Alla inlägg den 1 november 2013

Av loren adams - 1 november 2013 22:00

   

Abdul Latif, 57, an Afghan man, prays on Nadir Khan hill in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. The hill is known for the cemetery of the last Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, and his family. The building, left, in the background is an unknown tomb. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

The U.S special envoy for Afghanistan said Friday that an earlier attempt to reconcile with Taliban figures willing to respect a new Afghan constitution would have saved lives and weakened insurgents, hastening the peace process in Afghanistan.

Speaking on Friday in London, James Dobbins said an earlier move might have prevented a Taliban resurgence and would have lessened its force.

"I think we made several mistakes back in 2002," he said about the era just after the successful U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in response to the 9/11 attacks on the United States, which were planned by al-Qaida leaders based inside Afghanistan. "I think it was probably a mistake to delay a serious attempt at reconciliation until 2011."

Dobbins, who is the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, spoke after talks with Britain's Foreign Office. He said there should have been an early effort to integrate Taliban members who were "willing to come over, to operate under the new dispensation, willing to accept the constitution as it was evolving at the time. Those initiatives would have been better if they had been taken earlier."

The envoy also said the 2003 invasion of Iraq shifted U.S attention away from Afghanistan at a crucial time, giving the Taliban time to regroup and raises funds.

"The decision to move onto Iraq ultimately made it more difficult to turn attention back to Afghanistan once the situation there deteriorated," he said. "So by 2005, 2006 it was clear that much more needed to be done in Afghanistan and we simply didn't have the resources to do so."

Despite these setbacks, he said Afghanistan has made progress in recent years.

Hopes for peace talks have diminished with the Taliban refusing to talk directly to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, his government or its representatives. Attempts to open talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban in June ended in failure.(Associated Press)

 
Av loren adams - 1 november 2013 12:39

  The Nuristan Provincial Reconstruction Team was fighting an outbreak of rabies in the province’s Titin Valley that had claimed the lives of four Afghan citizens, but they were not going at it alone.

The PRT gotten help from the Iowa National Guard’s 734th Agri-Business Development Team, which provided 300 doses of rabies vaccine. The vaccine was used to innoculate dogs in the area and did help avoid the slaughter of Titon Valley’s canines.

Being ADT’s veterinary officer, one of my areas of expertise is veterinary public health, and to provided technical advice to the Nuristan PRT, which did not have a veterinarian on staff. Vaccinating animal populations is the only effective way to bring a rabies outbreak like the one in Nuristan’s Titon Valley under control.

By delivering the vaccine we helped to get the rabies outbreak under control. Providing the rabies vaccine to the PRT had no downside. However, I did have one regret. We only wished that we could be there helping them.


 

Av loren adams - 1 november 2013 06:42

My mission as the veterinarian for the 734th Agribusiness Development Team stationed in Kunar province, Afghanistan  was an interesting one. For example, I was able to participate in a veterinary seminar together with 35 veterinarians,  for nearly all of the private veterinary practitioners in Kunar.

 

With the help of the provincial vet, Dr. Mohammad Ghalib, and the Cooperative Medical Assistance vet, Maj. Robert Paul, DVM, we presented numerous topics we thought would interest the Afghan vets. They were schooled on nutrition and parasitism of livestock, observed a canine castration, and two goats were examined post-mortem for pathology. The seminar was a celebration to these veterinarians who do not often come together in one room for learning.

I was particularly pleased to talk about a topic that is important to both the veterinary and medical communities. I have been working on developing a rabies control program for the province. Rabies is a disease that the world has known of for over 4000 years. As most people know it is nearly 100 percent lethal once the affected animal or person develops clinical nervous signs like delirium or headache and fever. But with today’s vaccines this same disease is nearly 100 percent preventable.

Many people, especially in the modern world, think rabies is an unimportant disease because they have never seen an animal or person with the disease. I have never seen an animal with rabies even after working in mixed animal practice for 26 years. But when I asked the Afghan vets each one said he had seen the disease. Ghalib remarked he had also seen a child die from it. In Asia and Africa over 55,000 people die each year from rabies and this number is likely widely underestimated. It is possible 100 times more people die but with poor medical care and limited public health services the deaths are not reported.


Human deaths from rabies are very difficult to watch and patients need considerable sedation which is often unavailable in the developing world. The veterinary doctors were strongly supportive of helping in a rabies control campaign. One remarked he viewed it as his duty to provide such services that would help the community. The best ways to help an Afghan community is through dog vaccination and education of the people about dog behavior and bite management. Children are particularly vulnerable and need to know how to prevent dog attacks. Rabies control programs are not easy to implement, but I left this meeting knowing my Afghan colleagues feel strongly about helping the people of their province.

 


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