watchingamerica.com: When Kabul Capsizes ...

By Britta Petersen
Financial Times Deutschland, Germany
Translated by Bob Skinner

May 31, 2006

Civil war looms in Afghanistan because U.S. troops act like occupiers and the Taliban are powerful again. Now Europe must act so that its soldiers don't return home in coffins.

A rampaging mob, burning buildings, a number of dead, and for the first time since the end of the war, curfews. That is the result of an auto accident on Monday, May 29, in Kabul. Is Afghanistan becoming a second Iraq?

Not yet, but it's time that the international community wake up. If it doesn't immediately take the wheel politically, Afghanistan threatens to once again slip into civil war.

But especially the Americans are called on. No one who knows Kabul is surprised by the traffic accident nor the furious reaction to it. Since the Americans entered Kabul, they have conducted themselves like an occupying power. Anywhere a U.S. agency opens an office, the entire street is closed to traffic. And woe to anyone who comes to close to an American vehicle. Green, nervous soldiers with fingers on the trigger spread more fear and anxiety than the mujahedeen ever could.

~snip~

"I dread the moment my countrymen come to the conclusion that the Americans are no better than the Russians, and once again call for jihad," says an Afghani resident of Germany. Thus the rebuilding process is being threatened by the arrogance of the American superpower.

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