Afghan Government ‘Could Collapse’ After 2014, Report Finds

The Afghan government could crumble and fall after NATO’s expected withdrawal in 2014, according to a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG).

“There is a real risk that the regime in Kabul could collapse upon NATO’s withdrawal,” Candace Rondeaux, the ICG’s senior Afghanistan analyst, says in the report.

The report says that fraudulent presidential elections in Afghanistan in 2014 are expected and the instability that this is sure to cause could prove terminal for the Afghan government, which barely controls much of the country outside Kabul, the capital.

“Another botched election and resultant unrest would push them to breaking point,” the report found.

“The Afghan army and police are overwhelmed and underprepared for the transition,” the report says, referring to the complete failure of the Obama administration’s primary counter-insurgency strategy of building up indigenous forces to serve as a bulwark to the Taliban in the absence of US-NATO occupation.

Rondeaux, in an interview with Al Jazeera, said “Karzai seems more interested in perpetuating his own power by any means rather than ensuring credibility of the political system and long-term stability of the country.”

“Instead what you have are the gears of transition working in reverse against the gears of transformation,” Rondeaux said. “Now there is a great deal of concern that these elections may not even happen.”

The conclusions of the ICG are not unusual. Indeed, virtually the entire US political establishment recognizes that the war in Afghanistan is a complete and total failure. Both the Obama administration and the Romney campaign agree that US troops should be withdrawn in 2014, even though no aims have been achieved.

“The outgoing head of the Red Cross delegation in Afghanistan says civilians are in greater danger with less hope for peace than when he arrived on his job seven years ago,” reports the Associated Press.

President Hamid Karzai himself said just last week that the US war against militancy in Afghanistan “will not be successful,” noting that the Taliban have not been diminished after 12 years of war.