Could Afghan Women Hold Key To ISAF Support?
Wikileaks has published a CIA Red Cell document that indicates they are trying to shore up support in Europe to keep the NATO alliance alive in Afghanistan. The allies of the United States have been fighting strong anti-mission sentiment in Germany and France, showing a level of pessimism that is at times in contradiction to the progress being made. Now that Holland has dropped out of Afghanistan, the U.S. is afraid of winding up fighting a war on its own. Ironically, German and French citizens are so disengaged from the mission that the French government was able to quietly increase troop support in 2008 without too much of a public backlash. That could change, the document reports, if the summer produces the expected casualty surge with greater engagement with the Taliban. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR] conducted a poll in the fall of 2009 that indicates that 0.1% to 1.3% of French and German respondents identify Afghanistan as the most urgent issue
