As Western forces slog through their 10th year of combat in Afghanistan, a sign of just how poorly they've gotten through to the locals is how few Afghans have any idea of the events of 9/11 and what caused our intervention in their country.
The International Council on Security and Development reports that fully 92 per cent of the population in the key provinces of Helmand and Kandahar know nothing of the airliner hijackings and attacks of September 11, 2001. These are the Pashtun provinces where the heaviest fighting has raged for the past decade and the locals still have almost no idea why we're there at all.
ICOS President Norine MacDonald suggests we should be explaining to the Afghan people just why we've been stomping their villages and countryside for the past decade. I guess that just never dawned on our astonishingly mediocre military leadership in Afghanistan. Probably for the cost of just one or two airstrikes they could have papered Helmand and Kandahar with some leaflets explaining the whole business.
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