U.S. LACKS CAPACITY TO WIN OVER AFGHANS

"U.S. military and civilian agencies lack the skills and training as well as the institutional framework necessary to carry out culturally and politically sensitive socio-economic programmes at the local level in Afghanistan, or even to avoid further alienation of the population... the U.S. government does not even have a minimum corps of people capable of speaking Pashto, the language of the 14 million ethnic Pashtuns who represent about 42 percent of the population of Afghanistan... 5,000 U.S. officials had learned Vietnamese by the end of the Vietnam War. The Foreign Service Institute should be turning out 200 to 300 Pashto speakers a year... (but) the United States has turned out a total of only 18 Foreign Service officers who can speak Pashto, and only two of them are now serving in Afghanistan (which) belies the U.S. commitment to a nation-building and counter-insurgency approach..."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46578