Friday 25 June 2010


MEASURING SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN AFGHANISTAN

Michael A Innes

Asia Times, June 25, 2010

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) launched Operation Moshtarak in the Nad Ali and Lashkar Gah districts of Afghanistan's Helmand province in mid-February.

The intent was to wrest it from Taliban control and create a "bubble of security" for local governance, described in an ISAF press release as "an Afghan-led initiative to assert government authority in the center of Helmand province". [1] The operation involved the deployment of 15,000 allied and Afghan troops, among them American, British, Danish, Estonian and Canadian elements from ISAF's Regional Command South, as well as five brigades of Afghan forces drawn from the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, Afghan Border Police and the Afghan gendarmerie.

Operation Moshtarak was meant to demonstrate several things. Its first priority was to restore Afghanistan's ability to govern an area that had long functioned as a hub of Taliban and narcotics trafficking activity - a "bleeding ulcer", as then-ISAF commander General Stanley McChrystal recently called it.

(...) [artículo aquí]

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