Posted on 11/21/2007 8:39:30 PM PST by blam
Taliban control half of Afghanistan, says report
Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 22/11/2007
The Taliban has a permanent presence in most of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into the group's hands, according to a report from an international think tank.
An Afghan police officer searches an Afghan man, after he left the town of Musa Qala, in an area controlled by the Taliban
The Senlis Council claimed that the insurgents controlled "vast swathes of unchallenged territory" and were gaining "more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people".
It said that the Nato force in the country needed to be doubled to 80,000 front-line soldiers who should be allowed to pursue militants into Pakistan.
The 110-page report said that its "exclusive" research found the Taliban controlled 54 per cent of Afghanistan.
It calculated that Nato countries should contribute 2.3 soldiers per £500 million of their GDP to provide 71,000 soldiers, with 9,000 additional troops coming from Muslim nations.
If the plan were adopted, Britain would need to send 4,500 troops, significantly fewer than are deployed now.
British and American military leaders say the mission in Afghanistan has been hamstrung by Nato members refusing to send reinforcements or placing "caveats" on their duties when there.
There is no sign, despite pressure from the US and Britain, of any move within Nato to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.
The report said: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen and in what form.
The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm for Afghanistan before time runs out".
The Ministry of Defence dismissed the report, saying its conclusion that the Taliban would take Kabul was not credible. "The Taliban does not pose a credible threat to the democratic Afghan government," a spokesman said.
The report coincides with a study from Oxfam for the House of Commons international development committee, which gives warning that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating.
Oxfam said that Afghans faced "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa" and that aid was not getting to the most needy.
The Senlis Council, a Brussels-based think tank that conducts research into drugs, military intervention and development policies in Afghanistan, earlier this month advocated the growth of opium poppies in the country for use as morphine abroad.
It said the project would weaken the Taliban by offering an option for farmers and starving the organisation of funding.
You would think that if they were that visible in the country that our military could just kill a bunch of them daily.
Not sure I believe the 50% number in this article.
What happened?
Am I the only one who’s noticed that - now that Iraq is turning for the better in a major way - this news about Taliban ‘controlling half of Afghanistan’ is only now coming into focus?
Another sad illustration of the futility of “nation building” in a Muslim country.
Well, Democrats control half of the USA. So what’s the diff?
Controlled = "To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over"
Seems the cops are the ones in control...
Smells like another George $oro$ front group...
i’d think if this were true we’d see a lot more reports of this disaster in the news
Pure unadulterated bullshit.
Let's see what kind of source this "think tank" is before we go ahead and buy the media's story.
This is what we will soon be hearing from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and their minions:
“It was the wrong war at the wrong time. We should have been focusing on Iraq.”
Pure unadulterated BS.
Maybe they are just including all the territory within some Taliban’s view when he sticks his head out of his mountain cave.
The left wing loons are so damn transparent, Iraq is going well so they turn their agitprop on Afghanistan. It really is ridiculous but what’s more ridiculous is that there is a substantial market of loons in America who eat this crap up.
“In June 2007, the Senlis Council launched its “Poppy for Medicine” technical dossier that proposes a project model for licensing poppy cultivation and producing essential medicines within Afghanistan at a local level.”
As soon as I read the words "international think tank," I realized this was pure BS. So I didn't read any further. Did I miss anything?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY BOUCHER: Good afternoon. It’s good to see you all. As has been mentioned, I was down here a couple weeks ago to talk about Pakistan with you — President of Afghanistan visiting over the weekend, coming to Camp David to meet with the President on Sunday and Monday. I thought it was a good time to come in and talk a little bit about Afghanistan and what’s going on there. So if you’ll bear with me, let me make a few comments at the beginning and then I’ll be able to take your questions about Afghanistan or anything else in the region.
President Karzai is coming to the United States as a partner in the war on terror and a partner in stabilizing a very strategic region for the United States. I think it’s important to remember how much has been accomplished already. Every time you talk about Afghanistan, we have to remember that in five years we’ve built roads and highways, brought down infant mortality rates, put five million kids in school. Enormous strides have been made. The economy, the legitimate economy has achieved very healthy growth rates and Afghanistan is in a much better position now than it ever was before as a nation.
In addition, the Government of Afghanistan is in a much better position as a government. In terms of facing the enemy this year, whether it’s the Taliban or the narcotics traffickers, there are more police, more NATO troops, more soldiers in the Afghan army, more governors, more police chiefs, more government generally, as well as more aid projects going on throughout the country and that’s an enormous project.
Together we’re building security and governance for the people of Afghanistan throughout the country of Afghanistan. The Taliban, in turn, are under pressure from all sides, including from the Pakistan side and that’s an important development. Unfortunately, they have turned more and more to pure terror tactics, tactics of bombings, tactics of kidnappings as we have seen. They’ve been unable to take towns and territory. They have been in this year unable to concentrate forces to — even to the extent they did last year and to try to achieve military objectives and they’re just turning more and more into blowing things up and killing people and kidnapping people and that’s very unfortunate for those involved. But it represents a real, I think, shift on their part into what is increasingly I think, alienating a local population. And they find it more and more difficult to work with people who live in Afghanistan because in the end, those people want stability and they want safety and they want justice and they want opportunity. So the issue is as much fighting the enemy as it is providing the safety and justice and opportunity to the people throughout the country. We’re helping obviously in a big way. We have about over $10 billion for Afghanistan this year. We have another request for 4.7 billion for next year. That’s both the regular request and the global war on terrorism supplemental that we’ve talked about. The Afghan Government is pushing out with governance, with roads, with electricity, counter-narcotics efforts, law, governors, police chiefs.
Things sure have changed in three months.
Forever mired in Islam.
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