A peaceful solution to end the war in Afghanistan
12/03/2009
On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama announced he would be sending another 30,000 troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, increasing the total number of troops to 100,000. The purpose of the surge is to build the capacity of the Afghan forces to secure the country before American and allied troops begin withdrawing their forces in the summer of 2011. The other reason is to develop and stabilize the country’s economy. Because, after all, this isn’t a war based on religious differences, it is a war of survival for the Afghan people.
The aftermath of Obama’s decision to send more troops is clearly evident — many Americans are upset and angry, talking and blogging in cyberspace about our president’s campaign promise to end the war and send our troops home.
In October of 2007, Obama stated that if the troops weren’t home by the time he became president, it would be the first thing he would do. Unfortunately, the first thing he needed to attend to was America’s own crumbling economy.
The second issue was the desperate need for health care for everyone. And now, Afghanistan.
Although the prevalent opinion in the States is to abandon the war and move our troops out of the hostile countries of the Middle East, based on lessons of the past, immediate withdrawal would most likely mean devastation for the countries being occupied. For instance, Rwanda. Although there wasn’t a war necessarily being waged in Rwanda, there was a hostility mounting between two factions of people, the Hutus and the Tutsis — similar to the situation of the Taliban and the Afghan people. Once the Belgians left Rwanda, genocide of more than 1 million people occurred, which devastated the country, and more than 15 years later, they are still trying to rebuild and heal the nation.
While we are adamantly opposed to further bloodshed, be it innocent civilians or American and allied troops, we would be doing our country, our troops and the people of Afghanistan a huge injustice by abandoning the country when the problem is clear — the Taliban has a stranglehold on the Afghan people because of poverty and hunger. The Taliban offers wages of $8 a day, and the Afghan people have little choice, with unemployment at 40 percent and average day labor pay of $4, but to fight to feed their families. In a documentary, Afghan Marshall Plan: Winning With Jobs Not Guns, it is clear the average Afghani isn’t hostile or even angry at Americans — in fact, many of them haven’t even heard of 9/11 or the World Trade Centers. Thousands of locals are just looking for a way to survive.
With the death of prominent anti-Taliban lawmaker, Shamsher Kahn, on Monday by a teenage suicide bomber, the hostility and instability of the country is frightening. Kahn had once said, “The Taliban say they are fighting because there are Americans here and it's a jihad. But the fact is, they aren't fighting for religion. They are fighting for money.
If they had jobs, they would stop fighting." We think Kahn is right.
While the president did not speak to the exact strategy of what our troops will be doing, we believe more violence is not the way to end this war. With numerous Afghani leaders coming together, paving the way for a peace jirga (assembly), we believe there is a diplomatic solution to this conflict — education, stabilization and jobs. In a country that has seen so much war and bloodshed, it seems to be the only sustainable answer for a brighter future.
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