Afghanistan: All That for This …

After 12 years of war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, the restoration of stoning is one more sign of the failure of Karzai and the West.

If, before the end of December, President Hamid Karzai has not signed the long-term security agreement put forward by Barack Obama, the last 75,000 soldiers, mostly Americans, who are trying to maintain a semblance of security in Afghanistan, will leave with their weapons and equipment, without leaving behind some $4 billion of annual aid or the 15,000 foreign troops contemplated by the agreement to help the Afghan army fight terrorism and especially to continue the education and training of local soldiers.

However, after having accepted the principle ideas, Hamid Karzai, who finishes his presidency in April, has now advanced the conditions for his signature: notably, freeing the last 17 Guantanamo prisoners and receiving commitments from foreign soldiers to no longer raid Afghan houses “without being invited.”

In reality, the president that the Americans chose nearly 12 years ago to the day at the Petersburg Conference, on whom they have succeeded in imposing the nomination and re-election, finishes his last term and confirms to all that it was a terrible choice to distinguish him among his peers. He has revealed himself to be as corrupt as his brother Ahmed, the notorious drug trafficker, killed in Kandahar in 2011. And he has presented a weak front, which in reality serves as a cover for trickery and manipulation. In fact, Karzai, despite the constant support he receives from the White House, has never tried to change his country, nor to banish the demons that have made his country one of the main providers of trafficked narcotics.

Is Death by Stoning for Adultery Making a Comeback?

After 12 years during which Western nongovernmental organizations and NATO soldiers tried, sometimes at the cost of their agents’ lives, to empower women, to promote education and to civilize tribal justice, the Afghan government is contemplating returning to barbaric and medieval practices. According to Human Rights Watch, in the proposed new penal code, death by stoning for adultery will be restored. The threat of this restoration led the leader of the Paris Bar, Christiane Feral-Schuhl, to write her Afghan colleague to make him aware of her dismay and to tell him that such a measure would cause the Bar to cease all contact with their Afghan colleagues.

An equally bitter disappointment is in store for all those who tried to replace the poppy fields that bloom every spring in the Afghan valley with alternative crops. According to a U.N. statistic, the opium harvest this year yielded an historic record of 5,500 tons, a figure that surely caused the Taliban, who largely profit from opium trafficking, to rejoice.

There are definitely many who wish that the country of Kessel’s Cavaliers would return to its former practices — both in Afghanistan and in its neighboring countries. Thus, it is not too shocking to learn that on Dec. 3, Iran asked Hamid Karzai not to sign an agreement with the Americans, which involves an extended foreign presence. Is this only because the mullahs no longer want Western troops on their borders, or rather, is it because they want to re-establish the illicit commercial routes that flourished between the two countries?