Saw Anne Nivat last night on TV.
She speakes french, english, russian, arabic and other languages. She mixed with local populations (especially women) in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq (through the use of the veil.
The local women are either very talkative or won't talk at all.
There's a tremendous cultural gap between the populations and the american occupiers. Do US troops speak arabic, at least?

Some robot translations from the interview:

Afghanistan and Iraq are two completely different countries but it is the same war ave the same errors, in particular the stupid belief that the democracy is exportable, that it is taxable and that the autochtones can be content with their arrival whereas they have opposite them people whom they do not know. Lastly, which marked me the most, it is this brutal loss of the reference marks in the Afghan and Iraqi companies. The populations are in search of identity. This situation is comparable with the company post-Soviet, at the following day of the fall of the USSR, always in search of reference mark"

What they say, it is their disconfort of the consequences of this American invasion. Even if in both cases, this invasion put an end to two terrifying political régimes, the talibans on a side, the regime of Saddam Hussein on the other. The euphoria of the end of these regimes was quickly replaced by an incomprehension. This incomprehension becomes with time a sort of rage towards the occupant, i.e. the American. The Americans are perceived by the local population like not making any effort to adapt to their environment. They are interested neither in their habits, nor in their religion. There is a true cultural gap between the inhabitants and the Americans. The Afghans and the Iraqis are far from approving the American presence. What I explain in this book, it is the lack of respect of the newcomers towards the populations autochtones. The Americans adopt an attitude outrageusement provocative with respect to the population. They do not adopt the attitude of liberator, the smile with the lip and relaxed after their military victory. The GI S are extremely stressed, the inch unceasingly on the trigger of their M16 machine pistol, constantly pointed on the civil population. There is a permanent climate of fear.

The Afghan women are enclosed in a yoke of thousand-year-old traditions of their family. The family influence is very strong. The changes are held and it takes time. The Afghan company is not at all ready with the radical change which one would like to lend to him well. In addition, I met many women who admitted me feeling a great insecurity in Afghanistan post-taliban. Deputy of Loya Jirga even entrusted to me that the burqa was its passport to leave outside. In Iraq, it is a little more modern but not so much.
I think that one would need more dialogue and mutual respect. The population does not feel respected. Unfortunately, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American army makes monumental errors. It carries in it the hopes of the democracy but it does not hold account of local specificities and wants aboval all to impose its vision of the world.

I have doubts the US will change its approach to the situation and wonder therefore why troops still remain there. I also wonder, among americans who opposed the war before it started, how many want actually the troops to stay there for at least one more year (thinking they can still make a difference after all) as oppsoed to those who understand it's no use.