From The Independent:
More than half of Afghanistan is back under Taliban control and the Nato force in the country needs to be doubled in size to cope with the resurgent group, a report by the Senlis Council think-tank says. A study by the group found that the Taliban, enriched by illicit profits from the country’s record poppy harvest, had formed de-facto governments in swathes of the southern Pashtun belt. […]
Yesterday’s Senlis dossier coincided with an Oxfam report saying that Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian crisis in which millions face “severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa”. It highlights the fact that US spending on aid in the country, $4.4bn since 2002, was only a fraction of its military expenditure of $35bn in 2007 alone.
“As in Iraq, too much aid is absorbed by profits of companies and subcontractors, on non-Afghan resources and on high expatriate salaries and living costs,” said the report. “Each full-time expatriate consultant costs up to half a million dollars a year.”
Meanwhile, Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said civilian casualties caused by military action has reached “alarming levels” this year. “These not only breach international law but are eroding support among the Afghan community for the government and international military presence, as well as public support in contributing states for continued engagement in Afghanistan,” she said.
The over 50% figure put forward by this think tank is subject to dispute; the fact that the Taliban is controlling much of Afghanistan cannot, alas, reasonably be disputed at this point.
A recent BBC poll of Afghans and how they think things are going:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7124450.stm
Hi,
Ted Rall wrote about the return of the Taliban quite some time ago. How is it that a cartooning engineer can be so correct and the Bush/Cheney administration can’t?
Is that 50% by population or by area? Because I’d always understood that Afghanistan was pretty much “Nato Kabul and anarchy everywhere else”.
the fact that the Taliban is controlling much of Afghanistan cannot, alas, reasonably be disputed at this point.
True, apparently. The milblogs have been predicting the resurgence of the Taliban due to it’s control of the drug trade for at least a year. It doesn’t mean that Afghanistan is a lost cause, but what it does mean is that the lessons learned in Iraq need to be applied there. The Taliban are resurgent in great part because they get huge profits from the drug trade. If economic development at a micro level as well as at a macro level to give people a viable economic alternative to growing poppies, it would hit the Taliban in their finances. Afghanis don’t appear to embrace the Taliban, but they live with them because right now it’s their most viable choice. Defeating the Taliban will come when Afghanis have better choices. That will take the military to support security, but it will be grounded in economic assistance and development.
Oh, don’t be so smug, Mr. America-Hater. You want the terrorists to win!