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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Posts by M. Ashraf Haidari

WHY CANADA SHOULD KEEP ITS TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN
MAY 29, 2007 - 2:26PM PDT
Posted by M. Ashraf Haidari
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This commentary was originally published by EurasiaNet on May 23, 2007

Canadians are growing increasingly jittery about their country’s military participation in Afghanistan. A majority of Canadians now wonder if the political cost of maintaining troops in Afghanistan is too high. They should realize that the cost of not being there would be even higher.

According to a recent public opinion poll, 55 percent of respondents favor a pullout of Canadian troops from Afghanistan, if the casualty rate continues to climb. Meanwhile, more Canadians oppose their government's handling of the war (48 percent) than approve of it (44 percent). And... FULL TEXT
 
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THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’: NATION-BUILDING OR NATION-NEGLECTING?
FEB 7, 2007 - 12:20PM PDT
Posted by M. Ashraf Haidari
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Now is the time to finish the job we began in Afghanistan five years ago. Last year saw a desperate and vicious onslaught by a new generation of Taliban forces with enhanced logistical and financial support. More than 4,000 Afghans, many of them civilians, were killed in military actions in 2006, a three-fold increase from the previous year. Suicide attacks -- a phenomenon unknown to Afghans before 2002 -- jumped to 118 from 21. As our intelligence capabilities improve, we are finding and arresting more boys who arrive in Afghanistan fresh from ideological brainwashing in foreign madrassas. They weep when... FULL TEXT
 
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REBUILDING AFGHANISTAN: THE DIASPORA’S DEBT OF SERVICE
DEC 15, 2006 - 12:54AM PDT
Posted by M. Ashraf Haidari
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Do we Afghans ever think about our debt of service to Afghanistan and actually doing something about it? I think we hardly do so. But let us begin with the basic fact that the land we call home is diversely populated, geographically landlocked, politically and economically least developed, and unfortunately located in a predatory neighborhood where at least one of our neighbors sees its raison d'être partly dependent on instability in Afghanistan. Meantime, we understand that other state and non-state actors -- such as extremists, terrorists, and drug-traffickers -- have exploited our country's vulnerabilities to their advantage, and they will... FULL TEXT
 
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