The conflict in Afghanistan is at a decisive juncture, and the West is facing defeat on a scale not seen since Vietnam. Few want to face facts, and the result is a gap between rhetoric and reality of a kind that only wars gone badly 
wrong produce.
Lost in the rolling crisis that began with the Quran burning is an important upcoming date. At the end of this month, some say the 20th March, the Karzai regime will see through its threat to force out the private security companies who guard the contractors that carry out development projects across Afghanistan.
It never made any sense, a knee jerk reaction, to take over and punish a whole country because the US believed the twin tower bombers had a base there. 10 years of hellish war for an idiotic immoral revenge attack by the US war machine.
Humanitarian NGOs that operate without security will be unaffected. But the contractors who carry out projects funded by Western governments face the prospect of operating under the protection of a hastily raised “Afghan Public Protection Force”.
Would you put your business and your life in the hands of such a force?
According to the New York Times, some companies are wrapping up their projects in Afghanistan and leaving; others allow their employees to illegally keep personal weapons; and all are scrambling to make new arrangements.
In the kind of corporate buffoonery that neoliberal privatisation creates, and which has damaged the Western 
war effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, one US company is considering suing the US government. The contractors had been assured that they would have a secure environment in which to operate.
As one frightened US employee of an aid company commented, “We’re easy pickings” for insurgents and angry Afghans.
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And there are a lot of angry Afghans. Abdul Samad is one of them. He lost 11 relatives to the ‘rogue’ sergeant (and friends) in Panjwai. Along with those who have demonstrated against the Quran burnings, the Taliban, and the silent majority of Afghans.
Mr. Samad has one demand: It is time for the Americans to leave, all of them.
summary..Read full article HERE http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201231593938401477.html
The Free 