Some bright news: according to local sources, on April 16 a volley of RPGs were fired at the DACAAR house in Islamabad Village in the Laghman Province of Afghanistan. Several men entered the compound with the intention of abducting the Danes within. The local villagers, however, fought them off with hunting rifles and ferreted the aid workers to other safe houses.
This is unquestionably good news, as it might indicate that, since the Asia Foundation’s 2004 survey, which showed still strong support for NATO and the Karzai government, public opinion may not have shifted terribly far against the West. We annoy the hell out of the locals, but they prefer being annoyed to being enslaved.
I’ll take it for now. Plus, I’m happy to see reasons for staying hopeful about Afghanistan.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust