Embedded gloom with Brits in Afstan

A reporter for the Telegraph sees little light:

The British Army is rightly proud of the new road that runs through Musa Qala's teeming bazaar. After all, they built it - or, more accurately, it was built by the Afghans and paid for with British taxpayers' money.

Having just spent three weeks embedded with British troops in Helmand, I can report that, by Afghan standards, the road is pretty impressive. It is relatively straight and flat and, I was assured, has transformed the lives of many among the local population.

Quite what the bazaar's shopkeepers think of it, however, I do not know. On the occasion that I entered, flanked by soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment, it was simply too dangerous to stop and chat.

The very real threat posed by suicide bombers put interacting with the locals off the agenda, even though the soldiers were supposed to be on a "reassurance" patrol. The tension was tangible, the atmosphere threatening and deeply unpleasant. As far as the soldiers were concerned, they were in enemy territory.

But Musa Qala is supposed to be secure. It is supposed to be the model town from which insurgents have been cleansed and where even the local governor, Mullah Saalam, is a reconciled former member of the Taliban.

Put simply, Musa Qala is sold to us as the future; it is supposed to offer hope. So what has gone wrong ?..[an earlier, less pessimistic, British story is here]

The whole piece is certainly worth reading. It's conclusion:

Does failure beckon? In recent weeks both Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have promised to make Afghanistan the main focus of "the war on terror". But Afghanistan need more than words. It needs deeds, and it needs them now.

Meanwhile I think this NY Times story by Carlotta Gall (see links at final sentence of Update here), implicitly criticizing aerial bombing, is over-reliant on selected interviews with Afghans. The scent of an agenda.