The
article "How a ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad" suggests why
conditions in Afghanistan remain inadequate. David Rohde and David E. Singer
write in the August 12, 2007 article how the war against the Taliban in
Afghanistan succeeded initially.
In recent years conditions have failed to
improve.The CIA and the US Military have consistently underestimated the
resources necessary to achieve normalcy in Afghanistan. The US consistently
fail to recognize the affects of members of the Taliban in Pakistan raiding the
border areas and preventing reconstruction.
Once
the Taliban was defeated, the US failed to
provide enough forces to preserve a
Taliban-free zone and to ensure reconstruction of Afghanistan, a
country beset
by war almost continuously since the early 1980s.
Experts necessary to help
redevelop the war-torn and drought-stricken country are
largely absent. For
example by the end of 2006 there were fewer than ten US
agricultural experts in
Afghanistan to help develop agricultural production.
The
article suggests that once the US military had largely
defeated the Taliban and
Osama bin Laden had escaped the Bush administration lost interest in
Afghanistan and became more interested in pursuing its agenda in Iraq. This
occurred despite efforts by then Secretary of State Colin Powell to try to
provide services needed by the Afghanistan people.
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