Australians in Afghanistan

[George L. Singleton]

Cynthia Bynum, diplomatic correspondent out of Sydney, Australia, in her article which Noble Industries posted the link for, writes a masterful piece which I hope the Australian pols and top brass will read and seek to implement.

Complacent "this is how we have always done it, nothing really new under the sun" is a dangerous attitude for any of us in today's world.

The terrorist Taliban and al Qaida are irregular guerilla fighters whose patterns are changing frequently, simply said. We must do likewise and perpetually keep them off guard until they are KIA.

Likewise, the Pakhtun "code or constitution" which is unwritten creates havoc as locals are brainwashed culturally to more often than not help the terrorists not the allies nor even the national forces of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This cultural problem needs immediate heavy focus via psyops, Voice of America, the BBC, et al, as the backwoods civilian Pakhtun population are in many instances 100% dependent on TV and radio for all their news and information...*excluding the enemies use of low beam FM radio broadcasts to guide their troops in the field...we need a better "interrupter" fix for enemy FM, too.

In Afghanistan specifically a huge number of Pakhtuns, and other ethnic groups of smaller numbers, are totally and literally illiterate. Similiar problems in Pakistan in FATA, N. & S. Waziristan, and parts of the NWFP, into Pak Occupied Kashmir. Swat formerly had a pretty good public education system which the Taliban and al Qaida have targeted and physically destroyed as much of as they could until now.