Afghanistan, unravelling

"Something has gone alarmingly wrong in Afghanistan, previously touted as the Bush administration's one quasi- successful venture in nation-building. Afghanistan's rising carnage still has not reached Iraq-like levels, but the trend is running in decidedly the wrong direction. Unless Washington starts correcting its mistakes, parts of Afghanistan could start tumbling back toward the kind of anarchic chaos that once made such areas an attractive sanctuary for international terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

The warning signs go well beyond this week's deadly outbreak of anti- American rioting in Kabul. The past few months have also seen a stronger than expected Taliban military revival (with open help from supporters in Pakistan), a lengthening list of Afghan civilians accidentally killed in American military operations, a badly flawed U.S.-backed opium eradication program, and rising public disenchantment with Washington and its leading Afghan ally, President Hamid Karzai."

So reports the NY Times here, as published in the IHT. With all the cost in human and monetary terms, it seems that whatever the US set out to achieve is well on the road to failure. Sadly, Australia is also now "involved" in the unravelling of Afghanistan. One can only hope that Australia suffers no casualties in the personnel presently deployed there. At the moment most Australians seem to regard whatever is happening "over there" as something remote to them.

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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