Afghans Losing Hope After 8 Years of War

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:13 a.m. ET

KABUL (AP) -- The man on the motorcycle was going the wrong way down a one-way street, gesturing indignantly for the phalanx of traffic-clogged cars in front of him to move.

''Brother, why are you angry with us?'' said a passenger leaning out of one of the vehicles blocking his path. ''It's you who are going the wrong way!''

''I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at Afghanistan,'' the man cried back, waving his arm dismissively as he negotiated his bike onto a crowded sidewalk and drove off in a trail of exhaust fumes. ''These are sad days.''

In Kabul, even a traffic jam can provoke a comment on this Islamic nation's dismal state, which most people here believe is at its bleakest since the U.S. invaded to topple the Taliban in 2001. It's a striking sentiment when you consider it comes after eight years of international intervention, $60 billion in foreign aid and the lives of thousands of foreign troops and Afghan civilians.

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