Face of terror: Haqqani’s fortunes have been revived by U.S. mistakes and Pakistan’s ISI

It has been seven years since September 11th, 2001. Seven years that should have provided more than enough opportunity for the world’s great democracies to begin, at least, to come to grips with global terrorism. Yet today it is the face of brutal, escalating violence that stares back at us from the tribal areas on the Pakistan/Afghan border.

His name is Jalaluddin Haqqani. He was Washington’s darling in the 1980’s. Along with fellow Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Haqqani received most of the U.S. cash and military hardware intended to help Afghanistan rid itself of Soviet occupation forces.

Now, this ailing old reprobate and his son, Sirajuddin, are two of the Taliban’s most dangerous commanders. They and their guerrillas, together with their al Qaeda allies, have been the targets of at least two US-led raids just this week.

But as the pace and intensity of bloodletting increases, the prospects for stability in Southwest Asia are receding – as are the chances of a final reckoning for the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks.

It’s a syndrome skyreporter identified last summer, in 2007, as the Taliban insurgency gained alarming momentum. We dubbed it boomerang blowback - the Bush administration’s genius for taking the unintended consequences of the CIA’s past backing of killers like Haqqani, and making them loop round and round in new, destructive ways.

From failing to come to terms with terrorist safe havens in Pakistan, to propping up a monstrously corrupt regime in Kabul, the White House has turned the opportunities of a post-Taliban Afghanistan into a morass of despair.

But don’t take our word for it.

This week the outgoing European Union envoy to Kabul, Fransesc Vandrell, admitted to the BBC that the West has no coherent strategy for success. He held out little hope for improvement, because: “It is impossible to change the Bush administration's approach to Afghanistan.

"They don't want to see any changes because they still hope to present Afghanistan as a success story.”

Here’s a snapshot of George W. Bush’s “success story” seven years on from September 11th, 2001:

- Afghan civilians make up nearly half the 2,500 lives lost to armed conflict so far this year, according to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief. Armed clashes are up by 50% over 2007.

- This week the Taliban fought the Western-backed Afghan National Army in countryside just 45 kilometers from Kabul.

- The Afghan capital is on its highest perpetual state of alert since the vanquishing of the Taliban regime in Nov. 2001. Yet residents tell skyreporter that added security measures are suffocating the city, rather than increasing safety.

- The U.N. and the World Bank are among a constellation of agencies that have publicly condemned the corruption rampant in the Karzai regime. The Asian Development Bank states that the regime’s ability to govern is undermined by “pervasive corruption” at all levels of administration.

- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose government shares the blame, along with the Bush administration, for concealing some of the worst wrongdoing within the regime, has now publicly demanded that Karzai “sort out the government so we have a full attack on corruption and sort out the drug culture.”

- The Netherlands this summer threatened to reduce its aid unless Karzai introduced meaningful reforms to his government’s judiciary.

- As drought, insecurity and inflation have caused hunger in more and more regions, the Kabul-based agency Integrity Watch Afghanistan estimates that for every $100 in aid directed to the country, only $20 actually reaches Afghan recipients.

- The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in June that the Defense and State departments "lacked detailed plans and cost estimates for completing and sustaining" the creation of the Afghan National Army and Police. This, after spending $16.5 billion on the program over six years, while demanding overall U.S. control.

- Rising violence has caused the postponement for two years of Afghanistan’s first population census, and informed sources have cast doubt on whether conditions will improve sufficiently to allow next year’s parliamentary and presidential elections.

Little wonder, then, that Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Michael Mullen has warned Congress that the U.S. is “running out of time” to win in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, he added that sending more troops will not guarantee victory.

That’s a sharp rebuke for the neo-conservative way of thinking, based as it is on the surge tactic that has coincided with a decrease in U.S. losses in Iraq.

As the Afghan people will tell you, their country urgently needs a surge of sound strategy, rather than troops, from Western countries: a new determination to battle terrorism at its source – Pakistan – and to clean up the broken administration in Kabul.

The odds of that happening? Not good, if Canada’s Stephen Harper is any indication. Seeking re-election, Harper has set something that will be music to the Taliban’s ears: a firm end date on Canada’s military presence.

Having failed to take up the recommendations of the independent review he ordered late last year – the Manley Panel – Harper has been content to outsource the Canadian Forces to White House command and control, the same fated leadership exposed by Admiral Mullen’s remarks.

A flawed American administration, and a defeatist Canadian one:  what hope, then, have the people of Afghanistan got for their immediate future?