Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

An Afghan review

On the weekend an Australian soldier named Lance Corporal Jason Marks was killed in a firefight in Afghanistan. He's the fifth killed since the Australian Army deployed there in 2002. Reportedly there have been about thirty others wounded.

Six years is a long time to be at war for Australia. Going by what the Australian PM Mr Rudd has said in the past 24 hours, there's plenty of conflict to come and a high likelihood of more Australian casualties.

The number of killed and wounded on the other side is kept ambiguous. Apparently more than 1,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan this year. An estimation by Associated Press reckons about 8,000 died in 2007. As is usually the case in such figures, the innocents are lumped in with the militants.

There was another incident in Afghanistan on the weekend. It was televised to the world. President Hamid Karzai, surrounded by a small stadium full of puffed up Afghan military officers was having a good old fashioned banana-republic style military parade in Kabul. There was even a military band wearing gold braided toy-soldier uniforms which looked like hand-me-downs from some other banana republic.

Everyone had just gotten comfortable when a sneaky Taliban squad spoiled the party with some nearby gunfire and grenade explosions. Everyone jumped from their seats and ran, but not as fast as President Karzai. Outside the stadium there were amazing scenes as Afghan soldiers fled in all directions. It was a case of every man for himself.

It appeared that a significant proportion of the Afghan Army was a rag-tag affair which was more interested in conducting grandiose parades rather than doing the sort of more aggressive things which Australians are doing elsewhere.

As for the invasive Taliban squad, no one should be surprised that the survivors seemed to have melted away. Nevertheless, President Karzai's goons have been rounding up hundreds of people and disappearing them for some confessional interrogation.

As for Karzai himself, he's got a curious tribal history with many twists and turns. The best place to read of these is his Wikipedia entry.

Here's a piece of Afghan history from a nineteenth century book titled The races of mankind. I have an original copy on my bookshelf. It was published between 1873 and 1876, The woodcut is labelled, "A group of Afghans." In many areas of Afghanistan it wouldn't be difficult to find a similar scene today.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!