Afghanistan ... the centre cannot hold.. things fall apart

Why It's Not Working in Afghanistan
By Ann Jones posted at Tom Dispatch


Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? In August 2002, Rummy was already proclaiming the new Afghanistan "a breathtaking accomplishment" and "a successful model of what could happen to Iraq." Everybody now knows, the model isn't working in Iraq. Don't be surprised. It's not working in Afghanistan either.

The Afghanistan success story was always more fairy tale than fact -- one lie used to sell another. Now, as the Bush administration hands off "peacekeeping" to NATO forces, Afghanistan is the scene of the largest military operation in the history of that organization. Today's personal email brings word from an American surgeon in Kabul that her emergency medical team can't handle half the wounded civilians brought in from embattled provinces to the south and east. American, British, and Canadian troops find themselves at war with Taliban fighters -- which is to say "Afghans" -- while stunned NATO commanders, who hadn't bargained for significant combat, are already asking what went wrong…. Read on ...highly recommended.

Not if you are Tony Blair or his successor John Reid...

At the other end of the highway, in Kandahar city -- President Karzai's home town – and in the southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, and Uruzgan, Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah is reported to have more than 12,000 men under arms and squads of suicide bombers at the ready. They ambush newly arrived NATO troops. The embattled British commander, Lieutenant-General Richards, recently issued a warning: "We need to realize that we could actually fail here."


Journalist and photographer Ann Jones spent much of the last four years in Afghanistan working as a human rights researcher and women's advocate with international humanitarian agencies and teaching English to Kabul high school English teachers. She writes about her Afghan experience for the Nation magazine and notably in a new book Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan (Metropolitan Books, 2006). For more on her, check out her website.
Copyright 2006 Ann Jones

See also Legal Alien @ New York for news of Dutch efforts by Huib Riethof.

Lord Patel in February 2006 posted this about the Dutch army contribution and the drug smuggling Government ministers

Also Lord Patel last Labor Day posted this about building roads in Afghanistan