Afghanistan at the Tipping Point

By Douglas Farah

Seems like things in Afghanistan, at least in the world of perceptions, is going south as fast as Dow Jones. While circumstances on the ground have not changed radically in recent months, the Taliban have scored significant success simply by starting the current debate on whether the war in Afghanistan is winnable at all.

The opening salvo was fired in a leaked French diplomatic cable, which quoted the British ambassador in Kabul as saying the war couldn't be won.

According to the New York Times version:

"The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust," the British envoy, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted as saying by the author of the cable, François Fitou, the French deputy ambassador to Kabul.

"The presence of the coalition, in particular its military presence, is part of the problem, not part of its solution," Cowper-Coles was quoted as saying. "Foreign forces are the lifeline of a regime that would rapidly collapse without them. As such, they slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis."

Then, in one of the first stories on what all of Kabul knows, the NYT took on the issue of the possible involvement of President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, to the booming heroin trade. This, of course, only serves to reinforce the ambassador's fears about the growing corruption and the complete loss of faith in the Karzai. My full blog is here.

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