Brother, can you spare a pul?

So President Karzai has revealed that he has accepted money from Iran. Definitely not as much as the U.S. has given Afghanistan to tackle its bucketful of problems, but enough to fill a couple of bags. This probably confirms the worst fears those who've always suspected that Iran and Afghanistan were buddying it up somehow. Personally, though, I'm not particularly surprised. Karzai's government hasn't exactly been a paragon of accountability or fairness. What is interesting though is that the announcement follows up a period of pretty shaky U.S.-Afghan relations, and casts doubts on whether the Afghan government is going to go along with American or Iranian interests.

The same article states that Karzai claimed "American officials had leaked information to The New York Times about Iranian payments because of disagreements over the private security companies. " Whether this is true or not, it does reflect the issues that these private companies have played a part in Afghanistan's reconstruction. It's a Catch-22: the government doesn't want what are essentially Western mercenaries going trigger-happy, but without them to protect development projects, Taliban insurgents will hamper progress since local law enforcement is still insufficiently prepared to meet the threat.

The prognosis for U.S. future involvement in Afghanistan is not good at the moment. While many American news sources state that coalition troops are weakening the Taliban and that offensive operations have been a success, Afghan sources state otherwise (for a comprehensive overview, check out Afghan Notebook's entry Operation Dragon Strike and Kandahar). If the situation does not improve soon, public opinion on the war may fall so far that troops will have to withdraw soon from Afghanistan. Looking at the results from the small sample of students I surveyed for my project, the majority feel that the U.S. has been in Afghanistan for too long; this has been the second longest conflict for U.S. involvement, a few months short of Vietnam. And not to be too pessimistic, but we all know how that ended.

There is also a question of how this will affect U.S.-Iran relations (or lack of). Iran's the giant octopus in the Middle East room, and no one's quite sure where it's tentacles are reaching out to, which is what what makes it so unpredictable right now. We can see from Ahmadinejad's recent visit to the U.S. that there is little love for him, and it's partly because he's smart. Real smart, and a smooth talker. In most of his media appearances with pundits such as Larry King, he came looking a lot better than most would like, and without driving any interpreters to collapse from exhaustion during his speeches. There have been some overtures made towards nuclear talks, but even then there is no guarantee with the rapid changes in politics on both sides.

To continue the octopus theme:

RIP Paul (2008-2010)

*DRAMATIC PRAIRE DOG* - Say whaaaat?

No, this post isn't actually about the Dramatic Prairie Dog. Sorry to disappoint you. He is a cute fella though.

I used that title for a reason: just to see if I could grab your attention with an Internet meme. Because when I was going over my Afghanistan feeds and saw the title "Zombies*", I wanted to read it. Halloween is coming up, after all.

And it turned out to be about zombies after all, in a way. Zombies with notepads and pens and overly friendly microphones. Even better, it was relevant to my project about public opinion in Afghanistan. Or lack of.

Recent articles on Afghanistan have been primarily about how the electorate frankly doesn't give much of a damn about it at the moment. The New York Times alone has "For Midterm Voters, War is Off the Radar", "The Wars That America Forgot About", and from dear readers, "Letters-Why the Wars Aren't a Campaign Issue." Bit weird when you remember that the U.S. is still helping the Afghan government engage in one of the biggest and possibly most precarious set of talks with the Taliban.

Who's fault is it? The public, for just getting jaded and preoccupied with domestic issues? Or the shoddy, same-old-same-old reporting that comes out of that region, as Joshua Foust argues?

Bit of both, really.

I can attest to domestic issues being a higher priority for many Americans. Living in California, I have been bombarded with sundry TV commercials to vote for/against Jerry Brown, vote for/against Meg Whitman, vote for Prop 19, vote against Prop 26, etc. which can take the fun out of watching a 30 minute Simpsons episode. I'm not even eligible to vote, but I feel like I have to, just so something can get done, even if it's just so the green stuff can be smoked legally. And for a while, I definitely forgot that there were other, literal matters of life and death happening beyond the Atlantic and the Pacific.

If this is being played out in every state, of course people will be worrying about whether they're checking the right box on November 2. And that's not counting the constant head-banging over the economy and unemployment.

So what's the media got to do with it?

Foust makes a good point when he says "it’s rare to find a reporter for a major paper or TV channel that routinely quotes actual Afghans in their stories about Afghanistan." Everything in the news is about what America is doing in Afghanistan, and almost no space is given to what Afghans are doing in Afghanistan.

I won't crucify the media just yet because it makes sense if you consider that newspapers will choose to print what Americans will think is relevant, because there's only so much space available. Furthermore, many of the journalists stationed there don't go beyond Kabul much due to security concerns. What are they supposed to print then?

