Independent journalist Anand Gopal discusses the Taliban’s lucrative protection racket on U.S. supply convoys, Pakistan’s refusal to allow a bilateral peace deal between Hamid Karzai and the Taliban, Colin Powell’s disinterest in regime change in Afghanistan (in September 2001), the Afghan army’s inability to secure the country or fight the Taliban, how the Marjah screw-up has made the military cautious on the Kandahar offensive and why Gen. Petraeus’s ‘success’ in Iraq was easy: allow majority (Shia) to rule and bribe minority (Sunni) to stop fighting — while in Afghanistan the opposite is proposed.
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