Afghanistan: It’s even worse than you thought

[IndianaGreen]

Delegates to an Afghan "peace jirga" in June gave Hamid Karzai
a mandate to negotiate with the Taliban

Siddiqui: Afghanistan: It’s even worse than you thought

Published On Sun Aug 1 2010

By Haroon Siddiqui
Editorial Page

The buckets-full of leaked documents on the war in Afghanistan have elicited three responses, all misguided.

The first is that the classified papers tell us nothing we did not already know, namely that the NATO mission has long been a mess. This assertion devalues their real value — giving the war an official stamp of failure, which can no longer be dismissed as merely the opinion of naysayers or the weak-kneed.

The second is that the papers are old, covering a period ending in December 2009. The Obama administration has emphasized this, to imply that things have improved since. In fact, they are much worse, as we shall see.

The third is to overplay Pakistan’s con game: taking arms and money from the U.S. to take on the Taliban but, in fact, nurturing them as its proxy. This North American narrative has been highlighted by The New York Times. But the British paper The Guardian concluded, rightly, that the documents do not conclusively prove one way or the other what Pakistan is up to. We can be sure that it is up to what everyone else is up to: looking out for its own long-term interests, especially given that it has suffered the spillover of two wars (Soviet: 1980-88 and NATO: 2001 to date).

The most pertinent point for Canadians is that the situation in Afghanistan today is far grimmer than painted in the leaked papers.

http://www.thestar.com/article/842623--siddiqui-afghanistan-it-s-even-worse-than-you-thought

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. I don't think anyone has been able to win in Afghanistan

history repeating itself

[IndianaJoe]

2. It's a pretty hopeless situation. We should cut our losses and

get out. It's sad, but you can't change a backward culture like Afghanistan's overnight, and who says we are the ones to do it anyway. Al-Quaeda isn't there anymore and we really have no achievable war aims. Seems like exiting is the thing to do.