Remember Afghanistan...?

Remember the "good" war? Remember the search for Osama Bin Laden ? Remember Bush saying: We will not forget our Afghani friends? Well, check out Geoffrey York's story in the Globe & Mail, written after his fourth visit to Afghanistan, from what is now one of its most dangerous regions. What a colossal screw-up! Based on lies, with no understanding, no plan, no commitment... the result, no surprise. Pity the poor Afghani people...

In much of southern Afghanistan's vast countryside, the militant Taliban insurgents have already achieved their victory, leaving only the cities and a few isolated outposts in the control of the Canadians and other coalition forces. And day by day, they are creeping closer to the cities, operating openly on the outskirts of Kandahar and other major cities.

[...]

"In the rural areas, the Taliban do whatever they want -- even in the daytime, not just at night," said Dr. Sadat, a pediatrician who himself was forced to give up his work in a rural clinic after four doctors there were killed.

"The doctors and teachers have all left the rural areas because they are afraid of the Taliban. The rural areas are out of the government's control. Day by day, it is getting worse."

For three months now, Canadian troops have been struggling to extend their presence into Kandahar's rural districts. It might be too late. Some officers admit privately that the coalition has wasted the past four years by failing to push beyond the main cities. Instead of bolstering the new government's reach in 2002 when it was popular, the coalition is now trying to prop up what's become a much-hated authority that has squandered most of its public trust.

Since their defeat in 2001, Taliban militants have been allowed to regroup, re-arm and re-exert their influence. Most of the southern countryside is now paralyzed, beyond the influence of Afghanistan's central government, lacking any government services and unable to break the Taliban's stranglehold. Just as it was in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation, the foreign troops control the major cities while the guerrillas control the mountains and villages.

[...]

While the coalition has struggled to build a political commitment for its presence in Afghanistan, the Taliban are recruiting a steady stream of volunteers, churned out by religious schools in Pakistan that propagate a militant anti-Western brand of Islam. The Taliban have enjoyed a haven in Pakistan, where the government has turned a blind eye to their sanctuaries. And the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is too porous for the Afghan security forces to control.

[...]

Just like the U.S. troops in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the coalition is trying to prop up a corrupt and unpopular government. Local governments are dominated by so many warlords and gangsters that many Afghans express nostalgia for the Taliban regime of 1996 to 2001, which at least was not perceived as corrupt and immoral.

"The Afghan population is throwing up its hands," a veteran aid worker in Kandahar said. "The disorder today is coming from the government itself. Its mandate was to clean out the warlords, but instead it's engaged in an endless dance with them. Everyone says that the Taliban regime, if nothing else, at least stopped the corruption and created law and order."