Ghosts of Alexander on a BBC story hawking the UAE troops in Afghanistan:
The BBC says this “Blueprint needs to be repeated and expanded by others.” Right. What blueprint? I see no significant difference other than the UAE troops being Muslim and building mosques before other more desired projects. The UAE troops are operating only with the security support of American troops and are engaging in defensive actions while handing out junk food. It would be great if there was a model here. But there isn’t. The BBC report has all the accuracy and critical thought of a DoD press release.
At least it’s not an American journalist or news agency touting such nonsense for once. GoA notes that the UAE was one of the main reasons the U.S. did not kill Osama bin Laden in 1999. Thanks. We previously noted some of our own issues with the UAE phenomenon here.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust