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“Should the U.S. and Afghanistan Remain Allies”, Term Paper Example

Pages: 13

Words: 3689

Paper details

– Start your paper with a statement about why you think the U.S. should or should not remain allies

with Afghanistan. Then provide written rationale (basis) for your position.

– Include a short history of Afghanistan including info on population, demographics, economy, etc.,

– Include thoughts, ideas, and information from what you learned in the class by adapting terms and concepts of your textbook.

– Include information from appropriate newspapers and Internet sources.

– Include facts and figures from official statistics if appropriate and available.

– End your paper with a final comment/conclusion about your opinion/position

Use the course text as one reference (Handelman, H. 2011). Soc 300: The challenge of Third World development.

Intro:

In my opinion, Afghanistan and the United States of America should be allies. Afghanistan and the U.S. will only prosper and encourage further democratic remolding within other forlorn countries; immediately thereafter, teach by example. That is what I would like to see happen. That is how the world should better grow and prosper. That is the perfect way to establish this fairy-tale world.

That is, in my limited scope of U.S. incorporated ideals as established during my morally “correct” upbringing, at least by the standards of my predecessors, that would be the way to go about bringing a peaceful, open-minded, benevolently and righteous world together (hypothetically). Practically, and far more realistically, so many considerations and, next, plan-revisions will absolutely come about before any open-mindedly-influential progress can come about.

However, I do agree that Afghanistan would be the first place to start encouraging democratic growth; on the other hand, realistically I see that any principled demand would only lead to wars, deaths, anguish, and draw us all apart even further.

Essay:

Should the United States and Afghanistan Remain Allies? As a question to answer a question, an additional rhetorical question, have the U.S. and Afghanistan ever been allies? If that answer were to dictate the answer of both questions, then the answer would be a distinguished no. However, this book concerns the progress of humanity as a whole, the unity. Humans are social, and we all need to recognize that there is nothing more important that each other.

Afghanistan, a civilization that is set apart from a democracy due to nothing more than their third-world insight, if you will, must find some method for survival. Their established third-world emotional angst that has yet to even draw a curiosity, collectively, about where to begin in order to become a progressive industrialized democracy, let alone how to dig forty-feet down into the earth and find water to filter, is vitally important for human survival. Thus, there must be some way to engage this deprived nation, right? Hmmm….

“…at least 5 million additional deaths resulted from ethnic conflict in the Congo alone, with hundreds of thousands more in Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Since the end of the Cold War, the world’s attention has focused increasingly on ethnic clashes. Some experts predict that poor, densely populated countries will experience increased ethnic conflict over scarce resources (such as farmland) in the coming decades” (Handelman, 2011).

The Challenge of Third World Development, 6th Edition, by Howard Handelman, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, brings light to political, economic, and social issues that are familiar to a myriad of Third World countries. While detailing several themes of modernization and democratization, in their deprived worlds as opposed to ours, and the independent, pragmatic dependency theory (a response to the zealously hopeful merge implied within the Modernization theory), scrutinizing the existence and happenstance of underdeveloped nations, in this case Afghanistan.

Howard Handelman, conclusively, holds a tighter focus on the progressive over the historical predicament of future sabotage due to their previous failures. For Afghanistan to achieve a level of ecologically-balanced progress needed to guarantee long-term self-sufficiency to assure any security, then democratic, religious, and political changes need to happen; any resolve of standing ethnic conflict; agrarian reconstruction, sexist or one-sided Napoleonic (chauvinistic) rearrangement; and rapid urbanization all must take place. But that does not necessarily mean that this part of the Indian Mogul empire has necessarily been tainted beyond al recognition, nor does the terrorism during the reelection campaign of President Hamid Karzai in 2009.

In all reality, the greatest threat to Afghanistan’s economic reconstruction exists within the insufficient infrastructure and botched hope of further development. This is why Howard Handelman’s book is more progressive than stagnant and consumed in the historical predicament set by previous sabotage. That carelessness regarding Afghanistan’s banking system, which resulted in millions of dollars in losses, and the fraudulent matters that took place within Kabul Bank can be quite crushing in concern to hopes of any rehabilitation.

