watchingamerica.com: Afghan Success is Fading Fast

By Jacques Amalric
Liberation, France
Translated By Molly Smith

June 1, 2006


Is Afghanistan on its way to becoming the next Iraq? For quite some time now, the United States and the Europeans have been trying to avoid this question. In Washington, in London and even in Paris, it has been fashionable to contrast the Afghan success to the Iraqi imbroglio. There was a rapid victory against the Taliban regime, guilty of having sheltered al-Qaeda, in that case, a real coalition acting under a U.N. mandate, even if Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar managed to escape coalition troops.

The reconstruction of the country and the democratic transformation of Afghan society would take time of course, but was said to be well underway. Didn't the people at the end of 2004 hurry to the polls to elect Hamid Karzai in the presidential elections? Didn't the United States prepare for a reduction in troops (currently at 2,300) by several thousand units, and partially hand off responsibility to NATO? And isn't NATO in the process of increasing its numbers from nine to sixteen thousand troops, thanks to British, Canadian, Australian and Dutch reinforcements?

Since a few weeks ago, this optimistic scenario has faded, and an entirely different reality has asserted itself at the Pentagon, where the likelihood of a troop reduction is now in question. Never has this conflict - on one side, the coalition forces, police and a transient Afghan army; on the other, the Taliban - claimed so many victims. Up to the beginning of the year, the fighting was primarily in the southern Pashtun provinces, but has now moved north and even into the capital city, Kabul, which was recently put under curfew, after an American vehicle caused a traffic accident, resulting in anti-foreign rioting. To which, the Commander in Chief of American troops responded, "It is fair to say that the Taliban influence in certain regions of the country has increased over the past year."

Other evidence that the American strategists refuse to acknowledge: in spite of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's many denials, Taliban fighters continue to benefit from the support of Pakistan's Secret Services (ISI), who allow them use the territories of Northern Pakistan as they wish; ISI officers, nearly a state unto themselves, never recovered from the "loss" of Taliban Afghanistan, which they had nurtured into power to equip their country with "strategic depth ," in case of open warfare with India. The ISI has also permitted Pakistani militants to join the ranks of the Taliban; these were Islamic militants, whose terrorist activities in Indian Kashmir were recently halted by Islamabad. These reinforcement into the ranks of the Taliban go hand in hand with the spread of battle tactics reminiscent of the Iraq war; car bombs, ambushes, suicide attacks and the undermining of communication systems are now nearly daily events in Afghanistan.

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