This time next year this yearly round up should be starting to mention Canada's involvement in this partly Western created mess.
But given the fairly bad reporting coming out of the CBC and the so-called main stream print media in the country the following overview provides a pretty succinct summary of the situation.
I find the print, TV and radio reporting just a little too full of hackneyed bromides and cliches to gleam any real information and just love the way the debate is being formulated - standard "support the troops bs". Looks right now that too many people have been watching reading or listening to the fiasco going on south of the border.
Whatever, read the summary, I think it is pretty neutral:
Background Overview Afghanistan (31-12-2005)
Some highlights:
Insecurity hampers development in much of Afghanistan ... .
Economic growth remains mostly limited to urban areas, and in particular, Kabul.
Human rights abuses, poverty, and insecurity increase markedly with distance away from city centers.
Afghanistan again produced nearly 80 percent of the world’s heroin, and narcotics production and trafficking brought in an estimated U.S. $3 billion to the Afghan economy, far and away the largest single source of income for the country and a significant source of criminality and resistance to the rule of law.
In 2005 the Taliban and other anti-government forces ... significantly expanded their insurgency in the predominantly Pashtun areas in southern Afghanistan.
... the Taliban has succeeded in regrouping, with significant assistance from across the Pakistani border.
... also [there is a] growing resentment by local Afghans against a central government that fails to deliver on promises of development and the heavy-handed tactics employed by U.S. and coalition forces.
Despite the insurgency’s growing strength, the majority of Afghans cited the numerous regional warlords as the greatest source of insecurity.
Women and girls are subject to both formal and informal (customary) justice mechanisms that fail to protect their rights.
On October 18 [2005], Afghanistan held elections for a lower house of parliament ...
Afghans ... embracing a political process instead of violence. ... but the overall turnout was significantly lower than expected .... voters were put off by the complexity of the ballots, disenchantment with the performance of the government and international community, and the presence of too many candidates with records of serious human rights abuses.
[Some] ... infamous successful candidates were Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Mullah Taj Mohammad, Younis Qanooni, Haji Almas, and Mullah Ezatullah ... implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred during hostilities in Kabul in the early 1990s.
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