Afghanistan, the forgotten project

Insufficient manpower combined with the volatile eastern border region with Pakistan is making it more difficult to capture Osama Bin Laden and his top associates as well as the deposed Taliban leadership.  The longer Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are able to elude imprisonment, the more of a mythical stature they will develop among the local populace.  Their ability to evade capture is partly because the border remains extremely porous.  This situation is a huge source of worry with both Kabul and Islamabad doing little more than blaming each other for the situation, instead of cooperating on joint ventures.

Because of the remoteness and rugged terrain of this area, the U.S. has often had to resort to air strikes, which are causing civilian casualties and undercutting the good will that the U.S. is trying to build in the country.  The American reputation is also receiving a beating from perceived intolerances of the Muslim religion, which has resulted in demonstrations and riots.

Islam also plays a role in other concerns about Afghanistan.  There are still strong and influential conservative elements in the country.  Already in its short five year history of becoming a democracy, there have been clashes between democratic principles and Islam that have threatened to undermine the progress.  These civil freedoms have also come under attack from the current security situation as some officials have used excuses to curtail liberties.  In addition, women are still being treated as second-class citizens, both in public and in the domestic sphere.

The institutions designed to protect these civil liberties have problems as well.  The government is under heavy criticism for accepting former warlords into state jobs.  From posts in the presidential cabinet to seats in the legislature, former warlords with questionable human rights records are occupying important positions.  Some are concerned that their presence will prevent real progress from being made.  These same worries have been raised with other key positions, such as police chiefs, where Karzai has appointed men with a history of corruption and other crimes to the posts.  Corruption is also a problem in aid money and in the nascent police force.

Security remains the top concern in Afghanistan.  Even President Karzai has not escape the violence as he has been the target of numerous assassination attempts since his election.  Insurgents have been daring enough to launch rockets at the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).  The US ambassador Ronald E. Neumann nearly perished in a Taliban suicide bombing attack at the beginning of 2006.

Overall violence has increased in the past year.  From August 19^th to 21^st, 90 insurgents were killed in the southern provinces, including 70 in an attack on a district headquarter site in Kandahar.  Five Afghan soldiers were killed.  In separate engagements, 4 U.S. coalition soldiers and a British one died.^[xxix]  Police convoys were being ambushed and a suicide bomber attacked a Canadian detachment, wounding four soldiers and killing a child.  The month of May claimed over 300 total casualties.^[xxx]  NATO commanders have commented that the Taliban are “fighting harder and more coherently, tenaciously and in bigger numbers than they expected.”^[xxxi]  Not only are the Taliban renewing their fight with more numbers, they have shown their adaptability as well.

The Taliban have also been known to shift tactics, changing fruitless ones for more successful attacks.  The Taliban have used various devices, anything from suicide attacks, which are on the rise in the country to targeting “soft” citizens (i.e. personnel that are important to a robust civil society: judges, civil servants and intelligence workers).  Some have reported the attacks are proving more effective.  In January, a suicide bomber exploded in the middle of a crowd watching a wrestling match killing 20 people in a town near the Pakistani border, while another one in Kandahar destroyed an Afghan Army vehicle claiming 5 victims.^[xxxii]