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| A US Soldier walks through an Afghan Poppy field while on patrol |
By Muska Dastageer
How a long war of necessity turned into an unfinished one of choice.
Foreign policy is a murky discipline that often sees even the clear-eyed and rational at the helms of affairs regress into flawed reasoning about gains and losses. For the civilian leadership of the United States, the untimely drawdown of the combat mission in Afghanistan, denounced by its own generals in the Pentagon, may cost it much more than it gambled for.
With the tense calm in Kabul frequently shattered by bloody attacks and kidnappings, while the Taliban are winning greater swaths of territory, and civilian deaths at an all-time high since the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) started keeping records, current developments do not bode well for the country.
The remobilization of the Taliban movement and its onslaught in the northern parts of Afghanistan has prompted the vice-president of the triumvirate government, the once feared and since subdued Abdul Rashid Dostum, to reassemble his equally terrifying militias. These developments are not just a disparaging commentary on the strained consolidation of the Afghan national security forces as viable protectors and defenders of the land, they also spell out a worrying prospect for Afghans, many of whom vividly recall the civil war years of the 1990s. Fear has crept back in, trust in the government is wavering, and growing anger simmers uneasily.
Read the full story at The Diplomat