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they will kill me if I go on working for a western company. But what can I
do? There are no jobs.
Western money and investment is on the run, leaving monumental
corruption in its wake as those in employ protect what they can still have
and hold.
The vast Afghan army entirely bankrolled by the west for now in truth
can hold only cities and main roads. Its losses are often double-digit
percentages each month, along with the paramilitary Afghan police.
Too often unpaid, unloved and sitting ducks on their static VCPs
(roadblocks) for insurgent ambush.
There is a ring of steel around Kabul. For months signs at the checkpoints
actually say Ring of Steel. But as the autumn mud turns to frost-frozen
iron in the high, dry and bitterly cold Kabuli winter, the attacks come to
every district with ever greater frequency.
True, the uneasy new Ghani-Abdullah alliance of government has inspired
confidence because the election finally happened at all. Power was - or
rather, is still being transferred. But it not is not happening peacefully, no
matter how often various (mostly western) commentators peddle the
convenient lie that it is. Still cabinet places remain unfilled, month after
month after month.
Both men have deep and obvious political differences. On both sides,
supporters stand ready with men, guns and the ability to restart ethnic civil
war which has never finally gone from this land.
In London next week expect more platitudes about continuing western
support from European and US political leaders.
But in Kabul they will be sceptical of all this at best as they worry about
their money and how to get their wives and children out to Dubai, Delhi
anywhere but here.
Across swathes of the Afghan countryside they already know the game is
over, and what security, law and order they may enjoy is at the
dispensation of the armed insurgent warlords.
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Posted by Thavam