{"id":225,"date":"2007-10-19T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2007-10-19T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=225"},"modified":"2007-10-19T13:00:16","modified_gmt":"2007-10-19T11:00:16","slug":"afghanistan-everything-we-know-is-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/afghanistan-everything-we-know-is-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan: Everything we know is wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some things we just know<\/em>.
\nFor example, we all know<\/em> that the US-led mission to Afghanistan has been a complete failure. The Taliban is resurgent and more popular than ever. The government headed up by Hamid Karzai has no support among the population. The Afghan army is a joke. Ask any Afghan and they’ll tell you that the sooner the foreign troops leave the country, the better.
\nThese are the things that we know \u2013 and yet they are completely wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n


\nThere’s a report in today’s Globe and Mail<\/a>, Canada’s leading newspaper, of a public opinion poll conducted in Afghanistan. The poll took place in every Afghan province and involved a representative sample of 1,578 Afghans, men and women. The polling was done face-to-face by local Afghans \u2013 foreigners were not present.
\nAnd here is what the Afghans believe:
\n51% say that the country is heading in the right direction
\n59% believe that President Hamid Karzai represents their interests
\n60% say that the foreign presence since the fall of the Taliban has been a good thing
\n60% feel that they are better off now than they were five years ago
\n64% say that those foreign countries are doing a good job fighting the Taliban
\n65% say that foreign countries are doing a good job providing reconstruction assistance
\n71% have a very or somewhat positive view of their government
\n73% think that women are better off now than under the Taliban
\n84% have some or a lot of confidence in the Afghan national army
\nUnsurprisingly, when comparing the results by gender it turns out that women \u201ctend to be more negative about the Taliban.\u201d
\nNow imagine if the same poll were conducted among, say, readers of the Guardian or Independent in the UK. Would it show huge majorities expressing support for and confidence in both the Nato mission and the elected Karzai government? Probably not.
\nIn fact, in most of the countries that are participating the Nato-led effort, there are majorities that want to see that mission come to a very swift end. Yet when pollsters asked Afghans if they wanted the foreign forces to leave immediately, only 14% said yes.
\nWe all know<\/em> that the Afghan war has been another huge failure for George Bush and the USA \u2013 and we know this because we are told it every day by mainstream media in our countries. But the Afghans seem to have a somewhat different view and it just might be possible that they know what they are talking about.
\nMaybe it’s time we listened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some things we just know. For example, we all know that the US-led mission to Afghanistan has been a complete failure. The Taliban is resurgent and more popular than ever. The government headed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}