Folly In Afghanistan

Patrick Hennessey: Once again Afghanistan has made fools of us - Comment - London Evening Standard: 
"In fact, reports of collusion between Afghan National Security Forces and the poorly defined “enemy” in Northern Helmand (and elsewhere) have been circulating for a while and follow intense fighting. When I was in Afghanistan last summer, planned trips to Helmand had to be postponed while battles raged around Sangin, where the Afghan National Army initially lost and then regained key positions in and around the district.
A major problem is that our mission has always been so poorly defined as to make any meaningful assessment of progress almost impossible. To the extent that the mission is to bring “security” to the country (a difficult concept to quantify) such ongoing violence surely betokens failure; on the other hand, to the extent that the mission is to train and equip the Afghan forces, the immediate military response was encouraging."