Afghanistan Is in Its Worst Shape Since 2001, European Diplomat Says

By ALISON SMALE
NYT

GENEVA — One of the most experienced Western envoys in Afghanistan said Sunday that conditions there had become the worst since 2001. He urged a concerted American and foreign response, even before a new American administration took office, to avoid “a very hot winter for all of us.”

The envoy, Francesc Vendrell, a Spanish diplomat with eight years’ experience in Afghanistan, especially criticized the growing number of civilian deaths in attacks by American and international forces.

Those deaths have created “a great deal of antipathy” and widened the distance between the Afghan government and citizens, he said here at an annual review of global strategy organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Mr. Vendrell recently stepped down as the European Union envoy in Kabul.

The United States military is investigating an assertion by villagers in western Afghanistan that some 90 men, women and children died in a missile attack on Aug. 22. The Afghan government and a United Nations investigation have backed that assertion, but American officers have said that only seven civilians were killed.

Mr. Vendrell warned that the situation was precarious among the Pashtun tribes who live mainly in southern Afghanistan, bordering Pakistan. He also said that the Taliban-led insurgency had spread not only to the east but also close to Kabul and, in pockets, to the north and west, hitherto relatively peaceful.

(Continued here.)