This brings me back to my project. If the general public is pretty apathetic to foreign issues, who knows what college students are going to think. Maybe they'll be the same, if not even more numb due to the proverbial anvil of midterms (political and academic) hovering over their heads. Or they could be more aware, more inquisitive, because they are in college and there are opportunities to explore. Who knows?

You know what, I feel kind of bad. And it was my birthday yesterday. So here you are, as a metaphor for my friend's reaction when I told her I'd only just become legal (I'm a little young for the class):

Is anyone out there?

Finding a social bookmarking buddy is like trying to find a crush's profile on Facebook. It involves fact-checking, a degree of uncertainty, a lot of cyber-stalking, and the other person probably doesn't even know you're trying to find them.

But that was our assignment, so after trawling arenas such as Diigo and Delicious, it seems that AfghanVeracity comes the closest to being my social bookmarking buddy in that their bookmarks almost exclusively cover political and social issues in Afghanistan. Looking at their tags, they like to cover topics such as:

• Women
• DVDlist
• Non-profit
• Booklist
• Military_Policy
• News
• Activists
• DOD
• Military_Experience
• US_Gov't

Their chosen bookmarks often lean towards a focus on women, especially women in the military whom are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Issues can range from the role of women in the military, to how women are adapting to social changes in Afghanistan and what challenges remain. My research focus wasn't going to be that gender-specific, but these sources do provide an interesting perspective.

AfghanVeracity's account also stood out because most of their bookmarks also come with a small blurb about what the article or link is about, which helps me figure out what the content is because I am lazy and may not want to read it myself. For example, NewsHour: Women in Combat Numbers Increase is bookmarked with the concise "Intv. with Female Vet, talks about working with local women", so I instantly know it will be along the lines of a transcript with a veteran soldier. If that's what I want, I can click on it. And in this case I did, which revealed a very insightful look into how female soldiers have dealt with both the pressures of combat and serving along male comrades whom may or may accept women serving in the front line.

The blurbs are particularly useful in AfghanVeracity's case because a lot of their links are not to articles, but to websites of organisations and institutions such as the Afghan Women's Mission, which provides more practical advice on how to support such issues such as schools and health clinics for girls, as well as contextual information.

Maybe I was trying to be too picky about what would be a close bookmarking buddy, since beggars can't really be choosers, but sadly, there have been no updates on AfghanVeracity's account since May, so it is highly possible that the account is defunct and there won't be any new bookmarks in the near future. There are also only 32 bookmarks, which is not a bad number for a timespan of 2 months, but 2 months is the entire account history. And the majority of bookmarks were created in a single spree on 23 April 2010. Nevertheless, after checking out what links already exist, I think I can still put it to good use for my research in the social aspects of Afghanistan.

Dipping my oar in

This week's assignment required us to "dip our oar in" and comment on blogs covering topics similar to ours.


The Canada-Afghanistan Blog: Teaching Soldiers to Read

I’d never heard of this program before I found it referenced on your blog, but it sounds like an interesting idea. It never occurred to me that this would be an issue: I assume that the US and UK military require some sort of basic literacy before you can fully enlist for the very reasons mentioned by Lt. Gen. Caldwell about serial numbers and bank accounts.

That said, I checked out the original article, and the comments posted there raise some interesting questions about the information presented, such as: What languages exactly will the soldiers be taught? Serial numbers use English, but will they also be taught to be literate in their own language, and if so, to what extent? I am not familiar with the many local languages and dialects spoken over there, but I would imagine that it would not be easy finding one written script for all to read unless it were something like Arabic. Some of those commenters also seem justifiably peeved at the fact that money is being spent to teach Afghans when so many children back in the United States are already having issues with education; what are your thoughts?

It’s possible that these issues have already been covered in the program, and the details were somehow omitted when writing the article. I am very curious as to how this will turn out, and I will try and follow it on my own blog as well.

Afghan Notebook: Afghan Protests Turn Violent

I’m not one of your students, but that is a very interesting question you put at the beginning. Afghanistan and its neighbours are all very religious countries, and the clergy have an enormous amount of influence not seen in the U.S. or many Western countries anymore, at least not since the 18^th century or so. (Unless you count Catholicism.) As to why the proposed burning of the Qur’an provoked so much more anger than other equally shocking events, I think it is because of the Qur’an’s status in Islam. If a Bible burning were to take place, I’m sure there will be pockets of outraged reactions from the Christian community. However, the physical form of the Bible seems to me secondary to the text within it and the lessons of that text. With the Qur’an, the whole is sacred. I was taught in class that one should technically make sure they are purified through ablution before handling the Qur’an to read from it. And if I treated that seriously, I would be angry too if someone wanted to burn it to make a political statement.

On a final note, I am glad that they chose not to do it after all, but that doesn’t mean the sentiment has gone away. I also wonder what it feels like for Muslims who are serving in the U.S. army and have to witness the outpouring of anger on both sides.