After nearly seven years of costly efforts to stabilise and rebuild Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai's Government and its international supporters have not been able to secure either the Afghan capital or many other parts of the country, particularly in the south and east along the border with Pakistan. The Afghan authorities have again pointed a finger at the Taliban and their Pakistani backers as the culprits. There is no question that these forces, which are also opposed to India's involvement in Afghanistan, bear much of responsibility for Afghanistan's woes, but this tells only part of the story.The other side of the story is that Karzai presides over a corrupt and dysfunctional system of governance, with a very limited authority over the country. His Government is entirely dependent on the support provided by the NATO-led International Security fhAssistance Force (ISAF) and the US-led coalition forces, yet there has been little co-ordination between these forces and the Government's security apparatus.
The Afghan National Army is now claimed to be almost 70,000 strong, but it is still well short of the capacity to be a frontline fighting force. The ranks of the army, and for that matter the Karzai fhAdministration, are infiltrated by various opposition groups, most importantly the Taliban and its allies, more specifically Hezbi Islami, the Islamic Party of the former maverick Mujahideen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
In the case of the suicide bombing of the Indian embassy, the perpetrators used a truck full of explosives. This meant they had managed to get a large amount of explosives into the fortified city of Kabul and into one of its most securely guarded central areas. They could not have done this without sufficient help from inside, as was the case with the Taliban's previous daring operations at Kabul's Serena Hotel and Ghazi Stadium, and at Kandahar prison. This is a very humbling experience for the Karzai Government and its foreign backers.
Undeniably, the Taliban has sanctuaries in Pakistan and receives a considerable amount of support from the country. The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, has acknowledged as much. However, it should be noted that the Taliban has never been, nor will ever be, a major force: it is a militia composed of mostly poorly trained, clothed and equipped men. It has neither a strong system of command and control, nor any significant power behind it, as was the case with US backing for the Mujahideen in resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.