Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: L'Afghanistan come l'Iraq?

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/World/GG01Wd01.html
Afghanistan on brink as violence escalates
Rachel Morarjee
July 1, 2005
Seventeen Americans are believed to have died in the Chinook helicopter
crash. PHOTO BY: AP
A wave of Taleban violence highlighted by what was almost certainly the
downing of an American helicopter by enemy fire has brought Afghanistan to
the verge of chaos and could compromise US operations in neighboring Iraq.
The crash of the Chinook helicopter with 17 Americans aboard Tuesday was in
Kunar province, part of a swathe of southern and eastern Afghanistan where
rebel attacks have reached levels not seen since the Taleban government was
ousted in late 2001.
US military officials say a rescue team has recovered a number of bodies
from the wreck of the Chinook and several soldiers are unaccounted for.
Analysts said that if the United States could not defend its high-tech
hardware against grassroots Taleban insurgents, questions would be raised
about its ability to guarantee security ahead of landmark parliamentary
polls in September.
"It is obvious the US military's campaign to eliminate or weaken the Taleban
has significantly failed,'' said Riffat Hussain, an expert on Afghan affairs
at Quaid-e-Azam University in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
With US forces already overstretched in Iraq, and NATO troops confined to
the relatively peaceful north and west of Afghanistan, the 18,000- strong
US-led coalition force could not afford to write off the Taleban, he said.
"If it gets out of control in Afghanistan,'' Hussain said, "then the
American ability to keep things under control in Iraq would also be
compromised.''
Things looked much better a few months ago, after US-backed President Hamid
Karzai was elected by a huge majority of Afghans in a poll that was
relatively untroubled by Taleban attacks.
Afghan officials have said privately that the sharp surge in violence took
them by surprise - particularly as the US military claimed a few months ago
to have broken the back of the Taleban.
Now, though, the figures speak for themselves.
In the past month at least five American soldiers and 187 other people,
mostly militants, have been killed in series of bomb attacks, ambushes and
clashes, compared with the 116 who died in such violence in June 2004.
June 2005 began with the deaths of 21 people in a suicide bombing at a
mosque in southern Kandahar during the funeral of a cleric who was
assassinated by the Taleban.
And it has continued in bloody fashion, with at least 77 militants killed in
a pitched battle with Afghan and US forces in southern Afghanistan last
week.
Most of the rebels were blasted by American air strikes.
Two Afghan election candidates and a man traveling with a United Nations
electoral commission worker have also been killed in the south.
A major problem for the United States and its allies, analysts said, is that
the Taleban can blend in with an increasingly bitter local population that
has seen few of the benefits of reconstruction after 25 years of war.
The rising violence has almost entirely halted rebuilding across devastated
southern and eastern Afghanistan, with the UN halting demining programs
there earlier this month after five workers were killed.
With some of the public on their side, the recent Taleban offensive has been
far bloodier than their usual summer skirmishes.
"This time it is far more intense and well coordinated,'' said retired
Pakistan army general Talat Masood.
"The Taleban are reconstituting themselves,'' he said.
"It is a serious situation. Their activities are very coordinated and they
are very mobile.''AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

parliamentary polls in September.
Che puttanata.
-Stefano