Pohara’s SHA
Regarding the SHA for Golden Bay, Nelson Mail August 28.
The council will have made this decision because Pohara sections are more saleable than elsewhere, followed by those within walking distance from Takaka. There are unsold sections in the Rototai subdivision, because they are too far from town for an easy walk. New parcels of land close to town have been bought by developers.
When Cr Paul Sangster referred to a proposed Park Ave development being five minutes from town, that’s by car. The elderly who can’t drive are stranded. Cyclists have to negotiate 100kmh traffic, as do walkers as there is no footpath much of the way.
The council turned down the original application because of stormwater and traffic issues. Remedying these would push the price out of reach of first home buyers. Steve Hambrook’s comments are a bit disingenuous considering his family connections, and if Rose and Philip Windle had approached the neighbours when the subdivision was first mooted, their $50,000 might have been saved.
Last Monday, Trump announced that he would be sending more US troops to Afghanistan – probably about 4000 – and that they would stay as long as necessary. He has a clever new strategy, too: ‘‘We are not nationbuilding again. We are killing terrorists.’’
There is a strong temptation at this point to haul out the hoary old line: ‘‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’’ Trump is, indeed, proposing to do the same old things again, ostensibly in the hope of achieving different results.
Peak US troop strength in Afghanistan was 100,000 in 2010-11. If that did not deliver victory then, how likely is it that boosting US troop numbers from 8500 to 12,500 will do it now?
Neither the Soviet Union nor the British empire at the height of its power was able to overcome Afghan resistance to a foreign military presence, and we now have 16 years of evidence that the US cannot do it either.
Both the British and the Russians were able to maintain a military presence in the country as long as they were willing to take the casualties that involved, but in neither case did the regimes they installed long survive their departure. Whatever their merits, those regimes were fatally tainted by their foreign sponsorship.
The US now finds itself in precisely the same situation. Ashraf Ghani’s government is certainly not the worst that Afghanistan has had to endure, but it lacks legitimacy in the eyes conservative take on Islam was not seen as a problem by Washington when they were fighting the Russians, and most rural Afghan males do not see it as a problem now. (Nobody asks the women.)
Most urban, educated Afghans are terrified of the Taliban’s return, of course, but they are a small fraction of the population. And many foreigners see the Taliban as the least bad alternative to the US-backed regime. As Zamir Kabulov, the Russian special envoy to Afghanistan, said in early 2016: ‘‘Taliban interests objectively coincide with ours.’’
What he meant was that the Taliban aren’t interested in foreign affairs at all. They do not dream of a world Islamic empire; they just want to run Afghanistan. Indeed, they are the main military rivals to the jihadis of Islamic State and al-Qaeda who are currently trying to establish a foothold in the country – and by and large they are winning those little private wars.
But what about 9/11? There is good reason to suspect that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, then guests of the Taliban, did not warn their hosts before they carried out that atrocity, since it would clearly lead to a US invasion and the overthrow of the Taliban regime.
Obviously, few of these considerations will have occurred to Trump, but does that mean he really thinks he can win in Afghanistan? Not necessarily.
Maybe, like Obama, Trump has decided that he doesn’t want the inevitable collapse of the Westernbacked regime in Afghanistan to happen on his watch.