Top US army officer talks of Afghan difficulties

Zabul, Afghanistan: In this impoverished province on the Pakistani border, the US military's most senior officer came face to face with the consequences of nearly eight years of American indifference and neglect in Afghanistan.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, sat across from Governor Mohammad Ashraf Naseri, who nervously stroked his salt-and-pepper beard and ran through his problems.

Taliban fighters regularly pass unmolested across Zabul's border with Pakistan. In recent months, they have launched a campaign to blow up the region's roads and force teachers to shut down local schools.

They also sliced off the ears of one defiant teacher.

"Do you have any help here, or are you all alone?" Mullen asked.

Naseri replied that the provincial government consisted of him and four other Afghans. There was no money coming from the central government in Kabul. The only funds in the area came from the harvesting of illegal poppy, which supported the Taliban.

Mullen had come to Afghanistan for the second time in the past month for a closer look at a war that President Obama has vowed to set on a new course.

Mullen found a war effort still hampered by a shortage of civilian and military reconstruction experts, a government that barely exists beyond the capital and a US military command that knows it must work hard to overcome the mistrust caused by years of aerial bombings and house-to-house raids.

"Combat operations are not the answer here," Mullen said after the meeting. "The answer is development so that people have a way to sustain themselves."

- Los Angeles Times -Washington Post News Service