West's Afghan Strategy Failing: Reports

"The US policies in Afghanistan have re-created the safe haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy," said Reinert.

"The US has lost control in Afghanistan and has in many ways undercut the new democracy ... I think we can call that a failure," said Emmanuel Reinert, Executive Director of the Senlis Council, in a report on the council's website.

"The US policies in Afghanistan have re-created the safe haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy," he asserted.

The report, "Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taliban", said the flawed military approach by the US-led forces is allowing ousted Taliban to regain its influence.

"Huge amounts of money have been spent on large and costly military operations, but after five years southern Afghanistan is once more a battlefield for the control of the country."

One British soldier was killed and five others were seriously injured by a landmine in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan Wednesday.

The death brings to 38 the number of British military killed in Afghanistan since 2001 when US-led forces that toppled Taliban government.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) - which has about 10,000 mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops in the south - has come under regular attack, particularly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

Nearly 30 foreign troops have been killed in hostile action since the NATO-led force took over command of southern Afghanistan on July 31 from the US.

Starvation

The Senlis Council said the campaign against Taliban had inflicted lawlessness, misery and starvation on the Afghan people, with thousands of villagers fleeing the fighting and a continuing drought.

"Five years after 9/11, Afghanistan is still one of the poorest countries in the world and there is a hunger crisis in the fragile Southern part of the country," Reinert asserted.

"Remarkably this vital fact seems to have been overlooked in funding and prioritization of the foreign policy, military, counter narcotics and reconstruction plans."

The report said Afghan children were paying the price for the flawed Western policies.

"I took my child to the graveyard, my child died of hunger," said a man in one of the refugee camps charted by the organization in Kandahar Province.

There are 10 to 15 such camps in the region, each sheltering 10,000 people.

The report also blamed the forced eradication of opium crops for triggering a severe humanitarian crisis.

"Forced poppy crop eradication is an anti-poor policy," said Reinert, asserting that poppy cultivation means survival for thousands of Afghans.

He insisted that by destroying entire communities’ livelihoods without any alternative plan for how the farmers would feed their families, the eradication programs "are pushing farmers straight back into the arms of the Taliban."

A separate report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) reached the same conclusion.

"The counter-narcotics policy and eradication of the poppy crop have caused tensions between local people, the government and the [Nato] coalition," it said.

"The removal of the farmers' livelihood program runs counter to winning 'hearts and minds' in many areas.

"The Taliban capitalize on this."

Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium, most of which is used in Europe, Russia, China, Iran and Central Asia often as heroin.

The UN estimates suggest the crop will increase by nearly 50 percent this year to a record 6,100 tones.

Hollow Promises

Many Afghans saw the deteriorating situation an enough reason to join Taliban.

"In the villages, they had their crops destroyed, there is no water, no jobs, nothing to do – isn’t it fair that they go and join the Taliban? Wouldn’t you do the same thing?" said a worker in Kandahar city.

A former commander from Kandahar agreed.

"When you first came here we were so glad to see you. Now we have lived with you in our country for five years and we see you tell a lot of lies and make a lot of false promises," he said.

The new military campaign against Taliban in southern Afghanistan has also exacerbated peoples' suffering.

"After the bombing I moved to Lashkar Gah…I am afraid and terrified," said a man in a camp in Lashkar Gah.

"There have been no official camps established to provide for civilians who left their villages due to US bombing campaigns," he added.

On Wednesday, the Afghan parliament asked the foreign troops to avoid civilian casualties during its operations in the south.

"Preventing civilian casualties is one of the basic demands of the representatives of people," speaker Mohammad Younus Qanooni told visiting NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

He said that harming civilians could be used by Taliban to turn the general populace against the parliament.

The legislature has recently approved a motion urging the prosecution of US soldiers responsible for a deadly road crash which set off angry public protests nationwide.

A US military vehicle ploughed into a dozen of vehicles in the capital Kabul on Monday, May 29, killing at least five Afghan civilians.

The incident sent thousands of angry Afghans into the streets of Kabul, hurling stones at the US convoy and smashing vehicle windows.

Click to read the Senlis Council's report in Full