NYT: How we lost Afghanistan

[DeepModem Mom]

Afghan Symbol for Change Becomes a Symbol of Failure
By DAVID ROHDE
Published: September 5, 2006


Danfung Dennis for The New York Times
Attendance at a sewing workshop for women in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, dropped after the driver for the program’s founder was shot dead.

....The problems began in early 2002, former Bush administration, United Nations and Afghan officials said, when the United States and its allies failed to take advantage of a sweeping desire among Afghans for help from foreign countries.

The Defense Department initially opposed a request by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and Afghanistan’s new leaders for a sizable peacekeeping force and deployed only 8,000 American troops, but purely in a combat role, officials said.

During the first 18 months after the invasion, the United States-led coalition deployed no peacekeepers outside Kabul, leaving the security of provinces like Helmand to local Afghans....

***

American officials said the country was more destitute than they had envisioned, yet the $909 million they provided in assistance in 2002 amounted to one-twentieth of the $20 billion allocated for postwar Iraq. Officials quintupled assistance to $4.8 billion by 2005, but then reduced it by 30 percent this year.

The Taliban leadership, meanwhile, found safe haven in neighboring Pakistan. And Robert Grenier, the C.I.A.’s former top counterterrorism official and Islamabad station chief, said Pakistani officials largely turned a blind eye to Taliban commanders, who later seeped back across the border....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[hobbit709]

1. Different country, same stupidity

by our "fearless leader"

[bigtree]

2. same idiocy that thinks our own occupation and killings are somehow better

than the others killing there.

[savemefromdumbya]

3. Opium is going stronger than ever

[DeepModem Mom]

4. That's another issue the article addresses -- also, corruption. nt

[savemefromdumbya]

5. The public here thinks Bush 'won' Afghanistan

I was talking to someone the other day and they said that Bush had made Afghanistan free and cleared out the nasty terrorists. I guess this is the general opinion?

[DeepModem Mom]

6. I assume it is. I think people remember the early stories about women...

being freed from their lot under the Taliban, and haven't been updated.

[savemefromdumbya]

7. yes, we should run some more documentaries on prime time