Episode 58 - Remembering the Maidan Massacre and Can We Trust the Taliban?

Coming up on today's hot zone - a look back at the Maidan Square Massacre in Ukraine, and update on Afghanistan, and what the future there might hold.  Okay, Here we go!

 

Hi folks, I'm glad you are here supporting the hot zone. Over the past several weeks I've been to Syria and Venezuela, and have had the chance to help a whole lot of people because of the generosity of people like you.  My idea for this podcast is simple - go to the worst places in the world and help the people there in three ways: First and most important: pray for them.  Then, tell their stories to the world and finally look for ways to help them materially, whether by giving food, medical care or just a little bit of money to get them by.  And people are loving the concept.  I've heard from many of you who say it's so frustrating to watch the news and hear about all the heartache going on around the world and to feel so powerless to do anything about it.  I've also heard that while giving to a big charity might do some good, it isn't as satisfying as seeing exactly what is done with your money.  I want this to be a more engaging and dynamic news platform - you get the unvarnished truth about the people and places in the news - go watch yesterday's podcast if you haven't already, where I aired the uncut interview with an Iraqi soldier and war hero who was shot six times saving a little girl and her father from ISIS snipers - and then you get to reach right into those same people's lives and become a part of the story.  What's not to like?

 

Okay, let's look at the news.

 

While I've been reporting so much on Syria and Venezuela, we missed an interesting anniversary:  that of the Maidan Square massacre in Ukraine five years ago.  

 

Let's set the stage for what happened:  Back in 2014, the majority of Ukrainians wanted their country to identify more with Europe than with Russia.  And it's a well-known fact that Vladimir Putin would like to rebuild the old USSR's "buffer zone" of countries like the Balkans and control them in a sort of coalition of the unwilling.  Ukrainians didn't like that idea, but their president at the time, Victory Yanokovich, was more of a puppet of the Russians.  So on February 20, 2014, a large protest began in the central square in Kiev.  Yanukovich sent in police and ordered snipers to fire on the crowd, resulting in about a hundred people killed.  Things went south from there, and this led to weeks of tense and sometimes violent protests.  Yanukovych fled to Russia, and the country got new leadership.  But a couple months later, Russia moved troops into eastern Ukraine in Crimea, which sparked a war which is still going on to this day.  People are dying every day in this conflict - and the area around Donbass has become what some refer to as a human rights black hole.  

 

I had hoped to travel to Ukraine with a pastor friend who has very good connections there in mid-march, but I've had trouble getting the two-thousand-dollar budget approved - understandable because budgets are always tight and this kind of trip is never cheap.  But there are a lot of hurting people over there, and I'd love to get there to tell the story.  Some of the patrons of this podcast seem to think we could raise enough from our supporters to do the trip - so if you think I should go, feel free to donate via PayPal or Patreon.com, and if I can raise the funds, we'll go bring you the story and help as many people as we can.

 

As I've been researching this story I found a report that says Christians in Ukraine are targets of the Russian government, there was a list that leaked of churches across that country which would be burned if Russia invades further.  So I'd like to do more investigation into that.  

 

Anyway, let's move on to Afghanistan.  I'm very interested in the news coming out of there right now because my son Mason just arrived in Northern Afghanistan for his first combat tour as a crew chief in a medevac unit.  I've embedded with units like his before, and while many of the six thousand or so troops we have in the country right now are relegated to the advise and assist role, training Afghan troops and providing intel support, which means they rarely leave the base and get out where the fighting is, Mason's unit will be different - the medevac support they are providing to the Afghan army means they will be doing lots of point of injury pickups of wounded Afghan troops, and that means hopefully Mason will get to see some of the countries.  And of course we pray for safety, but it'd be a shame to spend nine months in the war zone and not actually see any action.  

 

On my first trip to Afghanistan, I embedded with a Medevac unit and went along on a very tragic mission that really was kind of a defining moment in my career.  Watch:

 

https://vimeo.com/manage/2111333/general

 

And there's plenty of action happening - the Taliban is simultaneously in talks with the government and stepping up attacks around the country.  2018 was the deadliest year on record in terms of civilian deaths in that country, and while ISIS is being vanquished in Syria, they are now recruiting in Afghanistan.  There they are known as ISIS-K, and US officials last week called them the biggest threat to America in the region.  So even if a peace deal is reached, and that's no fore-drawn conclusion, there will likely be continued fighting in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.  

 

It's easy to get frustrated about what's going on in that country.  We've spent a profane amount of America's blood and treasure there, and sometimes it looks like we don't have a lot to show for it.   But as the conflict has evolved over almost two decades now, It's important to see Afghanistan for what it is - in some sense a proxy battleground where we are countering Iran and even Pakistan's influence in the region.  

 

Now I don't believe all the "nation-building" we've done over there was really necessary or even helpful.  We're not going to make that country a jeffersonian democracy, and we shouldn't want to.  But much of the money we've spent over the past ten years has been an attempt to mitigate the risk to our troops by throwing money at problems which might better have been addressed with good old fashioned boots on the ground.  You know, years ago Ann Coulter made a statement regarding Afghanistan.  She said our strategy should be to go over there, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.  She got a lot of flack for that statement.  But with the benefit of hindsight, there is a lot of wisdom in that statement.  See, sometimes violence is the answer - or perhaps a shortcut to the answer.  Firebombing Dresden was a horrific thing - but it probably got us to the end of World War two sooner, which meant less aggregate misery and death in the long run, especially for America.

 

The lesson from Afghanistan is the same one my dad taught me when I was a little guy.  Do everything you can to avoid a fight.  But if you have to fight, do everything in your power to win it as quickly as possible.  Go all out.  America needs leaders who understand that lesson.

 

Pray for leaders like that.  And pray for the troops who are still, after more than seventeen years, carrying out American foreign policy in that dusty, far off land.  May God send his Spirit to Afghanistan and ease the suffering of its people.

 

That's it for the hot zone today.  If you'd like to join us, go to patreon.com/hotzone and subscribe, and please like and share us on your social media.  Hope to see you back again tomorrow, right here on the Hot Zone.