Obama's Afghanistan plan "non democratic", say US Congres...

In my view the [insurgents] motivation for fighting the Afghan government, the Americans, and others is very locally based. And that is important to realize because it means in my view that the solutions are not just about a central government, they are also about working with and understanding local dimensions, said Jones.

He told the subcommittee that the U.S. should think more concretely about bottom-up, rather than entirely top-down, which is where the U.S. has focused.

Another expert witness, Dr. Karin von Hippel, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], took a different stance by noting that although Afghanistan became a centralized state after the fall of the Taliban, there is nevertheless local involvement in politics.

They have a highly centralized form of government that may not be appropriate as you are saying to their very fragmented society, but thats what they have agreed on in the Bonn process, thats the constitution they agreed on. But that doesnt mean that there isnt a degree of a lot of local involvement at a number of different levels, Hippel said.

An example of such involvement was the National Solidarity Program - an effort by the government to reach rural communities across Afghanistan. Another example was the local councils, the shura, which can vote out the people who are in charge of certain local development projects, she said.

In his opening remarks at the hearing, US Congressman Gary Ackerman, chairman of the HCFA Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, called for a coherent regional approach in particular, one that deals effectively with Iran and Pakistan. He acknowledged that Iran had legitimate concerns regarding narcotics trafficking across its borders. But he added that there is significant evidence that Iran has armed the Taliban to gain leverage over the U.S.

While we seek their cooperation in Afghanistan, we should also insist they stop arms shipments to the Taliban in accordance with UN ...

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• news
• aghanistan
• politics
• obama
• congress
• us