U.S. Army Spc. Richard Madrid, left, and U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Samuel Murphy, right, observe the view of the horizon at a check point near Daab Pass in the Shinkay district in Afghanistan's Zabul province, Feb. 25, 2012. Madrid and Murphy are assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division's 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Joshua BrandenburgTaliban Wait To Take Power From A Failed Afghan Government -- Nipa Banerjee, The Ottawa Citizen
Kabul — Sitting in the midst of the deadly violence against foreigners spreading across Afghanistan, I have seen many demonstrators who have hardly carried even light arms — they used their fists and sticks, and at most knives. These were civilians, not the Taliban, who were certainly in the background. Against such unarmed civilian demonstrators, it was surprising to see such fear gripping members of the international community, who are protected with hundreds of security guards, their guns and sniffing dogs, sand bags, steel walls and armoured cars.
It’s no wonder, mainly Afghan civilians — more than 40 of them — have been killed, the punishment for the audacity to oppose a stronger coalition. But what horrified me most on the first day of the demonstrations were lovely little boys, as young as eight to 10 years old, marching with knives and sticks, in their hands. They hardly looked fierce but marched smiling away. They would make any woman want to pick them up and hug them. Instead, they are recruited as boy soldiers to die as suicide bombers before they reach their teens, while western diplomats and advisers, all making sacrifices in Afghanistan, are pulled out from the Afghan ministries to the safe havens of heavily armed compounds.
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My Comment: I concur with this analysis .... an Afghan civil war will probably be the end result from the departure of the international community .... but it will be a civil/sectarian war that will probably kill more people in the first year than in than previous dozen years.