AFGHAN STILL A FAIL

Last November, I posted about how some Afghans had no idea why American troops were in their country.  9 months later, not much has changed:

What Afghans think of the war: 'Why are you Americans here?'
By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / September 9, 2011
Christian Science Monitor

A decade after Sept. 11, Qul is just one of many Afghans who say they have heard almost nothing about the attacks that led to the fall of the Taliban government and an ongoing, 10-year foreign military presence in his country.

As US policymakers debate keeping troops in Afghanistan as far out as 2024, the void of information among large swaths of the Afghan population this deep into the war may cast doubt on the ability of the United States to effectively accomplish its goals here in the coming years.

Among those Afghans who know about the 9-11 attacks, conspiracy theories are rampant:

Habibullah Rafi is a respected historian who specializes in Kabul history at the Afghanistan Academy of Sciences, an academic research institute. On the morning of the attacks, he was with his family in Calgary, Alberta. Today he says that he believes America planned the attacks so it could invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

"After Russia was destroyed in Afghan­is­tan, America needed a way to sneak in here," he says, echoing a popular theory.