Afghans brave bombs to go to long-delayed polls
Afghans came out in force to vote in long-delayed parliamentary elections yesterday despite long queues and explosions that killed or wounded dozens.
Security forces were on high alert after threats from both the Taliban and Islamic State to disrupt the polls, which were originally scheduled for 2016.
A surprising 2500 candidates contested the 249 seats, many of them young hopefuls fed up with the old guard.
However, the election took place in the shadow of the assassination on Friday of General Abdul Raziq, the powerful police chief of Kandahar, by his own bodyguard.
Afghanistan is now heading into its 18th year of war.
But a former US Navy Seal, Erik Prince, talked last week about his proposed solution. He wants to privatise the conflict, replacing the 15,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan and 30,000 contractors with 6000 highly paid mercenaries.
Prince is best known as the founder of Blackwater, the private security company. He now heads a private equity firm. His plan has horrified US generals and the Afghan government but he says it would save more than US$50 billion (NZ$75b) a year as well as many lives.
‘‘After 17 years, thousands of dead Americans, tens of thousands of dead Afghans and trillions of dollars, it’s safe to say we as a nation have exhausted the conventional approach,’’ he said.
Prince, who was an early donor to Donald Trump’s election campaign and is the brother of Betsy deVos, the education secretary, has sent the president a 10-minute video pitch complete with soundtrack and soundbites.
He is highly critical of how America and Nato have conducted the war.
‘‘It’s not a 17-year war – it’s 30 rotations of war, sending different units each for six to eight months who spend two months getting to know the area and two months packing up so are productive, at most, for two months,’’ he said.
He proposes sending in 3600 skilled mentors, paid between US$500 and US$800 a day, who would embed with Afghan battalions long-term. They would be backed by a 1500-strong air force , 1000 personnel organising logistics and 2500 special forces.
Prince has calculated that all this, along with building two western-standard combat hospitals to reduce the high death rate, would come to US$10.5b compared to the US$62b currently spent by America in Afghanistan.