Saturday, September 03, 2005

Finishing the job

While Iraq hasn't yet worked out its new constitution, Afghanistan is far from anything resembling safety or democracy as well:
Suspected Taliban gunmen have kidnapped a district government chief, a candidate in upcoming legislative elections and three others after ambushing their vehicle in southern Afghanistan, police said Saturday...

Taliban rebels have stepped up attacks in the lead-up to the elections, leaving more than 1,100 people dead in the past six months...

Four elections workers and four candidates in the polls have been killed in recent weeks.

The abduction of the five also comes just days after a British engineer and his interpreter were abducted in Farah province in western Afghanistan.

Obviously the problems aren't constrained to any one part of the country, and the death toll (while widely ignored) is still mounting. Afghanistan has always been a military mission worth getting right, but there's an awful lot of evidence that the worthy goals there are slipping beyond reach.

No comments:

Post a Comment