Seven Years On, Terrorism Still Threatens Afghanistan

On September 11, 2001, the world woke up to a tragic day that has been recorded in recent history as a consequence of neglecting failing or failed states during the 1990s. The loss of more than 3,000 American lives was not just an isolated event that we sadly witnessed on the morning of 9/11 but the culmination of many such tragic events which had been unfolding before our watching eyes thousands of miles away from American shores in Afghanistan.

It is now an established fact by all accounts that had the United States and its allies helped rebuild Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from the country in 1989 and the ensuing fall of the Afghan regime in 1992, the country would not have become a no man's land -- a hotbed for global extremism and terrorism -- in the following years. However, soon after Afghans effectively delivered the last knock-out blow to the falling "Evil Empire," the United States and its Cold War allies achieved their strategic objective in Afghanistan and quit the country, leaving its impoverished people to pick up the pieces on their own.

M. Ashraf Haidari, www.embassyofafghanistan.org