Scott Taylor: Not much positive news from Afghanistan

October was by far the deadliest month of the war with 50 Allied soldiers killed, including yet another Canadian. The daring assault against the United States guest house in the fortified centre of Kabul last Tuesday — coincidental with an equally brash attack against the posh foreigners-only Serena Hotel — indicates that even in areas previously considered secure, the Taliban can now instigate violence and terror.

The steady stream of negative news has caused one international observer to warn us that "Afghanistan could become Somalia." Simon Chesterman uttered this dire warning while he was in Ottawa to deliver a speech to the International Development Research Centre.

Cited by the media as an Oxford-educated lawyer who is a specialist in state building, it was Chesterman’s quotes about the Balkans that disturbed me the most.

"The successes we’ve had in state building, such as they are, are places like Kosovo," he said.

While Chesterman is certainly not alone in his attempt to paint the Kosovo fiasco as a "success," I think that if we are going to use it as a yardstick to measure progress in Afghanistan, a little dose of objective reality needs to be injected into the equation.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1150655.html