This disatisfaction is not limited to Irag, but Afghanistan also. I watched a presentation by Sarah Chaye of her book, Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, last night on CSPAN. She has lived in Kandahar for sometime now, and she has taken notice of how corrupt the newly installed government is. The reliance on the former warlords by the US, and inability of the new government to reign them in has led to vast corruption in the region. So bad is it, that many people are being driven back into the ranks of the Taliban. The governments inability to provide stability has led many to wish for a return of the Taliban because they did a better job of running the show.

Here is a short excerpt from the book review in the New York Times:

She contends that Gul Agha Shirzai, the warlord governor of Kandahar, has been able to convince the American military officers constantly rotating through the city that he is a loyal supporter of the new Afghanistan. But in fact, she writes, he and his relatives hid their own sweeping corruption, along with bitter complaints from other tribes. Today, Afghans who long for a modern and stable country express disappointment with Hamid Karzai and his American backers for creating a hugely corrupt Afghanistan. In rural areas, support for the Taliban is rising.

Chayes’s most explosive charge is that Pakistan — the United States’ supposed ally in the war against terrorism — is actively supporting the Taliban as a way to counter the spreading influence of its regional rival, India. To placate the Americans, Pakistan occasionally arrests a senior Qaeda operative. But at the same time, the resurgent Taliban fighting and killing American soldiers in the “new” Afghanistan were “maufactured and maintained, housed, trained and equipped by stubborn, shortsighted officials in that very Pakistani government,” she writes. “I was at a loss to understand why American decision makers could not see how suicidally contradictory their alliance with Pakistan was. To us on the ground, it was obvious.”


This is also similar to what is happening in Iraq in some ways. The level of corruption is very high in most provinces, and this has caused many Iraqis to have a lack of faith in the government to provide services and security.

If you care to read the whole review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/bo...fab9dd&ei=5070

"If you break it(Iraq), it's yours." (Colin Powell's advice to the President and his cabinet before the invasion of Iraq)