© NurPhoto via Getty Images / Aziz Sana
Kandahar province
I recently spent 12 months in Kabul as an adviser on policing. After seventeen years of NATO's mission to bring peace and security, it's sad to say that the country's probably in a worse state than ever.
Our terrible failure in Afghanistan, with lives wasted despite billions spent, has produced only one winner: organised crime. A senior Hungarian career detective friend of mine recently told me there has never been so much cheap, pure heroin in Budapest. Another Turkish Police colleague of mine told me a similar thing about Istanbul this week.
Last year, I worked in Afghanistan with a small number of International Police Experts. My US, German, Australian, Hungarian, Turkish colleagues, like me, each had 30 or more years' experience, and many had years of extra experience in Afghanistan and in other conflict zones.
But just like in our home countries, the many politicians, military leaders, diplomatic staff and NGOs there would not listen to us experts in policing. NATO, just like the Soviet Union before it, has been resoundingly beaten in Afghanistan, and the country will almost certainly continue in chaos. The story is little different to the West's failures in Iraq and Libya, and, probably before too much longer, Mali and a few other places in Africa.
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