We don't have enough boots on the ground to be everywhere. We are confined to FOB's until we get an order to go outside the wire. There are hotspots all over A-stan. We can shut them down near Kandahar, or Khowst, they just move thier AO somewhere else. We must expand the ANA, and other Afghan security forces, so they can protect thier major urban centers. US forces know where the camps are in P-stan, we know the who, its WHERE are they gonna be tommorow that counts. US/UK, Canadian, Dutch, and French troops need re-inforcing. The members I mention above do almost all the fighting and dying, while other NATO members are hamstrung by caveats, ROE's, and thier spineless Gov.'s. NATO is a paper tiger. It has been exposed for wat it is. The US defended mainland Europe for too long, now when they are needed, they renege on commitments.
The Taliban’s Baghdad Strategy
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Students at Kabul University say they don't like the way the country is headed—and if they leave, Afghanistan's hopes for the future will depart with them. "I'm worried," says 20-year-old sociology student Khalid Dehati. "My father says personal security today is as bad as it was under the communist regime." Computer-science major Ali Arifi, 19, says he can't even visit his home village in Ghazni because the Taliban have taken the place over. "I want to stay to help my country," he says, "but all my friends want to leave." Science student Zulaikha Afzali, 21, isn't shy about saying she intends to leave the country when she graduates. "Afghanistan is, was, and will be insecure," she says. "I'm heading for Germany." Asked if they'll vote for Karzai in next year's presidential election, she and five friends blurt in unison: "No!"
Like the Iraqis, many Afghans have begun checking for escape routes, just in case. One American who heads a non-profit research group in the capital, asking not to be named, says Afghans on his staff have asked him to promise he'll get them out if security collapses. During the chaos of the 1980s and '90s, millions of Afghans streamed out of the country to camps in Pakistan and Iran. Both countries have now forcibly repatriated most Afghan refugees and closed their doors to new arrivals. One married 26-year-old Afghan who works in rural development says his father, a police brigadier, recently sat him down and advised him to start planning an exit strategy for his wife and their infant son. The young man can only shake his head: he doesn't know where they can go.
Some civilians aren't waiting around to see if things get worse. Shakeela Hashimi's 21-year-old son, Samir, has shut down his used-car dealership and is preparing to take his wife to Canada. He says there's too much crime and insecurity in Kabul. "Two years ago we had hope," he says. "Now we are losing it." The family is still mourning his 17-year-old sister, who was shot dead last year by an unknown assassin in the family's house. The Logar parliamentarian believes the bullet that killed her daughter was meant for her. Najib Ahmadzai, a Peshawar-based people smuggler, says his business tanked after the Taliban fell, but demand for his services has come back strong this year. It's hard for Afghans to get visas from most Western countries—and ironically enough, it's often easier for them to apply for asylum if they have no visas. Wardak says he's heard of people paying as much as $30,000 to be smuggled through Iran and Turkey to Europe.
Any route out will do. In May, Wardak led a nine-member delegation to Brussels for a series of meetings at NATO headquarters. But when it was time to go home, he says his colleagues told him they had all decided to stay in Europe, with or without formal asylum. He finally talked them out of their plan, he says, but it was a tough sell. In July, the only woman on Afghanistan's four-member Olympic team, 800-meter runner Mahbooba Ahadgar, disappeared from the team's training camp in Italy and reappeared in Norway, asking for political asylum.
Just as ominously for the country's future, Kabul's formerly bullish business investors are pulling out. "The decline in security has been steep in the past two months," says Hamidullah Farooqi, the chairman of Banke Millie Afghan. "It's getting bad." Street criminals are thriving. "The biggest problem the business community faces is the serious kidnapping threat from mafia-like criminal gangs," Farooqi says. "We've lost a couple of our friends to kidnappers, and others have lost their money and cars. They had no choice but to pick up and leave." Many of the country's richest executives are moving their cash to safety in Dubai, he says, like one Afghan businessman he knows who has invested $4 billion in various projects there. People in Kabul say roughly 20 percent of all real-estate purchases in Dubai last year were made by Afghans pulling their cash out of the country, and Farooqi says the estimate sounds right to him.
The public's sense of gloom only feeds on itself. Still, no one seems to know how to turn it around. The trend keeps looking worse, Farooqi warns. "We face a serious lack of security, corruption, crippling bureaucracy, bad government policies and bad government behavior," he says. "No wonder business is leaving." "Anything that affects hope is crucial," says the senior Western diplomat. Right now, the Taliban have cornered the market.
© 2008
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