Linda Norgroves' death - who's responsible?

[silverfox]

I accept that Huguenot, and maybe I read too much into Santerme's post.

I agree Afghanistan is in the dark ages. But then that's me putting my Western Liberal values on it. The best solution in all these cases, once the main threat or obstacle has been removed by military force, is that the people themselves decide how to rebuild their country. The danger is aid agencies try to encourage the indigenous population to adopt liberal parliamentary democracies and belief systems that cannot simply be imposed on countries that don't have the institutional structures necessary to support them.

If such countries decide, for example, that girls should not be educated or even be able to vote, to what extent should we interfere? If aid workers are seen to be interfering rather than helping, to be the lackeys of the invading forces, then the aid agencies are in danger and the suffering of the populace will be compounded.

[mockney piers]

Firstly, military force won't be removing any threats, it'll be maintaining instability, and secondly I think you credit agencies with too much influence. And just how do you go about encouraging a population to adopt liberal parliamentary democracy, that's a bit back to front as it's a top down thing, not a bottom up one (at least without a genuine popular revolution).

We've installed an ikea parliamentary democracy, and huge chunks of the population were actually pretty hopeful initially and still try to engage in the democratic process, but it's too corrupt and too tainted and seen (probably quite rightly) as a tool of foreign powers. Quite where the aid agencies fit into all of this is anyone's guess.