For three months, and with tens of thousands of soldiers, US and NATO forces have been trying to win the battle of Marjah, in the Afghan province of Helmand. Leaked assessments by the US have appeared in The Independent newspaper and the New York Times. And they are grim. The Taliban has returned and the population is fleeing wholesale.
According to senior foreign affairs correspondent Bernard Hammelburg, the problem is that there is no viable government. The assumption of the campaign was: the US army does some serious cleaning up, and subsequently the Afghan government takes over. That is not happening.
Hammelburg thinks we – the 40 countries united in ISAF – are to blame. We decided to give our support to Hamid Karzai: “We knew he stole the elections, we knew he was corrupt, we knew he was distrusted and ignored by many elders in the countryside. Nevertheless, we kept putting our trust in this man and his cronies.”
Email this Video
Printer-friendly version
When you occupy foreign land you will always be a sitting duck!
There is no instance, in the history of mankind, of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. When you occupy foreign you will always be a sitting duck.
A post-Karzai Afghanistan may have to be didvided into separate political units or regions as no single leadership has emerged in the past, or is likely to, in the forseeable future. As much as NATO and the West in general would like to see Afghanistan firmly led by a single, strong leader with a solid base of central government, this is not a realistic strategy to plan around. Regional controls in Afghanistan backed by NATO formed and trained Afghan military and police forces from these respective regions would be more trusted and supported by the local populaces. Afghans have never acknowledeged themselves nor in reality strived to become a conventional nation state in the international context. A loosely defined Afghan confederacy united by international backing may be the only means to contest regional controls from the Taliban.
Post new comment
Please be reminded all comments must be in English, short and to the point - guideline 250 words. Abusive and inappropriate comments will be removed.