Sunday, March 21, 2004

Let's hope this isn't a trend http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3555257.stm Afghanistan's Civil Aviation Minister, Mirwais Sadiq, has been killed in the western city of Herat. One report said Mr Sadiq died after a rocket propelled grenade hit his car. The attack followed a failed bid to kill his father, the governor of Herat. After Mr Sadiq's death, heavy fighting broke out between troops loyal to his father and a senior local military commander Zahir Nayebzada, police said. There are reports that up to 100 people have been killed in the clashes. Of course, Afghanistan isn't a democracy.  It's torn by ethnic, tribal, religous factions, ruled by warlords, and struggling mightily under a foreign-appointed government trying to rule from within the walls of its enclave. Not at all like Iraq, of course.  4:03:37 PM    Comment []  trackback []

Let's hope this is a trend I am far, very far, from being an expert on Malaysian politics... but it appears that Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has won re-election in a landslide, with the Islamic Party, Pas, losing control of the two states they control. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3554137.stm Now, this could be all upside down...I'm assuming that the winners are more moderate, and less tolerant of radical jihadists, than the Pas people. I hope so, and that this will prove to be the start of a trend in the politics of countries with substantial Islamic populations. Those that actually have elections, of course. 3:52:48 PM    Comment []  trackback []

Reconstruction progress The Christian Science Monitor's Dan Murphy has a nice, brief recap of progress in Iraq on the first anniversary of the invasion (complete with charts!). The lead grafs: BAGHDAD – Andy Bearpark, the soft-spoken Briton in charge of the US-led coalition's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, was detailing an impressive list of achievements Wednesday morning. Phone services, basic sewage, electricity, and oil production have all improved to near prewar conditions. A nationwide poll found that 70 percent of Iraqis say their lives are going well since the US invasion. Iraq's infrastructure "is roughly back to where we were before the war,'' Mr. Bearpark says. "Roughly back to where we were before the war" seems like a fairly low level of achievement. As I recall, the military campaign was both swift, and about as gentle on the infrastructure as all the prognosticators at the time could have projected. The initial "shock and awe" bombing was intense, but brief. There was virtually no grand, last stand "Battle of Baghdad", which was a great fear of all the military experts. Saddam did nothing like 1991, when he torched thousands of wells. Basically, we got Iraq in as whole a condition as could have been hoped. So why are we only back to square one? How bad would things be now if there had been a brutal, bloody, prolonged Battle of Baghdad, or if Saddam had blown up everything in a bitter, scordhed earth last act? Or both? It boggles the mind. Let's not forget, too, that much of the sorry state of the Iraqi infrastructure was due to the nature of the post-1991 war sanctions. Anything that had the remotest possibility of so-called "dual use" was banned. Among other things, this meant the almost total degradation of Baghdad's water purification and sewage treatment facilites -- as pumps failed, parts to repair them were unavailable. (For a good, if dry, accounting of 90's Iraq sanctions and diplomacy, Dilip Hiro's "Neighbors Not Friends" is indispensable). So, let's not go patting ourselves on the backs too much for rebuilding the infrastructure. There's a certain amount of "we opened/painted a school!" level of analysis I see in the press, which always makes me thing, "Uh, didn't they already open schools? This isn't reconstruction." 9:46:55 AM    Comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jon Moyer. Last update: 3/30/2004; 4:48:42 PM.