WASHINGTON, Nov 13: Five years after the fall of Kabul to the US-led forces, President Hamid Karzai's “weak, corruption-riddled government” is still struggling for survival, says a report in The Los Angeles Times on Monday.
Also on Monday, an official report described the situation in Afghanistan as bleak, noting that insurgent activity in the country had risen fourfold this year, and militants launched over 600 attacks a month, a rising wave of violence that had resulted in 3,700 deaths in 2006.
The Times report noted that foreign donors had spent at least $16 billion in Afghanistan and over $10.3 billion of that had come from the United States. But the Afghan government has little control over that money which further erodes its power.
“Many see the nation slipping back into the grip of violence, corruption and extremism from which the West promised to liberate them,” the report said.
Several of Mr Karzai’s provincial governors were still regarded as corrupt and ineffective and the central government’s influence remained weak in large parts of the country, the report added.
“From ethnic minorities in the north to his fellow Pukhtuns in the south, Mr Karzai faces the same growing disaffection” with his government, the report said.
The report noted that although Mr Karzai was officially commander in chief, he had no control over the foreign troops fighting the Taliban insurgency and little over his own army, which answered to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
“In the meantime, the insurgency has spread across more than half the country, with fighters advancing northward from strongholds in the east and pushing all the way to the Iranian border in the west,” the report said. “Government officials say the militants in villages and districts near Kabul are laying the groundwork for future offensives.”
TALIBAN NOSTALGIA: The report claimed that corruption in courts and police had made many Afghans nostalgic for the Taliban's ruthless justice and the threat of violence had forced hundreds of schools to close and left others without enough books or teachers.
The report acknowledged that the country's gross domestic product had doubled since Mr Karzai came to office, “but the drug trade is the largest employer and source of income. Drugs account for half of Afghanistan's economy and create what the United Nations calls a narco-society.”
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid aimed at persuading farmers to grow legal crops, this year's opium harvest is expected to set a record. It's up 50 per cent from last year, to an estimated 6,700 tons, the UN said in early September.
The report also quoted US military intelligence documents as saying that after they were ousted from power in 2001, the Taliban retreated to bases in Pakistan, where the ISI once nurtured them. From there, the Taliban and its allies regrouped in eastern and southern Afghanistan,
Washington today regards Pakistan as a key ally in fighting terrorism, but many Afghans suspect the country of playing a double game, the report said.
The other report, published in some US news outlets on Monday, said insurgents were launching over 600 attacks a month as of the end of September, up from 300 a month at the end of March this year. The violence has killed more than 3,700 people this year.
The report said that the rising drug trade in Afghanistan was fuelling the insurgency in four volatile southern provinces. The slow pace of development was contributing to popular disaffection and ineffective implementation of the drug fight, it said.
