Afghanistan Unraveling

Afghanistan, Unraveling

Something has gone alarmingly wrong in Afghanistan, previously touted as the Bush administration's one quasi- successful venture in nation-building. Afghanistan's rising carnage still has not reached Iraq-like levels, but the trend is running in decidedly the wrong direction. Unless Washington starts correcting its mistakes, parts of Afghanistan could start tumbling back toward the kind of anarchic chaos that once made such areas an attractive sanctuary for international terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

The warning signs go well beyond this week's deadly outbreak of anti- American rioting in Kabul. The past few months have also seen a stronger than expected Taliban military revival (with open help from supporters in Pakistan), a lengthening list of Afghan civilians accidentally killed in American military operations, a badly flawed U.S.-backed opium eradication program, and rising public disenchantment with Washington and its leading Afghan ally, President Hamid Karzai.

Afghans have long been renowned for their hostility toward foreign troops on their territory, as the 20th- century Russians and the 19th-century British learned the hard way. Until now, they have made a conspicuous exception for the 21st-century Americans, who helped them shake off Taliban misrule and then promised their poor and war-shattered country an international rebuilding effort.

More than four years later, Afghanistan's patience is running out. America's military presence is seen as narrowly focused on Washington's own agenda of hunting down Qaeda fighters, and indifferent to Afghan civilian casualties and Afghanistan's own security needs.

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It looked bad from the start. DOD was not going to put their men in that mixer like USSR did so bags of money paid off the war lords. Me thinks the money is gone so they need more. Right?

his son is going to serve in Afghanistan. I am sure he will not read such an article otherwise.

When he told me his son who is to be married tomorrow was going to serve in Afghanistan, I cringed. But my brother insisted that it was a great thing.