Afghanistan 'falling into hands of Taliban'

A new report from the Senlis Council states that the Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and that the country is in "serious danger" of falling into Taliban hands.

Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries", the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday.

On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".

It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.

The council goes as far as to state: "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 ... 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 before time runs out."

I have always thought that the current policy - where Karzai controls Kabul and very little else - is a disaster in the making. No intervention in Afghanistan, whether by the Russians, the Brits, or anyone else - has ever been successful.

And there is certainly no way to control that vast terrain with a mere 40,000 Nato troops.

When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Mujahideen took to the mountains and attacked them from there. The Taliban are not even having to do that as they now have a presence in 54% of the country.

Senior British and US military commanders privately agree despite their public emphasis on short-term successes against Taliban fighters.

The insurgency is divided into a largely poverty-driven "grassroots" component and a concentrated group of "hard-core militant Islamists", says the Senlis Council, which has an office in Kabul and field researchers based in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan.

There is no sign of any move within Nato to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Nor has there been any lack of indications that the British Army were not aware of how potentially disastrous the Afghanistan campaign was, as General the Lord Guthrie made clear in October of last year:

'Anyone who thought this was going to be a picnic in Afghanistan - anyone who had read any history, anyone who knew the Afghans, or had seen the terrain, anyone who had thought about the Taliban resurgence, anyone who understood what was going on across the border in Baluchistan and Waziristan [should have known] - to launch the British army in with the numbers there are, while we're still going on in Iraq is cuckoo,' Guthrie said.

Of course, there are no indications that troop levels are going to be increased in Afghanistan whilst the war rages in Iraq which leaves us with the distinct possibility that we might have two failed campaigns on our hands, rather than simply the one disaster in Iraq.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Taliban, resurgence, Karzai, Kabul, 54% of Afghanistan, war on terror