Afghanistan: Waiting for Obama
In the hornets’ nest that is Afghanistan it is easy to win a war but impossible to achieve peace. Since the fall of the Taliban regime in December 2001, the violence of the war has made the country a complex trap where a solution to the conflict looks like a very tough prospect indeed.
Outside the capital of Afghanistan, international forces have been unable to stem the advance of the Taliban, who already control the south-eastern half of the country, bordering with Pakistan. From their stronghold in Kandahar province, the guerrillas have grown strong by trafficking in heroin – the revenues of which are used to finance their weapons purchases – and this has made the region into a hell-on-earth for the civilian population. It is a source of revenues used not Orly by the Taliban. The warlords and senior government officials have made use of their “Afghan narcos”, turning this new Afghanistan, originally a result of the war on terror, into a “narco-state”. Corruption has put paid to all hopes of making an honest living in Afghanistan...