Friday, November 26, 2010

Pentagon report: Afghans believe Taliban victory inevitable

Kristina Reid

3:26 pm

11-26-2010


A new Defense Department report says that increased fighting against the Taliban has failed to explain to the population that the government of Afghan and coalition forces will succeed. The report states that the "Taliban's s strenth lies in the belief of the population of Afghanistan that the coalition forces will soon leave."This statement gives credence to the belief that a victory is inevitable. The section of the report focused on progress toward security and stability in Afghanistan, commonly reffered to as the 12-30 report; is a manditory update to congress that monitors the progression of security and stabitilty practices in Afganistan over a period of months. The report goes on to mention that though the Taliban is not popular, it manages to exercise its frustraitions with the weak system of Afghanistan's government. Depite public polling that displayed the lack of support for the Taliban, Afghan nationals are fond of remaining non-committal while the Afghan Government and Coalition forces strive to provide security, government, and economic opportunities. The Taliban have a surplus organizational adequacy and support to pose a threat to the government's liveliness, mainly in the south. If the security situation erodes, regional stability will vastly deteriorate as well. During the Pentagon report characterizes "uneven" progress along with "modest gains" in security and actualizing a stable governemnt, is also goes on to say that the current strategy is displaying "some aspects of progress." At a Pentagon hearing, a senior Defense Department official dicussed how the report did not cover what he called "encouraging signs," during the past six weeks against Taliban forces in Southern Afghanistan."This is an extraordinarily dynamic situation," he said. "Even the progress we've seen in the past seven weeks since this report came out is something that is changing the reality on the ground. But in no way, shape or form is anybody guaranteeing success, saying it's 100-percent certain."


I chose to write about this article because it shows how terrorist thrive on the fear of the people.The war against terroism in Afganistan has been going on for sometime now, and it seems that all the fighting has done little to help get the issuse of terrism under control. I think that the current way of doing things in Afganistan needs to be improved so that the people can see more postive results come out of all the fighting. I know that the words "war" and "positive" dont really seem to fit togethr well, but something needs to be done to change to moral of the people. As long as the people feel that their lives are going to be controlled by the terrorist actions then the terrroist are going to have the upper hand in the fight. If the people we are fighting to protect don't believe in the good guys then, the good guys might also start to loose faith in themselves as well.

href="http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/24/pentagon-report-afghans-believe-taliban-victory-inevitable/">

1 comment:

Becca said...

This is a sad but not surprising report. These people feel they have no way out. I am not above saying that if I were in their situation I may end up supporting the Taliban, too, simply out of a very real fear for my loved ones. The Taliban make up the rules as they go so nothing is off the table. But the way to go about changing the mindset of the people is very complicated and I know I myself have no theories on the best way to go towards achieving it.