Threat of Failure in Afghanistan

If you are interested in what is going on in Afghanistan, and its historical and regional context, then this superb piece from France’s Le Monde is well worth your time.

Apparently, things aren’t looking good.

With shocking simultaneity, four reports by military experts recently sounded the same alarm: without a fundamental revision of current strategy (indeed, the lack thereof) by the international community in Afghanistan, the country runs the risk of becoming a “Failed State,” and will quickly become, if it hasn’t already, the nexus of international terrorism. Six years after 9/11, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden enjoy a state of quasi-impunity in the vast no man’s land between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And how so? Well,

By calculation as much as by sheer blindness, the Unites States has for a long time leaned on the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, without seeing that Musharraf would never dare to check the Islamist faction within his army, those complicit with the Taliban. Historically, Washington has been constant in its missteps in Afghanistan. During the Soviet period, America favored the arming of the most anti-western elements within the Mujahedeen – Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – to the detriment of the more moderate elements – Ahmad Shah Massoud.

And for complex geopolitical reasons, the outlook is not favorable. For example,

Islamabad’s objectives in Afghanistan have nothing in common with Washington’s. Even beyond the fact that the ethnic solidarity of Pashtu Afghanis and Pakistanis has always rendered the reality of a border at the “Durand Line”(contested by Kabul) illusory, Islamabad sees New Delhi’s sustained efforts to reinforce diplomatic and commercial ties with Afghanistan even more fodder for its longstanding obsession with Indian encirclement

To find out more of the complexities of the Afghan situation, go to the excellent Le Monde article here on WATCHING AMERICA.com, which offers ongoing coverage of this and other U.S.-involving conflicts