What Will The Afghanistan War Legacy Be?

U.S. soldiers carry a fellow soldier to a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter for evacuation after he was injured by an improvised explosive device on the way to Combat Outpost Baraki Barak in Afghanistan's Logar province, Oct. 10, 2012. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Christopher Bonebrake

What Will The Afghanistan War Legacy Be? -- Tom Peter, Christian Science Monitor

Much of the Soviets' development work got wiped out by a civil war in the 1990s. But the scope of the effort then was limited compared with the work today.

There may be two years left on the clock for the war in Afghanistan, but NATO's ability to shape events has largely come to an end, with the fighting at a stalemate, stalled peace negotiations, and incidents of Afghan security forces turning against their international counterparts.

Officials say international war and aid efforts are ongoing, but there are few indications that they will yield different results.

Rather than asking what more the international community can do in Afghanistan, the question may now be, What kind of legacy will the past decade of international influence leave here, and how long can it last?

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My Comment: Afghanistan has changed .... but I have always been skeptical that the development projects that have poured into Afghanistan will remain in the near future. The sectarian and tribal differences are just as pronounced today in Afghanistan as it was before the U.S. invasion .... and I suspect that this will continue long after we have left. Couple this with corruption, other countries getting involved in Afghanistan's internal affairs, warlords and drug addition .... the social/economic/political problems are still there .... and will remain there for the next few generations. But the biggest change has been in education .... this will have a long lasting impact, and I hope that it will be this cultural change that will .... 50 to 100 years from now .... change the country for the good.