According to a survey published on Tuesday by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 56 percent of Afghans now see the foreign troop contingent as an occupying force. Furthermore, only 39 percent of those surveyed said they saw ISAF as a guarantee for security, well down from the 45 percent result found in the same survey in 2010. Fully 60 percent think that the country will descend into civil war once NATO forces withdraw. Babak Khalatbari, head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's Afghanistan office, said on Tuesday that the results were "a matter of concern." Not bad for ten years' work ,eh? Full report.
I am not at all surprised by this. I think the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have revealed several shortcomings in the way the United States conducted its wars in both theaters:
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b) the limited efficacy, if not total failure of nation-building once the United States kicked the door in. Is it any wonder that both the Afghans and Iraqis see the US and its allies as "little more than occupiers?"
c) the limited efficacy of special operations forces. The failed SEAL missions in 2005 and late August this year underscore the fact that they cannot be cure-all for all the ills that exist in the said countries. If anything, they showed that the insurgents have learned how to fight the SOF commandos.
d) the lack of imagination on the part of policymakers and the officer corps as manifest through their penchant for confusing operational details with grand strategy.
e) the total breakdown of diplomacy due to the fact that the United States and its allies were never shy about wielding their guns and swords first before they started engaging the HN leaders.
f) the total failure of COIN doctrines in that these doctrines direct the focus on the implementers of the COIN doctrines and NOT the indigenous people they are intended to help.
g) they also highlight the fact that the Western financial might is not absolute. If nothing else, they demonstrate the fact that the US and her allies lack the wherewithal to sustain two simultaneous wars.
My mother once danced with Adenauer.
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This was fully expected.