For 15 years, Ahmed Bachar has looked after orphans. Two hundred of them, ages 5 to 16. He’s made sure they had a bed each night, food in their bellies, and a way to get to school.

When Allied forces pushed the Taliban from power in Bachar’s native Afghanistan in 2001, money from international aid agencies started to flow to him. With it, Bachar was able to get a building, books, clothes and even toys for the children.

Today, however, Bachar is a fugitive. Wracked with guilt for abandoning the orphans, he is hiding with his own seven children for fear of being killed by—of all people—the Taliban.

They are back. With a vengeance. And in their eyes, accepting international monies is a capital crime.

“Maybe 80 percent they leave me alone, but 20 percent chance they kill me,” Bachar explains. “The problem is, I cannot trust the government forces to protect me. The police only want bribes from us. We are caught between the two.”

Bachar’s story, which illustrates Afghanistan’s twin plagues of a resurgent Taliban and an inept and corrupt West-backed government, appeared in this past weekend’s Sunday Times, in a moving article by long-time Afghanistan reporter Christina Lamb.

“Bachar’s case, in a town just an hour’s drive from the capital, is typical,” Lamb wrote. “Although the coalition can defeat the Taliban in direct battle, what the Taliban do is control the terrain psychologically” (emphasis mine throughout).

As far as Bachar and so many of his countrymen are concerned, the Taliban’s removal and nato’s presence were merely a temporary reverie. Life has largely returned to the way it was before the 2001 invasion.

Signs of this reality are everywhere. Taliban justice is widespread. According to one British aid agency, they behead someone about every other day. Terrorist attacks are increasing; this year has already been the deadliest for U.S. forces since entering the country, breaking the record set last year. In June and July, more American troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Lamb reports that on UN security maps, more than half the country is now considered “uncontrolled hostile environment,” whereas just a few years ago, none of the country fit that description.

Kabul is surrounded by the Taliban. “Of four highways into the capital from the south, east, west and north, built with hundreds of millions of foreign aid money, only the northern route is considered safe. Even that has become prone to rocket attacks,” Lamb says.

Meanwhile, the nation’s heroin production is booming. A New York Times piece last week said the illegal drug may account for half of Afghanistan’s economy. In other words, if the poppy fields were razed, the economy would collapse. And much of that dirty money is funneled into terrorist activity.

The locals aren’t the only ones to recognize this reality. The allied forces see it too, including the commanders. And they are becoming more vocal about it.

Gen. David D. McKiernan, America’s top officer there, says, “In large parts of Afghanistan, we don’t see progress.”

“The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust,” British envoy Sherard Cowper-Coles was quoted in a French paper as saying.

Last week, news of a coming intelligence report on the “downward spiral” in Afghanistan hit the New York Times. American officials who saw the classified, yet-unfinished report said it paints a bleak picture of a nation with crumbling central authority because of rampant corruption in the Hamid Karzai government (far beyond the policemen who won’t look after citizens like Ahmed Bachar until they get a payoff)—a nation under siege by Taliban militants using increasingly sophisticated technology and benefiting from safe havens in Pakistan. America is sending nearly $6 billion of aid to Afghanistan each year, and it doesn’t know just how that money is being spent.

What is to be done? Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, a British commander who just finished his tour in Afghanistan, has an idea. “We need to lower our expectations,” he told Lamb. “We’re not going to win this war.” He advocates simply trying to tamp down the insurgency to the point where the Afghan Army can take over—and looking to strike a political deal, even if it means returning some power to, you guessed it, the Taliban.

He’s not the only one thinking this way. Last Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said America would be open to negotiating with the Taliban if it meant an end to the Afghan war. Ultimately, he said, reconciliation must be part of a political outcome.

That’s right. Reconciliation.

With the Taliban.

For Ahmed Bachar, that means reconciliation with living under a death penalty for buying kites for orphans with U.S. dollars.

Essentially, the secretary’s comment reflected the beginning of official recognition and legitimization of the reality that Bachar and other Afghanis are already coping with. That is, given the fact that it was the Taliban that allied forces displaced in their 2001 invasion, a negotiated solution that returned power to that militantly Islamic organization would effectively return the nation to its prewar status.

