Afghan Paper Urges International Community to Fight Root Causes of Terrorism

Text of editorial entitled: “Dragon should be killed” by Afghan state-run newspaper Anis on 15 January

Our country is dealing with a critical situation. The apparent interference of Pakistan in the internal affairs of Afghanistan has created a challenge for the reconstruction projects in our country and has engaged various Afghan bodies in security issues. The NATO and coalition forces have not yet been able to control the security crisis in our country despite their serious operations against terrorism, and the Pakistani agents are becoming more active in our country day by day.

The USA recently announced that it would deploy 600 additional soldiers in Afghanistan. It already has 20,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, some 12,000 of which are currently operating within the framework of NATO.

Although the deployment of 600 additional soldiers in Afghanistan will not be very effective and while it does not point to any new policy, it should, however, be seen from the military and security perspectives of Afghanistan which is that the USA should think of fighting terrorism and terrorist bases on the other side of the border. It will be difficult to contain the current security problem unless the root causes of terrorism are dealt with.

Sending more soldiers to Afghanistan and not paying attention to the actual root causes of terrorism which are in the other side of the border will not yield any result but higher casualties among these troops. If the Taleban are not suppressed at their training camps and breeding centres, they will inflict damage not only to the Afghans but also to American soldiers.

This issue was also debated by the NATO leaders and member countries some time back. Some NATO commanders frankly opposed the proposal on deploying more soldiers in Afghanistan and reasoned that the solution to the problem demands that the channels through which terrorists penetrate Afghanistan should be sealed on the other side of the border. They suggested this because they had witnessed many Taleban groups crossing the border and infiltrating Afghanistan, carrying out destructive operations in Afghanistan and receiving logistical and intelligence support from the Pakistan side.

It is no longer a secret that thousands of Taleban receive ideological and military training in Waziristan, Haripur, Shamshato, Pashtunabad, Gerdjangal, Mansehra, Akora and other places and are then sent to Afghanistan. Unless the government of Pakistan, especially the Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI], are put under pressure by the international community, even deployment of thousands of additional soldiers will not help to prevent suicide attacks, mine explosions or the Taleban crossing the border and penetrating into Afghanistan. There is no use beating a dragon’s tail, but, in order to kill the dragon it must be hit on the head. It is extremely important for NATO and USA to recognize the head of the dragon and do not fight its tail.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring South Asia. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.