The fundamentalist Muslim movement recognized as Taliban, and Obama’s other global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist known as al-Quada, al-Qaida, or al-Qa’ida, are both recognized as “an international terrorist network, [and] is considered the top terrorist threat to the United States,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations ( HYPERLINK “http://www.cfr.org” http://www.cfr.org, 2012). All that, plus the morally unspeakable attack on Shiite worshippers where around 60 people were killed in Kabul, can be quite overwhelming. Fix this war-zone? Simply considering that question will intimidate any virtuously minded civilian that was not raised anywhere near such a desolate region or brought up in a ethically displaced region; there is only so much that strategists, textbooks, and other analysts can rationalize for any group or individual.

Nonetheless, the matter is not about how to tactfully address this irremediable Afghan War concern, but instead that a sole focus must be placed on the fact that Afghanistan has the ability to be slowly integrated into a much-needed catalyst if the rest of the world wishes to have a say in this matter. World democratization is far too out of reach to even be imaginable, at this time, but slight steps can and must be taken, first with Afghanistan. President Karzai has sworn to fight corruption and legislate as a progressive reformist and not defensively or reactively. Now Afghanistan’s economic reconstruction, despite “civil war in the previously obscure country of Afghanistan,” is a feat that does not seem as impossible. Accordingly, for the sake of both countries, they will both better prosper only if the U.S. and Afghanistan remain allies.

Here are additional official statistics concerning Afghanistan, including info on population, demographics, economy:

Afghanistan Economy:

Every bit of this article is imperative to the welfare of Afghanistan:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.

So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”

With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”

The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency (Risen, 2010).

History, according to Afghanistan History. afghanan.net:

Nyrop, Richard F. & Donald M. Seekins, Afganistan: A Country Study Department of the Army, 1986

Afghanistan’s History, its internal political development, its foreign relations, and its very existence as an independent

state have been largely determined by its location at the crossroads of Central, West, and South Asia. Waves of migrating peoples poured through the region in ancient times, leaving a human residue to form a mosaic of ethnic and linguistic

groups. In modern times, a.. well as in antiquity, great armies passed through the region, establishing at least temporary local control and often dominating Iran and northern India as well.

Although it was the scene of great empires and flourishing trade for over two millennia, Afghanistan did not become a truly independent nation until thetwentieth century. For centuries a zone of conflict among strong neighboring powers, the area’s heterogeneous groups were not bound into a single political entity until the reign of the brilliant Ahmad Shah Durrani, who in 1747 founded the monarchy that ruled the country until 1973. After his death, the absence of a strong

successor possessed of military and political skills resulted in the temporary disintegration of the kingdom he had created, a frequent pattern in the society’s history. Just as it was the arena of conflict between the Mughal Empire of India and the Safavi Empire of Iran in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Afghanistan in the nineteenth century lay between the expanding might of the Russian and British empires. It was in the context of this confrontation that Afghanistan in its contemporary form came into existence during the reigns of Dost Mohammad Khan and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan.

Historical patterns of the past several centuries remained relevant to the nation’s situation in the mid-1980s. First, because of Afghanistan’s strategic location geopolitically, great rival powers have tended to view the control of Afghanistan by

a major opponent as unacceptable. Sometimes the Afghans have been able to use this circumstance to their benefit, but more often they have suffered grievously in the great power struggles. Great powers have considered Afghanistan’s internal politics more as a reflection of international rivalry than as events in themselves.

From afghanan.net:

Afghanistnn: A Country Study numerous peoples of the society. Only in response to foreign invasions or as part of a conquering army outside the country have the many diverse groups found common cause. In the more remote areas tribal warriors-particularly the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group-have successfully resisted foreign domination for centuries. Neither the heirs of Alexander the Great nor those of Genghis Khan, Timur, or Ahmad Shah were able to subdue the tribes permanently.

A third enduring pattern in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been the gradual extension of Russian control

into Central Asia. The strategies used by the tsar’s generals to subdue the khans north of the Amu Darya may have been

instructive to Soviet commanders who moved across the river in 1979. The Afghans, like the Turks and Iranians, historically have had both a fear of the Soviet Union and a desire to benefit from relations with their northern neighbor.

Finally, one cannot examine Afghan history without noting the key role of Islam. Even Genghis Khan was unable to uproot Islam, and within two generations his heirs had become Muslims. Religious leaders have always played a political role

and, as in many other nations, religion has served as a means of political expression. An important, if often unacknowledged, event in Afghan history that played a role in the politics of Afghanistan’s neighbors and the entire region up to the present was the rise in the tenth century of a strong Sunni dynasty- the Ghaznavids-whose power prevented the eastward spread of Shiism from Iran and thereby assured that the majority of Muslims in Afghanistan and South Asia would become Sunnis.

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