Is This Progress? Afghan Reality

If you listen to Harper and Hillier and Scheffer, the US and NATO are making real progress in Afghanistan.

If you listen to Afghanis, you get a different story. To see how Afghan women see Afghanistan, stop by every now and then at www.rawa.org. Here are the top headlines for the past week:

- 70 Percent of Afghanistan still lawless

- Husband cuts toes off his wife, pours hot water on her (with photos)

- Afghanistan - women's lives worse than ever

- Bashira, gang-raped in Sar-e-Pul province, calls for justice

- Wanted for empty prison, some convicted Afghan drug barons

- The masscre in Shagay, Bakwa district of Fara Province

- Afghanistan sitting on a gold mine

- Gang-rape of young girls in northern Afghanistan.

A warning: this site has photographs of abused Afghan women that are, to say the least, disturbing.

Six years after we drove out the Taliban, this is what we've allowed the place to become? The people of Afghanistan will never be free or safe until we destroy the warlords' iron grip on that country.

We need to realize that we have delivered the people of Afghanistan into the hands of a gang of butchers that is almost indistinguishable from the bunch we drove out. If we're there to liberate the people of Afghanistan, let's do it - starting in Kabul.