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A report released this morning by Open Society Foundation investigated the practice of night-time raids conducted by the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan and found that the resulting violence and indiscriminate detention of civilians undercuts any progress made by Coalition forces against the Taliban. One Afghan interviewed by the Foundation expressed the popular sentiment on the US night raids: “They claim to be against terrorists, but what they are doing is terrorism. It spreads terror. It creates more violence.” Nearly ten years after the Afghanistan war, Western efforts to oust the Taliban are failing. On September 13th, two days after the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the US Embassy in Kabul was fiercely attacked by teams of armed men wielding rocket propelled grenades. The day-time attack lasted many hours and well into the night. The Embassy attack, which took place in Kabul’s most heavily fortified area, was coordinated with simultaneous suicide attacks throughout the Afghan capital. It is suspected that the attackers were dissident members of Afghanistan’s security forces, sending a chilling message that the Taliban, who claimed responsibility, now had the ability to infiltrate and attack the US presence at will. There have been more than a dozen attacks by the Taliban in Kabul this year alone, including three major attacks since June. The attacks include high-profile assassinations of officials representing the pro-US Afghan government. According to my guest Gareth Porter, the state of the Afghanistan war this year indicates a clear failure of the Bush-era counterinsurgency tactic adopted by Obama. Porter writes, “the Taliban war narrative that it is able to penetrate the even the tightest security and cannot be defeated appears to have far more credibility with Afghans of all political stripes than the narrative put forward by U.S. strategists.”

GUEST: Gareth Porter, is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy and the Afghanistan war. He writes for Interpress Service.

Read Gareth Porter’s latest article on Afghanistan here: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/09/14/taliban-narrative-in-afghan-war/

Download the Open Society’s report, The Cost of Kill/Capture: Impact of the Night Raid Surge on Afghan Civilians, here: http://tinyurl.com/3kqhhgo

Gareth Porter recommends the following news sources: www.pajhwok.com, ipsnews.net, and english.aljazeera.net