Afghanistan: A Chilling Front Line Analysis

Christina Lamb, of The Times of London, has provided one of the best assessments of the ground realities in Afghanistan. She should know as she has been reporting from Afghanistan for 20 years. I strongly recommend that her present analysis should be carefully read.

One has to be patient as this is a longish report where she argues why the US and the NATO forces cannot beat the Taliban.

Here are the excerpts from Lamb’s report: “Most alarming is the way Kabul has been encircled by the Taliban, prompting a sense of being under siege both among Afghans and foreigners, behind their concrete blocks and armed guards.

“Of four highways into the capital from the south, east, west and north, built with hundreds of millions of foreign aid money, only the northern route is considered safe. Even that has become prone to rocket attacks.

“Complicating matters is the fact that the Taliban are not the only source of violence. Like a franchise of the disgruntled, there are also militants from the Hezb-i-Islami of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Al-Qaeda militants from the Jala-luddin Haqqani network based in the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan, drug networks, armed criminals and corrupt elements inside and outside the government.

“With most of the population unemployed, there are plenty of people who will happily fire a rocket for a few dollars. ‘It’s not the Taliban that are winning – it’s the government who are losing,’ says Haroun Mir, deputy director of the Afghan Centre for Research and Policy Studies.

“ ‘The Taliban are mining in a sea of acquiescence, a sullen, frightened acquiescence,’ agrees a western diplomat gloomily. ‘If you ask people, they don’t want Taliban; but if it’s a choice between them and corrupt, predatory government, they prefer Taliban’. If there is one positive to be found in the mess, it is that from London to Washington all agree that the situation is critical and things have to change.

“So bad is the situation that British and American forces are indirectly funding the Taliban as they get their own fuel and water supplies through. The private contractors they use estimate that 25% of the $4,000 per truck paid for security ends up with the Taliban. To read the complete report please click here...

Photo above courtesy The Times: British soldiers in Afghanistan – The Stress shows.

Elsewhere, Amy Goodman’s article is also worth reading…Please click here…