Fur­ther proof that the fight in Afghanistan should not be waged by sol­diers but by human­i­tar­i­ans and social busi­ness­peo­ple comes from Oxfam today. While peo­ple in the West believe the cause of the war in Afghanistan is the Tal­iban, a sur­vey shows that most of Afghanistan’s res­i­dents believe that poverty is it’s cause.

From Reuters, writer Jonathon Burch details the sur­vey from Oxfam.

After three decades of war, Afghanistan remains one of the poor­est and least devel­oped coun­tries in the world. It is also one of the most cor­rupt. Unem­ploy­ment stands at 40 per­cent and more than half the coun­try live below the poverty line.

On top of that, vio­lence is at its high­est lev­els since U.S.-backed Afghan forces top­pled the Tal­iban in late 2001.

The report, based on a sur­vey of more than 700 ordi­nary Afghans by British char­ity Oxfam and sev­eral local aid groups, found that 70 per­cent of peo­ple ques­tioned viewed poverty and unem­ploy­ment as the main dri­vers of the conflict.

Nearly half of those sur­veyed said cor­rup­tion and the inef­fec­tive­ness of their gov­ern­ment were the main rea­sons for the con­tin­ued fight­ing, while 36 per­cent said the Tal­iban insur­gency was to blame.

The 704 respon­dents from around the coun­try were allowed to give mul­ti­ple answers on rea­sons for the con­flict.
…

There are some 110,000 for­eign sol­diers in Afghanistan, 68,000 of them Amer­i­can, try­ing to quell a strength­en­ing Tal­iban insur­gency that has spread to pre­vi­ously peace­ful areas.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is in the final stages of decid­ing whether to send up to 40,000 more U.S. troops.

But ordi­nary Afghans are frus­trated at the slow pace of devel­op­ment, endemic cor­rup­tion and the inabil­ity of Afghan and inter­na­tional secu­rity forces to stop the violence.

Instead, one of the poor­est nations in the world will soon see more Amer­i­can sol­diers com­ing into the coun­try. So our ques­tion is, how do sol­diers fight poverty? Most likely by killing those who live in it.

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