Covid - August 2021

So we had 12 new cases of Covid in the Western Isles yesterday. Reading that back, I'd prefer 12 new cases of beer, wine or uisge-beatha, but never mind.

Co-dhiù (anyway), I was remembering last year between March and July. Arrive outside Tesco, and dreading the queue. You could be expected to wait for an hour and a half before even getting in the door. Then, it was a socially distanced shuffle round the shop. Absolutely no doubling back to pick something you'd forgotten or only that moment thought of. Going round the heads of the aisles, you were under no circumstances permitted to scoot across from aisle 4 to aisle 6. If you had forgotten your cans of soup after crossing into aisle 6 (you have to know the layout of Tesco Stornoway to appreciate this), you'd have to go without - or ask a member of staff to get it for you. Well, I'll always praise Tesco staff for being helpful, and they excelled themselves during that period. What remains today, is queuing up aisle 12 to wait to be called to a till.

Do we also remember the toilet-paper panic? The soap panic? Some unfortunate souls had to wipe with yesterday's edition of the Sun (insert name of your own reviled daily rag). Awww, the lovely days of yore. The days you couldn't even go on the ferry, other than for essential purposes. The days people couldn't come to the island other than for essential purposes. Number of Covid cases in Stornoway during that time? Zero, if I recall.

And here we are in August 2021. Tourists flooding into the island with their motorhomes, and it's not the sorts we're used to. If this is the way Brits behave in Ibiza, Magaluf or Aya Napa, then I pity the poor souls that have to be hospitable to them over there. Bet they're breating a sigh of relief. 

They're back

 Yesterday, Sunday 15th August, the Taliban walked into power in the Afghan capital Kabul. Its president fled, and no resistance was offered by government forces. In the end, the government, sponsored and supported by the US and NATO, turned out to be as strong as a freshly-boiled strand of spaghetti. Spineless, a paper tiger. A failure of US foreign policy.

The Americans did well to boot the Taliban out of power in 2001. It had to be done. It is a pity that they did not stop to think about the consequences of that military victory, as it was by then. The US did not anticipate what they would have to do post-Taliban. Change management involves knowledge of the start-point of your enterprise, and knowledge of your end-point. Where do you want the enterprise you are changing to end up. The Americans did not have a clue. They went into Afghanistan in a blind rage, which is understandable after 3,000 innocent people were killed in the Twin Towers attacks of 9/11. They tried the same in Eye-rack, booting out that odious man Saddam Hussein.

Regime change. Winning the hearts and minds of the people. If you want to do that, you got to know the hearts and minds of the people. You have to understand them, their history, their culture, religion and background. Find out what their aspirations are for the future, short-, medium- and longterm. Only then can you start to work towards building a new government structure for a country. 

It was not done for Afghanistan. Hundreds and thousands of servicemen, who volunteered to serve their country, laid down their life for Afghanistan. And Iraq. Thinking they were helping to build a better place. But the politicians that sent them there let them down, for not having a plan to do so. 

They are back, the Taliban. The world has changed since 2001. Let's hope that Afghanistan has, after all, become a better place. Only time will tell.

Afghanistan

Today is the 76th anniversary of the capitulation of the Imperial Japanese Forces to the Allies, heralding the endand of the Second World War. It had required the detonation of two atomic bombs, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to prompt the Japanese to surrender. 

15th August 2021 will go down into history as the day that twenty years of military intervention in Afghanistan, by the USA, the UK and other countries, came to nothing. It was not the first time that foreign intervention in that beautiful country failed. The Soviet Union came away with a bloody nose in 1990, after ten years. 

Afghanistan was invaded in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks on the US. The country had become a safe haven for Al-Qa'eda and other extremist groups from which to launch attacks around the world. Initially, the US made a clean sweep, removing the Taliban from power and establishing a more humane government across the country. The following years were punctuated by mounting casualties; we all remember the planes coming into RAF Brize Norton, carrying the remains of fallen servicemen and -women. They were paraded through the town of Wootton Bassett, whose inhabitants would line the streets to pay homage to the poor souls who had made the supreme sacrifice in a far-off and distant land. The town was bestowed the prefix of "Royal" by HM the Queen in acknowledgement of their efforts. 

US President Joe Biden announced that all American forces were going to leave Afghanistan on 11th September 2021. The Taliban came out of hiding and in a matter of weeks have overrun the country. As I type this, they are poised to take control of the capital, Kabul. It shows that the efforts by the US and others to bring change to Afghanistan and permanently remove the Taliban from power have failed monumentally.

The point of this post is to express the bitter disappointment that all those sacrifices were in vain. Not just by US or UK forces but by all others who sought to introduce a better life to the people of Afghanistan. I cannot imagine how those who lost loved ones in that conflict must feel today. I cannot imagine how those who lost loved ones in 9/11 must feel, for it was because of their loss that the US went into Afghanistan in the first instance.

What a waste.