Osama bin Laden is dead. The occupation of Afghanistan has been nothing more than the USA military keeping a toe hold into the region. The war against al Qaeda is over. There are stranglers of the original regime still alive or so we are lead to believe. Even the one eyed Mullah Omar has been dead for years. Fifteen years is nearly a full generation and nothing has changed that much. The war was against al Qaeda.
I wish the new leadership within Afghanistan a peaceful existence with those that seek stability in the region including Saudi Arabia.
If the trillions of US spent in this hideous war that was over years ago had been spent in Puerto Rico, the conditions would be extremely different and quite possibly the waiting list for a pediatrician would be months long.
By Carlotta Call
A hilltop overlooking Kabul, where a $100 million Saudi-funded mosque and education complex was to be built. Construction was scheduled for completion this year, but the hilltop site remains a dusty lot where boys fly kites and drug addicts crouch beside a cemetery wall.
Kabul, Afghanistan — Fifteen years, (click here) half a trillion dollars and 150,000 lives since going to war, the United States is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight. A surging Taliban insurgency, meanwhile, is flush with a new inflow of money.
With their nation’s future at stake, Afghan leaders have renewed a plea to one power that may hold the key to whether their country can cling to democracy or succumbs to the Taliban. But that power is not the United States.
It is Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in the Afghan conflict: It is on both sides.
A longtime ally of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia has backed Islamabad’s promotion of the Taliban. Over the years, wealthy Saudi sheikhs and rich philanthropists have also stoked the war by privately financing the insurgents.
