"Help is on the way" "Oh! Damn"

[Lefty Scaevola]

the above line and response was common enough from my wargaming days, where each player in a group of allies usually preferred independent operations.
Currently in Afghanistan:

"BERLIN (AP) - A civilian was killed when a heavy bundle of humanitarian supplies dropped by parachute crushed her house in northern Afghanistan (news - web sites), the U.S. military said Thursday."

Crushed by food and blankets. Well, soon the airfield at Mazir-rey-Sharif (sp) will be operating for more efficiant import of relief supplies. The biggest problems will be having enough trucks and gasoline for dround distribution, and preventling warlords from using aid distribution for power purposes. The NA is feling its oats now and is starting to thumb its nose at the rest of the world. Predictions anyone, for a functional Afghanistan adminstration within a year?

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

Hard to say about a year from now, but the NA behaviour is hardly surprising.

They sucked before, that's how the Taliban took over in the first place!

Hopefully, the USA and it's allies will straighten out the place to everyone's satisfaction (highly unlikely), or at least, put in place a functioning Government that the Afghani people want and can support.

 

[atawa]

It would surprise me that in a land so strongly devided by ethnic and religious lines, where each warlord has his own (clan based) turf there can be any kind of central gouvernment without one side conquering the whole country like the taliban did.

I think it will go back to the pre-taliban days....non stop internal strife over a peace of useless dessert or mountain

 

[Leowind]

There will certainly be a strong pull to the ages-old internal fighting as has been suggested, but the group meeting in Germany to work on a transitional government made unprecedented gains in agreement, so I have some hope that perhaps with all the world focused on Afghanistan at the moment that they will find a way, with world help, to get their act together. I won't say I can see it happening, I just have hope that it might. I pray it will.

(Whew, is that a long sentence, or what? I gotta work on being more concise. Or at least using shorter sentences :dizzy: )

 

[joespaniel]

I learned a valuable lesson in Somolia.

Give them the tools they need and get the **** out!

You can NEVER make them want to stop fighting each other, much less build a nation. They have to get sick of war first, on their own.

Sadly, we can only do so much without getting dragged down, and becoming part of the problems.

 

[IceCascades]

Somalia was different - no one wanted the US there.
Afghanistan is a different case - with the effort and the money, Afghanistan's problems could be solved, and a bloody good shot could be taken at fundamentalism in the process.