http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/kaldor/secure-afghanistanA great overview, empirically, of the dire situation in Afghanistan, and very much worth reading.
If TV/broadsheets paraded even a fraction of the obvious torrent of civilian suffering detailed above, we'd split our tongues. Can you recall seeing even more than a flicker? Why do we know so painfully little about this humanitarian catastrophe?
By no means, however, does Kaldor offer a rigorous analysis of the drivers behind this appallingly calculated and brutal tragedy. In fact, only a suspiciously limited one.
"Human security" is a dangerous notion because, inevitably, in practice it would mean little more than a rebranding exercise for a most detestable occupation – fresh balm laid on a crushed corpse. This is not to say, however, that we might not yet see it sold to the public as another excuse to continue the West's open-ended drive into the Middle East.That Kaldor accepts "protection of Americans" as a genuine stratagem is less bemusing than frightening, just as unironically referring to Iraq as a "mistake" in one's opening paragraph is a surefire alarm-sounder. The euphemistic deployment of "tension" is another haunted, ghostly phrase...
Read, as ever, with caution.
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