Afghanistan Conditions

An update on conditions in Afghanistan: most of the country is in the hands of warlords and bandits, schools are closed because nobody is paying teachers, and many women are still imprisoned in their homes.

"This is the condition of the Afghan nation," said Dr. Zieba Shorish-Shamley of the Womens' Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan.
It is not what we promised the Afghan people, nor what we say we'll bring the Iraqis....

"The U.S. has promised, over and over, that we will not be abandoned," she said. "There is no money going in, there is no reconstruction, the warlords are ruling. What are the Afghans to think?"

And what of the Iraqis?

We tell them the United States is to be a magnanimous liberator and generous occupier, intent on molding a nation of regional factions now yoked together by tyranny into a democratic state of great promise. And when they look for a template, what do they see?

"If the Iraqis look at Afghanistan as an example of how they are going to be liberated and reconstructed, I think they won't like it," Shorish-Shamley said.