Afghan war unwinnable under Karzai, says rights group

It would take "a miracle" to win the war and restore viable peace in Afghanistan under the inept government of President Hamid Karzai despite a massive surge in foreign troops, a rights group said on Monday. The surge had also driven violence to its worst levels since the Taliban's 2001 ousting, with 14 civilians killed or wounded on average each day, Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a new report. "Contrary to President Barrack Obama's promise that the deployment... would 'disrupt, dismantle and defeat' Taliban insurgents and their al Qaeda allies in the region, the insurgency has become more resilient, multi-structured and deadly," the group said. The 30,000-strong troop lift was also clouding U.S. foreign policy objectives, with regional powers such as Pakistan, India and Iran flexing their muscles in the country ahead of an expected U.S. and NATO pullout, starting next year. Assessing that it would take a miracle to win the war under Karzai, the report said the crisis of bad governance and inept leadership in Afghanistan had been compounded by a disorganized, half-heartedly committed and concomitantly mistaken international community.