Friday, August 6, 2010

A sobering assessment from a friend in Afghanistan

"Kandahar was interesting. The way I would describe it is the Wild West, a frontier city. Drug runners, war lords and insurgents really run the place and the 'sheriff' ( or governor) has no power, a figure head that hides in his protected office surrounded by Western security.

The Afghan forces are shockingly bad, a trainer said off the cuff, he'd prefer to train the Taliban because they have better discipline and determination than the Afghan forces. It is really very depressing. I have no faith at all that the Afghan forces will be able to hold the country. When the West pulls out Afghanistan will fall, there is simply no institutions that can stand-up on their own.

I'm sorry to depress you but that is my honest assessment. For all the treasure, lives and sacrifices America has given to Afghanistan, there seems very little to show for it. Kabul still has mud roads."

Depressing indeed.

2 comments:

Oldfool said...

I'm just an oldfool that reads history and tries to learn from it. Doing the same old things over and over gets the same results over and over. The mud in Afghanistan has seen all this before. Over and over.
I have no suggestions but "do something even if it is wrong" is often a bad choice.

Tutu said...

You certainly should know. I agree with Oldfool.