Charge-sheeting ISAF

This week, every columnist worth his salt has expressed his/her opinion on the looming impeachment of the president or Dr Afia Siddiqui's plight. It took a major effort to curb the urge to present my own "two cent's worth" on the topics. Recently, Group Captain Mark D Heffron, a former UK chief of information coordination at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul briefed a selected Muslim and Asian media at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London on ISAF operations in Afghanistan.

Heffron has been brought into the new post of information coordinator following concern that Afghanistan may prove to be an even greater catastrophe for the US and Britain, than the Iraq war. Parallels have already been drawn with the Russian occupation in the 1980s, dubbed as Moscow's Vietnam War. So far the US and UK have been in Afghanistan for approaching seven years, two years less than the Russians.

During his candid briefing, the Group Captain made disclosures regarding the ISAF's performance in the Afghan theatre of war, admitting that ISAF operation is "under resourced." In terms of comparison, he went as far as saying that Afghanistan would need no less than 800,000 troops for what ISAF numbers achieved in the Balkans. ISAF's success in Kosovo was based on the fact that logistically it could be well supported being in the heart of Europe and closer to USA.