CNN poll shows lowest support for Afghan War

Two important articles on the War in Afghanistan... Firstly, CNN analyst ponders the end of the War in Afghanistan here saying:

American support for the war in Afghanistan has never been lower, according to the latest CNN polling. The low numbers just the latest figure in the complex math being calculated to determine how the US should proceed in the ten year war.

The latest poll from CNN and Opinion Research Corporation found only 37% of all Americans favor the war, 52% say the war in Afghanistan has turned into a Vietnam.

Those numbers are going down as US commitment to the war is going up, significantly. 30,000 more troops added this year. At the time the troop increase was announced, military leaders were aware it would mean a rise in troop casualties and were vocal in trying to warn Americans that it would happen.

Still the daily headlines about troop deaths is staggering. 16 NATO troops have been killed in the last three days. The US has lost 386 troops so far this year.

Additionally, Aid Groups that are on the ground in Afghanistan now believe that aid organizations must accept that thr Taliban are going to play a role in the future of Afghanistan (HERE).  They say,
Aid workers in Afghanistan should work with the Taliban as the insurgents will play a permanent role in the country's future, a safety monitoring group said Friday.

The insurgents, who have been fighting a brutal war for nine years, were becoming increasingly confident of returning to power, the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) said in a quarterly report.

With the Taliban "certain to play a permanent and increasingly political role" in Afghanistan's future -- and foreign forces increasingly sidelined -- ANSO advised non-government organisations (NGOs) to work with the insurgents.

"We recommend that NGOs start developing strategies for engaging with them rather than avoiding them," ANSO's director Nic Lee said

"We understand that the (insurgents) are increasingly desirous of this engagement and if handled correctly will respond to it coherently and non-violently," he wrote in an introduction to the report...

Some parts of the country, especially in the previously peaceful north, were "in danger of slipping beyond any control," Lee said. The report describes the Taliban as "increasingly mature, complex and effective".

The insurgents were setting up "shadow governance" structures, and leaders "are outlining tentative foreign policy, reassuring neighbours of cooperation on narcotics, the environment and commerce, while alluding to 'the upcoming system of the country'," Lee said...

"The sum of their activity presents the image of a movement anticipating authority and one which has already obtained a complex momentum that NATO will be incapable of reversing," he said.