Downhill in Afghanistan: The most remote place on earth is now the most dangerous

Downhill in Afghanistan: The most remote place on earth is now the most dangerous

By Jonathan Power

The policy, made within hours of the atrocity of 9/11, seemed to be to try to bomb the country to cinders, irrespective of the number of civilian casualties, not learning the lesson of Dresden, that wild bombing rather than leading to capitulation merely reinforces local opinion against the aggressor. Later, troops on the ground have continued to alienate local opinion with their seeming inability to differentiate between fighters and civilians. The war is being lost as the Taleban, defending Al-Qaeda or just fighting for their own piece of earth, gain the upper hand, improving their strength and their military skills by the month. The poppy growers watch their profits soar, with plenty of the profits going into Taleban coffers, because the West is unable to face honestly the one policy that might work — legalization of the drug trade, as the former minister of finance of Pakistan, Sartaj Aziz, suggested in Prospect magazine. (He argued for a controlled experiment in one province.

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