Afghanistan Slipping Further Away
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism
That’s what the CIA is tellling the administration.
Here’s more from the NY Times:
The assessment found that Mr. Karzai’s government and security forces continued to struggle to exert authority beyond Kabul, said a senior American official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The assessment also found that increasing numbers of Afghans viewed Mr. Karzai’s government as corrupt, failing to deliver promised reconstruction and too weak to protect the country from rising Taliban attacks. [...]The assessment, which was conducted before Mr. Karzai’s visit to Washington in late September, echoes the frustration that has gathered force in Afghanistan since the spring, and American officials in Washington and Kabul are expressing increasingly dire warnings regarding the situation here. Ronald E. Neumann, the American ambassador in Kabul, said in a recent interview that the United States faced “stark choices� in Afghanistan. Averting failure, he said, would take “multiple years� and “multiple billions.�
“We’re going to have to stay at it,� he said. “Or we’re going to fail and the country will fall apart again.�
Listen, the fight in Afghanistan always felt more important than Iraq because of the Taliban and Osama. And let’s not mention 80% of the world’s heroin production.
Maybe we’ll start paying more attention to Afghanistan after the election…
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 5th, 2006 and is filed under Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 5th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Maybe you guys SHOULD start paying more attention, and take back responsibility for YOUR war.
As a Canadian, I don’t think Canada should be engaging in warfare, especially someone else’s war. But we’re already more than half in and we can’t stop now. The only way for us to pull out is if you Americans go back in.
November 5th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
I agree. We should.
But how do you think we’re going to go about that?
November 5th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
NATO, ISAF, the US and the collation forces are fighting the wrong war in Afghanistan.
An indigenous insurgency has never been put down by military force that is not draconian in nature. The Russians could not do it here and they were much more willing to suffer causalities and to trample over human rights than any western democracy ever will be.
The way to defeat an indigenous insurgency is not by military force but by removing the factors that make people support the insurgency.
That means having a functional government, a functional educational system, a functional infrastructure and a viable middle class. Getting this to the Afghan people means some true aid and not just the phantom aid that is practiced. (Much of the money being spent in the donor country, huge mark-ups for agencies and NGO’s who simply pas the work on to a sub contractor who re-sub contracts for the work after taking as much as 50% in overhead etc.)
It also means actually putting the Afghan government in charge of the country. Right now the government of Afghanistan has no control over the tens of thousands of foreign military troops in the country. This is an occupied country,
Give the people something to live for and they will not be as willing to throw away their lives for nothing.
November 6th, 2006 at 7:42 am
What you’re reading in the papers and seeing on the TV isn’t even close to accurate. I wrote letters to editors all the time on my first deployement explaining how the stories they were reporting didn’t match up with my eyewitness accounts. After being routienly ignored that time I haven’t done that so much this time.
You don’t see the stories about the new wells, new schools, new tractors, district centers. The “journalists” aren’t talking about the changes from one month to the next, one year to the next; the crowds of children going ot and from school every day where there were none. The refugees returning to previously vacant land. You hear abouthte crops of poppies and marijuana, but not the huge crops of wheat, barley, vegetables, and fruit. You get treated to a daily running bodycount, but you do not get told what those lives bought.
The stories are all about the price and nothing about the value.
http://blip.tv/file/97012
If the Taliban or the Iraq insurgents offer up propaganda, that gets published, but any hint of “spin” on our part is a vice somehow.
I’m not one of these that will claim that the media is biased, or rather, not politically biased. What they are is anti-establishment. Government, regardless of party, is bad, and the crusading journalists are going to expose the truth and show you all how you’ve been deceived. As such we can do no good and presenting such would expose a pro-American bais which they must guard against. It’s a theory anyway.
The simple fact is that no one can declare this effort a failure. Churchill once made a comment about the end of the beginning and such applies here as well. Did we hope to get away without having ot supply a generational effort? Of course. It was a possibility. Turns out not to have come to pass. That’s not a failure, just a reality.
You should have seen this place in 2003. It’s not even the same place today. Kandahar has electricity. Since Operation Medusa there is a night life too. That’s huge. Returning refugees is a clear measure of the conquoring of fear and so is the family in Kandahar that will sit outside on a fall night to watch television.
But you’re going to have to come see for yourself, or take my word for it, because you’ll never see it on even FOX News.
November 6th, 2006 at 7:47 am
None of which is going to spring, fully formed, even from teh head of Zeus.
Simply, totally, false.
November 6th, 2006 at 8:31 am
The plan for Canada was that they request more NATO forces and equipment from NATO countries. There was really no response from other NATO countries, but that was written off to Canada’s usual excuse for not participating in NATO ; not enough troops or equipment. So, the US moved 30,000 troops and a week later sent another 20,000 to Iraq. The answer for Canada would be to provide more troops than the 2,500 in Afghanistan rather than asking for more from NATO, something it never provided and used as an excuse not to spend money on the military-less military, less problems globally with the military.
The actual goal here would be a break down of NATO countries some time next year with the Canadians pulling out based on that problem. Bangladesh got the development money and it’s seen as Canada ‘writing off’ Afghanistan by allowing a third party to distrbute the funding, which is on trouble because the schools are seperated by gender and there was a coup in Bangladesh right after the funds were promised.
So, the plan of a NATO breakdown and withdrawl of Canadian forces is really only important if the insurgency gets worse, something that they plan on-but the real answer is to contribute more Canadian forcers to say, for example; 20 to 30,000.
November 6th, 2006 at 8:41 am
At least it’s a common misapprehension.
We haven’t left. There are more of us here now than there ever have been. At no time have our numbers here fallen.
The difference is that instead of NATO and the US running parallel security missions, now NATO is in charge of the security mission.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Here’s an interesting thought…instead of blowing billions on futile military oppression, why not spend a few hundred million on building infrastructure and the economy? Nah, too wussy for the neocons.
November 6th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
hty…Canada has a tenth of the population of the US…their 2500 troops would equal 25,000 of ours. By your logic, we or someone else should send in 250K (give or take) troops if the Canadians pony up 20 or 30K troops.
Their entire military is only about 64K regular and about 28K reserves. Do you honestly suggest that Canada sends 1/3 of it’s military(including reserves…) to Afghanistan?
November 6th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Sleipner: you presume 1) that we’re oppressing anyone and 2) that we aren’t building infrastructure.
You’re wrong on both counts.
November 13th, 2006 at 4:29 am
Canadians are peacekeepers.Atleast that`s what the Canadian government told me all my life, they even are trying to eradicate Canada`s contribution to ww1,ww2,Korea and every conflict we have ever been in.The schools don`t go near that part of our history.
What happened to the Canada I knew / where did it go? White poppies,the NDP,political correctness,lowering the flag,wtf is going on!
Peace loving we are but we are also a paradox in that we produce the worlds most capable fighting man.So lets hug a Taliban to day and it`ll all go away.Damn! that might make a good country song.