So much for the Allies' success in Afghanistan

In recent weeks we have seen revelations of how the US - with the undoubted complicity of its allies - used torture as part of its war on terrorists. We also know that even the pundits now acknowledge that it was all for nought. No less troubling is the fact that having invaded, first Iraq, and then Afghanistan, that the whole enterprise has been a disaster on every level. The allies might have withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan - well, in a fashion - but what they have left behind is disaster writ large. The New York Times reports today on how the Taliban is back in Afghanistan - in an area the Americans thought secured.

"In a large swath of the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, government centers are facing a long-dormant concern this winter: Four years after the American troop surge helped make such places relatively secure, they are back under threat from the insurgents.

The fighting in Helmand Province in the south has been particularly deadly, with over 1,300 security force members killed between June and November. And the insurgents’ siege of several key districts has continued long after the traditional end of the fighting season.

Two American soldiers and a member of the Afghan military looked for caves with weapons caches near Kandahar in February.U.S. Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016MAY 27, 2014
It has been so bad that the 90-bed hospital for war wounded run in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, by the international aid group Emergency was still running nearly full in early December, according to Emanuele Nannini, the group’s coordinator. While the group keeps no statistics on how many of its patients are fighters, and treats all sides, a rough estimate is that half of the patients are Afghan police officers, from both national and local forces. Soldiers are treated in military hospitals, which do not divulge their statistics."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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