Open combat turns hunters into hunted

LONDON - Reports by two international think-tanks yesterday highlighted failures of United States and British policy in Afghanistan and warned of the deteriorating security situation.

The Senlis Council claimed that the campaign against the Taleban has inflicted lawlessness, misery and starvation on the Afghan people. Thousands of villagers fleeing the fighting and a continuing drought, as well as farming families who have lost their livelihood because of the eradication of the opium crop, have ended up suffering in makeshift refugee camps.

And the influential International Institute of Strategic Studies said that a vital opportunity was lost when the West failed to carry out adequate reconstruction work after the Taleban retreat in 2001. Christopher Langton, the head of the defence analysis department, also said that attempts to impose secular laws on a tribal Pashtun society, without the establishment of security, had not worked.

Dr John Chipman, director-general and chief executive of the IISS, said the British tactic of moving into remote areas in Helmand has "acted as a catalyst for intensifying insurgency by drawing the Taleban into open combat. However, it is also true the insurgency has a new energy and the Taleban see ... troops from the European member states as an opportunity target. Furthermore the Taleban message that the foreign troops are 'occupiers' resonates loudly in the villages of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan.

"The counter-narcotics policy [has] caused tensions between local people, the Government and the [Nato] coalition. The removal of the farmers' livelihood programme runs counter to win 'hearts and minds'. The Taleban capitalise on this contradiction by championing the cause of the farmers."

- INDEPENDENT