Skyreporter's statement of the situation in Afghanistan

I don't always like what Skyreporter says but his recent post is a credible formulation of the situation in Afghanistan. In so far as it is accurate, it is greatly worrisome -- so what's new about that? This is Afghanistan and Pakistan. RLC


Taliban Leaders Mock U.S. 9/11 Legacy From Pakistan Havens
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com

Sept. 11, 2009 - On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, the West's effort to rid southwest Asia of the menace of terrorism is collapsing in a surge of bloodshed and corruption on a truly damning scale.

One fact stands shamefully above all others.

Today the least worried combatants in all of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the warlords who enjoy an untroubled sleep each night and by day dispatch killing force with virtually no fear of retaliation, are Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his leadership council, safe in the protective embrace of Pakistan's military in Baluchistan province.

The U.S.-led coalition of international forces in Afghanistan is unwilling to tackle this most pressing of objectives, even by political and diplomatic means. Yet until the zealots of Omar's rump Taliban leadership feel the heat in Pakistan, there's no prospect of easing the pace and ferocity of violence in Afghanistan.

Today in Kabul, no Afghan man, woman or child, nor even America's top general, Stanley McCrystal, can be certain the next pair of eyes they meet will not belong to a suicide bomber or gunman, a random glance that will be their last sight on earth.

McCrystal's new mantra, that U.S. strategy will shift to "protecting the Afghan people" is less credible than a box full of ballots from Paktika.

The good general seems oblivious to the most basic fact confronting him and his Western legions. The only way to protect Afghans is to end the war, and the only way to end the war is to put pressure, real pressure, directly upon the Taliban leadership where they live and command their fighters' war effort: Pakistan.
Even this week's conviction in Britain of three would-be airline bombers, who took their orders from Pakistan's tribal areas, has done little to dent the dome of denial Western governments maintain over the dirty secret of Pakistan.

History tells us we should have learned from past mistakes. Here's a story this reporter filed to the Calgary Herald on Oct. 28, 2001, some 47 days after the 9/11 attacks on America, and about two weeks before the forced exit of Mullah Omar's regime from Kabul, along with Osama bin Laden's Arab fighters and their foreign cohorts.

How little has changed, and not only with regard to the collateral killings of civilians by air strikes aimed at Taliban fighters.

The Arab fighters heard over the radio, and the Talibs - most fled to refuge in Pakistan. They have operated from those Pakistani havens for eight long years. As we see from today's carnage in Afghanistan, no amount of official denial can alter that fact.

For more see Skyreporter.com October 28, 2001.