A national survey of US intervention in Afghanistan reveals half of Americans (52 percent) think the US has not achieved its goals in Afghanistan.
The evaluation survey by the Pew Research Centre and USA Today was conducted among 1,504 adults between Jan 15 and 19.
A national survey of US intervention in Afghanistan reveals half of Americans (52 percent) think the US has not achieved its goals in Afghanistan.
The evaluation survey by the Pew Research Centre and USA Today was conducted among 1,504 adults between Jan 15 and 19.
The share of people who think the decision to use military force was right has fallen five points since November last year to 51 percent. In January 2006, the year Pew Centre began asking the questions, 69 percent of Americans supported the decision to take military action in Afghanistan. In the current survey 41 percent say it was the wrong decision.
Here disquiet is growing over unkept US promises to rebuild the country.
Abdul Rauf, an entrepreneur, says he is bitterly disappointed the West is leaving Afghanistan with an “unfruitful war” and inefficient government. “I left my whole business abroad and returned to my fatherland with great hopes,” he says.
The US invaded the country in end-2001 because Al-Qaeda’s terrorism was the biggest problem. With the passing of time drug trafficking has become strongly linked to terrorism. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reports the area under opium cultivation has grown yearly since 2006. Opium is a 1.5 billion USD business here. More than half the opium is cultivated in Helmand, a southern province where British and US troops launched successive operations to retake control from the Taleban, and failed.
The US has spent more than 100 billion USD since 2002 to rebuild Afghanistan, but the spending has been unable to provide good governance, deliver basic services to the majority of the population or guarantee human security. Dozens of others countries have also poured in development aid but Afghanistan still ranks near the bottom of the UNDP’s Human Development Index. Anxiety over the military’s inability to safeguard the country has grown.
Defence analysts want Afghanistan’s allies – read US – to press Pakistan to stop aiding and abetting terrorist organisations. The US thinks it has put the Taleban on the run but as long as there is a possibility of their return to power the US cannot claim victory in the war on terror that was started by former US president George W. Bush in the wake of the World Trade Centre bombings by al Qaida. Washington attacked the Taleban regime claiming it was sheltering al Qaida’s fugitive leader Osama bin Laden.
The US can no longer afford the extravagant military operation in Afghanistan. “The American people are tired …,” observed Mir Ahmad Joyenda, former parliamentarian and deputy country director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).
Why has Afghanistan been a monstrous failure for Washington? Observers here blame the US-led NATO’s shortsighted focus on one individual – President Hamid Karzai.
Mohammad Ali Rezwani, a journalist and political analyst, believes the policy of the US for 13 years has been “focused on a person”. “The US followed policy of a person not a nationwide policy or policy pivoted in the best interests of the nation,” Rezwani says.
The war in Afghanistan is the longest war fought abroad by the US. President Barack Obama has promised to bring it to a closure. The US has staked claim to being the world’s only super power – a status it will not give up easily in Afghanistan. The Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), which has become a bone of contention between the US and President Karzai who has refused to sign unless Washington agrees to new conditions, was envisaged as a framework of US military assistance to Afghanistan from next year.
