An Oasis

Afghanistan: A disaster waiting to happen?

Peter Oborne delivered a striking picture of an Afghanistan rife in corruption and lacking in substantive progress since the attention of the world has moved elsewhere in tonights "Here's One We Invaded Earlier" on UK Channel 4. Oborne deliberately sets out to be controversial in the piece which Channel 4 calls an "authored polemic" but even allowing for that it is clear that there is frustration with the pace of change and a lack of money to make it happen.

Jon Henley writes slightly more rosily in The Guardian (Afghanistan 2001) of a place where refugees are returning, wells have been dug, shelters built but all the time plagued by factional in-fighting and unexploded shells. Asking "Is life better?" he answers, "How do you measure that in a place where just being alive is an achievement?"

Posted by Paul at May 31, 2003 09:32 PM |