for its dislike of Islamic jihadism and the Taliban. While the national election results -- and the victory of two opposition parties hostile to President Pervez Musharraf -- dominated headlines in Canada after the election, many experts say the vote in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) has huge but little-understood implications for the war in Afghanistan. It's likely to have a more profound impact on Canada's mission in Kandahar than the promise of another 1,000 troops, or the delivery of military helicopters. "The major threat to the Taliban offensive is not from the front but from the rear -- Pakistan," says Barnett Rubin of New York University, a world-renowned scholar on Afghanistan. "As the Taliban and al-Qaida launch their spring operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the political challenge to the control of their base areas is [now] their greatest vulnerability," says Mr. Rubin in a recent online commentary about the ANP victory, posted on the U.S. political blog Informed Comment: Global Affairs. Ahmed Rashid, a respected Pakistan journalist, is equally clear about the sudden political transformation in the Taliban's zone of sanctuary. "There have been big celebrations in Kabul at the victory of the ANP, he said in a recent online interview with Harper's Magazine. "President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan will be hoping to see a real crackdown on the Taliban leadership that has been given sanctuary in Pakistan... He is particularly close to the ANP leaders whom he calls his brothers." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 About US * Barnett R. Rubin * charles d smith * Farideh Farhi * Gershon Shafir * Manan Ahmed * Juan Cole * arn * philip j cunningham * Rhoda Kanaaneh Yes. Good catch, Free Radical. :-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-03-08 08:52 |
| #1 "As the Taliban and al-Qaida launch their spring operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the political challenge to the control of their base areas is [now] their greatest vulnerability," says Mr. Rubin in a recent online commentary about the ANP victory, posted on the U.S. political blog Informed Comment: Global Affairs. Isn't 'Informed Comment' Dr. juan Coles bedwetting site.? If that guy told me that the sky was blue, I would look up. |
| Posted by: Free Radical 2008-03-08 06:16 |