26 October 2006
Pakistan-Afghanistan Conflict Roots
Barnett Rubin’s OpEd in the October 26, 2006, Wall Street Journal makes clearer some of the complex historical sources of the rivalries and politics surrounding the Hindu Kush. Like the current bloodshed from the disintegration of Iraq, much of the ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan owes its possibility to the policies of imperial Britain.
Another consequence of the U.K.’s colonial rule is the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Let’s hope that a similar legacy, the increasingly contentious cobbled-together “nation” of Nigeria, doesn’t force the U.S. or other states to assume the burden of restoring order there.
Barnett Rubin’s OpEd in the October 26, 2006, Wall Street Journal makes clearer some of the complex historical sources of the rivalries and politics surrounding the Hindu Kush. Like the current bloodshed from the disintegration of Iraq, much of the ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan owes its possibility to the policies of imperial Britain.
Another consequence of the U.K.’s colonial rule is the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Let’s hope that a similar legacy, the increasingly contentious cobbled-together “nation” of Nigeria, doesn’t force the U.S. or other states to assume the burden of restoring order there.
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