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Afghanistan mission close to failing

After six years of U.S.-led military support and billions of dollars in aid, security in Afghanistan is “deteriorating” and President Hamid Karzai’s government controls less than a third of the country, America’s top intelligence official has admitted.

Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30 per cent of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10 per cent, and the remainder is under tribal control.

The Afghan government has angrily denied the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s assessment, insisting it controlled “over 360” of the country’s 365 districts. “This is far from the facts and we completely deny it,” said the Defence Ministry.

But the gloomy comments echoed even more strongly-worded recent reports by think tanks, including one headed by the former NATO Commander-General, James Jones, which concluded that “urgent changes” were required now to “prevent Afghanistan becoming a failed state.”

Although NATO forces have killed thousands of insurgents, including several commanders, an unrelenting drip of violence has eroded Karzai’s grip in the provinces, providing fuel to critics who deride him as “the mayor of Kabul.”

A suicide bomb at a dog fight near Kandahar last week killed more than 80 people. Fighting erupted in neighbouring Helmand on Friday when the Taliban ambushed a police patrol. The Interior Ministry said 25 militants were killed; a Taliban spokesman said they lost one.

A day earlier, the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation aid agency said it feared that Cyd Mizell, an American employee kidnapped in Kandahar last month, had been killed in captivity.

A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability. The U.S. has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and — twice as many as in 2004 — while the U.K. has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 U.S. marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.

NATO commanders paint the suicide bombs and ambushes as signs of a disheartened enemy. On Friday, Brigadier Andrew Mackay, commander of the British contingent in southern Afghanistan, said the Taliban were “worn down,” running low on fighters, and being ostracised by local communities.

But analysts believe the Taliban is successfully adapting the brutal guerrilla tactics that have served Iraqi insurgents so well. The six British soldiers killed in Helmand over the past three months were victims of roadside bombs. The drugs trade is swelling the Taliban coffers — according to the highest estimates, 40 per cent of profits, or tens of millions of pounds, go to the insurgency.

The insecurity has penetrated the capital. Since an assault on Kabul’s Serena Hotel last January, westerners have disappeared from the streets of Kabul. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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