- WASHINGTON - A retired army
colonel commissioned by the Pentagon to examine the war in Afghanistan
concluded the conflict created conditions that have given "warlordism,
banditry and opium production a new lease on life," The New Yorker
reported on Sunday.
-
- Retired Army Colonel Hy Rothstein, who served in the
Army Special Forces for more than 20 years, wrote in a military analysis
he gave to the Pentagon in January that the US failed to adapt to new conditions
created by the Taliban's collapse, the weekly magazine reported.
-
- "The failure to adjust US operations in line with
the post-Taliban change in theater conditions cost the United States some
of the fruits of victory and imposed additional, avoidable humanitarian
and stability costs on Afghanistan," Rothstein wrote in the report.
-
- "Indeed, the war's inadvertent effects may be more
significant than we think."
-
- The military should have used Special Forces to adapt
to new conditions, Rothstein wrote.
-
- The war "effectively destroyed the Taliban but has
been significantly less successful at being able to achieve the primary
policy goal of ensuring that al Qaeda could no longer operate in Afghanistan,"
he wrote.
-
- The Pentagon returned the report to Rothstein with a
request he cut it drastically and soften his conclusions, the magazine
reported.
-
- "There may be a kernel of truth in there, but our
experts found the study rambling and not terribly informative," Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Collins told The New Yorker. - AFP
-
- http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/southasia/view/78653/1/.html
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