It’s an absolutely remarkable situation.

If negotiating with the Taliban is the path to ending the war in Afghanistan, then you have to ask, what was this war all about? For seven years, the Taliban has basically been fighting, not to crush the West—which would be impossible—but merely to inflict enough suffering on the West that it loses the stomach for the fight and pulls out in ignominy. They’re not likely to take the first deal Mark Carleton-Smith or Robert Gates pitches at them, but they’ve got to be pleased with the direction things are going.

It is fascinating to compare this hard reality with the rhetoric echoing through America’s presidential campaign. “In 16 months we should be able to … bolster our efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda,” said Barack Obama in the first presidential debate just two weeks ago. “[T]he important thing is I visited Afghanistan … and I know what our security requirements are. I know what our needs are. So the point is that we will prevail in Afghanistan,” promised John McCain in the same debate.

Yes, Afghanistan is tough—but if elected, I can win that war. This is, in essence, what both candidates say.

They also say, in essence, that if the other candidate is elected, Afghanistan will be lost. But in fact, their plans are not substantially different from one another. Both men would increase troop levels, try to secure the border region with Pakistan, and utilize every available diplomatic channel with the Karzai government and with Pakistan. Obama plans to encourage democracy in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and increase nonmilitary aid to Pakistan. McCain plans to “obtain the allegiance of the people of Pakistan,” who, he acknowledges, have “intermarried with al Qaeda and the Taliban.” “It’s going to be tough,” he says, “but we have to get the cooperation of the people in those areas.”

They speak as though these strategies have never been tried. In truth, they represent no radical departure from present policy. The current administration has been fighting this war, with the help of several nato allies, employing a battery of tactics, for seven years—and has ended up in the same place it started, minus over 500 soldiers and $172 billion. The plans of these candidates are destined to run aground in the inhospitable Hindu Kush mountains just as those of their predecessor have.

We don’t mean to be pessimistic—just realistic. In speaking of the problems facing the U.S. and other nations, the Trumpet bases its analyses on biblical principles and prophecies, which point to the outcome we can expect in Afghanistan.

As Gen. Douglas MacArthur said after World War ii, history has proven ad nauseam that all human efforts to create peace through either diplomacy or warfare end in tragic failure. The only solution, he said, would require “a spiritual recrudescence, an improvement of human character …. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”

Consider. To the ancient nation of Israel, God promised manifold blessings for obedience to His laws. Among these was the promise of security through supernatural protection: “And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword” (Leviticus 26:7-8). Clearly the U.S. is not receiving this blessing today.

The counterpart to the promised blessing of victory over enemies is God’s warning about terrifying curses for disobedience. The idea of being under a curse may seem ancient and superstitious in this modern, scientific age. But if you believe the Bible, you know that curses are real—even today. To rebellious Israel and its descendants (which include the United States), God warns, “And I will break the pride of your power … And your strength shall be spent in vain …” (Leviticus 26:19-20).

Consider the staggering implications of these scriptures. They imply that these modern nations would have power, and pride in that power—they would have military strength. This fact is corroborated by other prophecies about the modern descendants of Israel (e.g. Genesis 24:60; 49:22-26; Micah 5:7-9). But—because of these nations’ disobedience—God would break that pride, and thus—as a curse—all that power would be wasted, squandered!

Is America now under this curse?

Absolutely. There could be no more perfect description of the U.S. today—still far and away the greatest military power on Earth—than to say that the pride in its power has been broken, and that it spends its strength in vain.

In 1961, Herbert W. Armstrong proclaimed, “America has won its last war.” Many scoffed. But time has proven his biblically based prophecy correct. We must be able to identify the spiritual reality underpinning current events. We must be able to recognize a curse when we see it. And don’t expect the next president to turn Afghanistan around.

The fact that the world’s mightiest military is absolutely befuddled and unable to suppress the Taliban is a vivid and shocking example of what happens when a nation’s pride in its power has been broken.

To learn more about why America’s war efforts are failing, and for an advance look at the biblically prophesied future of America’s military endeavors, read Gerald Flurry’s article “Why We Cannot Win the War Against Terrorism.”