Afghanistan Revelations: Corruption Cause of Collapse

This blog has always predicted that in the end the West’s well meaning efforts to bring Afghanistan into the modern world would fail, not least because of the utter corruption of the  so called democratic structures which  NATO propped up for far too long. The political reluctance of the West to deal with the obvious is a failure, among several, of its post Cold War nation building adventures.

The new disclosures that most of the much vaunted security forces did not actually exist, with corrupt generals and politicians taking to themselves the wages of phantom security and police forces, is a virulent condemnation of the wishful thinking in Washington and other capitals, in spite of warnings from their own senior military leaders.  The whole sorry episode is a terrible betrayal of those who gave their lives in good faith to support a noble cause without any prospect of fulfilment.

The Taliban now impose their extreme form of Islam on their country, while cash, food and other forms of humanitarian aid is withheld by angry democracies, demanding the Taliban change their tune. But the chances of that happening are as remote as the original vision of victory, so the innocent population, now short of everything to the point at which babies are sold to raise money for food, drift towards a state of famine.

What a complete and utter disaster. Will we have the courage to own it?