Chaos in Afghanistan

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In the World Policy Journal, Carl Robichaud warns that the United States—and, for that matter, the rest of the world—is letting Afghanistan slowly slip into chaos. Insurgents have been gaining strength in recent months, and violence is on the rise. The country needs an estimated 200,000 peacekeepers to provide security, and it’s about 80,000 short. And the international community has failed to bolster the central government’s legitimacy by spending the money to rebuild the country—11 times as much has been spent on military operations as on reconstruction, humanitarian aid, and economic assistance.

Everyone knows the history here: After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in the face of U.S.-backed resistance in the 1980s, the United States let the country go to hell. A decade later, among other things, it had to go invade Afghanistan. One would think this is a pretty good argument for not letting the country go to hell. Apparently not.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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