The most interesting aspect of the news that there are CIA agents in the Afghan government is how quickly the story died in the media, when by all rights it should have prompted a month-long scandal...
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Apparently, not all new ideas are good. The time has come to show more respect for traditional notions of government, citizenship and national interests.
BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN - Beset by mounting casualties on the battlefield and deepening disquiet at home over the United States' longest war, President Obama's Afghan policy now faces another big headache: the unraveling of central authority in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian nation that hosts a U.S. air base critical to the battle against the Taliban.
Just a month after agreeing to extend for a year a $60 million lease on a U.S. air base here, Kyrgyzstan's generally pro-Western but increasingly impotent president, Roza Otunbayeva, has retreated from U.S.-backed security programs that Washington hoped would help fortify a fragile Kyrgyz government. These include a counterterrorism and anti-narcotics training center and an international police mission.
The government's paralysis, most notable in its inability to control truculent Kyrgyz nationalists in the south of this former Soviet republic, does not pose any immediate physical threat to the U.S. air base, which is about 20 miles from the capital, Bishkek, in the north. But it does raise the prospect of prolonged and possibly bloody clashes ahead and strengthens forces inimical to Washington's interests in the region.
What diplomats and local analysts describe as perilous political drift in Bishkek has been compounded by the approach of parliamentary elections in October, a vote that will probably amplify nationalist voices wary of the West and further enfeeble Otunbayeva.
BITTER infighting, duelling court actions and allegations of death threats at the Manitoba Islamic Association threaten to tear the organization apart during the holiest time of the Muslim year.
Right in the middle of Ramadan, a time when Muslims pray, fast, and perform charitable deeds, Naseer Warraich and Idris Elbakri are both claiming they are the legal head of the organization founded in 1969. Warraich was elected for a two-year term during the MIA's annual general meeting last December. Elbakri was elected by members who were at a special meeting in June.
Warraich has filed documents in Court of Queen's Bench asking for the results of the June election to be tossed and asking for an order preventing the president and council elected during that meeting from making decisions or exercising authority over the MIA.
In the other corner, Elbakri and the rest of his executive council have filed documents asking for the courts to order an entirely new election for all seven executive positions and to have a judge appoint someone to oversee the election.
The whole matter ends up back in the lap of a Court of Queen's Bench justice on Sept. 27.
Warraich said on Monday he has received death threats, which he has referred to police, for continuing his battle to retain the organization's top job.
But Warraich said he would be willing to drop his battle if everyone would agree to have an outside firm audit the MIA's financial books for the last few years.
"It's a charity organization with a charity status," he said. "I was going to do an audit, but then all this came together. The government should look into how the money is spent."
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Battle brewing over leadership of Islamic group
To the death, I sincerely hope.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/01/2010 12:21 Comments ||
Top||
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I wonder if I could foul this whole situation up and keep it before the courts for years by filing papers claiming that I, a retired guy and noted sh*t disturber, should be declared the legal head of this organization.
Would that set the cat amongst the pigeons for a bit?
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The problem with the article is that like most 'analysis' it focuses on what's measurable, noses and equipment. It fails to analyze qualitative changes in the forces and the transitional costs that involves. Just check out the equipage of the grunt in 1998 and what he gets today, not just in load but in the ability to exploit capabilities that didn't exist at low level unit ops. How more effective is that element today over that element yesterday? Now carry that perspective throughout the entire force structure. Personnel is also a major DoD cost and operating a volunteer military during war is never going to be done on the cheap except with low skill, basically trained cannon fodder.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
