Just One More Year to Defeat the Taliban?

That's the prediction made by the head of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Richards, as he echoed the call for more troops while admitting that war won't be won militarily.

In a wide-ranging interview before he leaves Kabul next month, he said:

· The west must stop trying to impose western solutions on an Islamic society at a very early stage of development.

· Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, must step up the country's efforts to root out corruption.

· Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan governments had to improve. "Currently they are passing in the night and the climate is not good," he said.

· Civilian agencies, including Britain's international development department, had to speed up reconstruction efforts.

· Nato countries responsible for security in different areas of Afghanistan must avoid the risk of treating operations in isolation, rather than as part of an overall plan covering the country.

This war has been going on over 5 years and all of those points should have been laid out at the beginning of the assault. The fact that, 5 years on, they are still the major stumbling blocks shows how immensely difficult it is for anyone who tries to change the reality on the ground in Afghanistan.

Frankly, the idea that the Taliban will be 'defeated' after just one more year of fighting seems to be just a wish that is not based on reality. The main factor to be dealt with on that front is the Pakistani government's hesitancy to properly secure its border (and that will not be done effectively by erecting a fence - which Canada's Conservative government supports - or by planting land mines) in order to stop the flow of more Taliban support and fighters. Pakistan continues to give lip service to serious efforts on that front and the domino effect is an ongoing military struggle in Afghanistan which also affects the 'hearts and minds' of Afghans who continue to trust the Taliban more than the allied occupiers.

There's also ongoing speculation that members of Pakistan's intelligence agencies are actually providing aid to Islamic extremists.

...Western diplomats in both countries and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies — in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence — have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervor but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan's vulnerable western flank.

More than two weeks of reporting along this frontier, including dozens of interviews with residents on each side of the porous border, leaves little doubt that Quetta is an important base for the Taliban.

There are many signs that Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them.

Quetta has long been a concern as a base for the Taliban and Musharraf is either unwilling or incapable of dealing with such situaions. Meanwhile, western governments and allies involved in the Afghanistan war seem bound and determined to treat Musharraf with kid gloves while our soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan.

Contrary to what the current head of the NATO forces in Afghanistan believes, one more year of battles will certainly not bring about the defeat of a movement that is so deeply rooted in the region and that presents a real challenge to Karzai's government in areas of the country still reticent to accept western imposed changes and ideas of governance.

Afghanistan still faces a huge humanitarian crisis and massive poverty which brings about extremely sad stories like this:

On 4 November 2006, Nasima, 25, a member of a local women's council, grabbed the AK-47 from the policeman guarding the council meeting in the Grishk district of southern Helmand province and killed herself.

She had had enough of the daily beatings by her husband. Like many other women in Helmand, Nasima was given away by her family in 2005. Her father owed a huge amount to an opium dealer and, unable to return the money or provide the quantity of opium he had promised, he offered his daughter to the smuggler, who already had a wife and four children. Under Islamic law and in many Muslim countries a man is allowed up to four wives.

"Nasima was enduring a bitter life in the family. The family members and her husband considered her as an extra burden," Gulalai, head of the local women's council in Grishk district, told IRIN.

Nasima's case is just one of hundreds of such incidents where women are traded for debts. Most go unreported in the troubled southern provinces, where most of the opium in Afghanistan is produced. The practice is also reported in other provinces, particularly the east and the north, but the stakes are higher in the south, the heartland for drug trading.
[...]
Afghanistan and its female population are at the bottom of the global poverty scale. The country is the fourth lowest in the world for living standards and third lowest in gender disparities, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) stated in August 2006.

Solutions to Afghanistan's problems are incredibly complex and the foolish idea that it is possible to kill off the remainder of the Taliban within one year when there will continue to be a steady flow of fighters who support their strict Islamic ideology and tenets is just a pipe dream. Even if all members of the group identified officially as 'Taliban' were destroyed, another entity with the same repressive goals and ideals would replace them and the military fight for control of Afghanistan would continue.