Afghanistan's 'Little America' now a Taliban center

RAW STORY
Published: Monday September 4, 2006

According to a report in tomorrow's New York Times (reg. req.), a part of Afghanistan into which the United Starts poured so much building effort that it was called "Little America" has now become the center of a Taliban resurgence that is making Afghanistan almost as dangerous for American soldiers as Iraq.

This resurgence is attributed by the Times to American refusal to become involved in areas of Afghanistan outside the main cities, as well as to the perception of ordinary Afghans that the flood of reconstruction funds into those limited areas has brought only corruption to their country.

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Excerpts:

When the Taliban fell nearly five years ago, Lashkar Gah seemed like fertile ground for the U.S.-led effort to stabilize the country. For 30 years during the Cold War, Americans carried out the largest development project in Afghanistan's history here, building a modern capital with suburban-style tract homes, a giant hydroelectric dam and 300 miles of canals that made 250,000 acres of desert bloom. Afghans called this city "Little America."

Today, Little America is the epicenter of a Taliban resurgence and an explosion in drug cultivation that has claimed the lives of 106 U.S. and NATO soldiers this year and doubled American casualty rates countrywide. Across Afghanistan, roadside bomb attacks are up by 30 percent; suicide bombings have doubled. Statistically it is now nearly as dangerous to serve as an American soldier in Afghanistan as it is in Iraq.

The problems began in early 2002, former Bush administration, U.N. and Afghan officials said, when the United States and its allies failed to take advantage of a sweeping desire among Afghans for help from foreign countries. ... During the first 18 months after the invasion, the U.S.-led coalition deployed no peacekeepers outside Kabul, leaving the security of provinces like Helmand to local Afghans.

In Helmand, the absence of security and government control enabled the province to become the largest heroin-producing area in Afghanistan. By 2005, local Taliban fighters and drug traffickers had formed an alliance against the government. Today, the province's educated elite accuses local officials of engaging in drug trafficking and impoverished farmers say they grow poppy to survive.