http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/44888,opinion,losers-in-the-great-game

 

Losers in the ‘Great Game’

The West has ignored countless warnings, leaving Afghanistan in turmoil, says christina lamb

Afghanistan was supposed to be the 'good war', but barely a day goes by without more bad news from the front. As someone who first reported from the country when the Russians were there in 1987, the saddest thing is that it did not have to be this way. In stark contrast to Iraq, when the Royal Marines arrived in Kabul in December 2001 they were welcomed. After years of civil war, most Afghans were desperate for peace and saw foreign troops as the only answer.

Today that support is lost. More US troops are now dying in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Last month, British forces lost more than one soldier a day. And, according to Nato figures, more than 900 Afghans have been killed this year, making this the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Nor is the violence any longer restricted to the south and the east. With bombs in the

Indian embassy and an assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban have shown their ability to enter the capital. So how has a supposedly rag-tag band bogged down more than 40,000 Nato soldiers in what many describe as an unwinnable war?

Those of us who visit Afghanistan frequently have long known that the answer lies across the border. For years Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) has encouraged Islamic militant groups to carry out their dirty work, whether in Kashmir, Afghanistan or in promoting sectarian violence at home, while the West has turned a blind eye. When I tried to research this a few years ago, I was picked up from my hotel room in Quetta in the middle of the night and deported.

The Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid has been warning of this so vigorously that he's been in danger of becoming known as the Cassandra of the Hindu Kush. He has now brought together all his warnings - and the West's mistakes - into Descent into Chaos,

a book which could have been subtitled 'How they ignored me'.

As the title suggests, it is not an optimistic tome. For, as Rashid writes, Pakistan's meddling with militant groups is coming home to roost: the country suffered not just the assassination of Benazir Bhutto but also 57 suicide bombs last year, killing 640 people.

Pakistan is not the only villain in this story. One reason that the Taliban is finding fertile ground in Afghanistan is that Karzai is a weak president, whose government has become a byword for corruption. Another was the CIA's funding, in the aftermath of 9/11, of the warlords, whom most Afghans blamed for their country's miserable state.

But mostly Rashid blames one Donald Rumsfeld for blocking nation building. Bush and Blair promised they would not let Afghanistan down again, as happened in 1989 when as a young reporter I watched Western aid workers, spies and advisors abandon the country literally overnight after using the mujahideen to oust the Soviets.

By following what Rashid calls "the path of least reconstruction", Bush and Blair have left Afghanistan one of the poorest countries on earth. And, for the West, one of the deadliest.