Afghans grow more suspicious of our occupation: Afghan diplomat

Sharif Ghalib is a long-time Afghan diplomat who was the first representative of Afghanistan in Canada. He was the Charge d'Affaires in Ottawa from 2002 until 2005. He writes in the Asia Times:

Mar 14, 2008

Afghanistan: New envoy, old challenges
By Sharif Ghalib

... Frustration over the lack of security is mounting so much so that a growing number of ordinary Afghans question whether the multinational coalition forces are in their country to bring peace or whether these forces are capable of doing the job in the first place.

As a result, the declining pattern of security has taken a heavy toll on the confidence of the people over the ability of the Afghan government and the international community to carry out reconstruction objectives at the desired pace, aimed at tangibly improving their lives.

... a great many wonder how negligibly their lives have been changed with the billions of dollars that have been funneled to the country. ...

Oddly, UNAMA, on more than one occasion, has been on the record as taking position and/or putting out intrusive statements over purely internal government issues, such as appointments of certain state officials, and at times even judging the country's parliamentary decisions, irrelevant to its jurisdiction and the framework of its responsibilities, and detrimental to the efficacy of its role, image and integrity in a post-conflict nation still susceptible to upheavals.

By the same token, revelations about UN-ranking delegates' clandestine activities in southern Afghanistan in making contact with the Taliban last December, found by the Afghan government to be unsanctioned and inconsistent with the nature of their jobs, and the ensuing controversy surrounding their expulsion, are instances which run utterly counter to impartiality as an underlying principal enshrined in the charter of the United Nations as an international organization. ... (link)