Afghanistan remains a failed state. Mainstream journalists are starting to openly discuss the Pakistani intelligence services’ role in the country’s instability, but Ajai Sahni in the Asia Times explains the real situation on the ground:
The US-led coalition is unambiguously losing the war in Afghanistan, and it is important, at this stage, to reiterate the obvious, that is, precisely why the war was undertaken in the first instance: because of September 11, 2001, because of the al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, and because of the assessment that the Taliban regime there had provided safe haven and operational facilitation to al-Qaeda for its planning and execution of the multiple and catastrophic strikes in the United States. The war was not merely punitive, it was intended to be preventive. It has proved a failure on both counts.…
Would any Australian journalists care to ask John Howard about the current situation in Afghanistan and not accept a lame response? No, didn’t think so.