Word: afghanistans
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...this transformation also provides Western military commanders with opportunities they can exploit. Local populations that tolerated or supported the Taliban and al-Qaeda for ideological reasons are less likely to back criminal gangs. If Western commanders and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan can help protect and organize local communities, they stand a better chance of winning...
...Qaeda are now raising $500 million a year from the opium trade. What does that mean in terms of their capabilities and what they are able to do with that sort of money? It's clear that drug money is paying for the Taliban's operational costs within Afghanistan. That means that every time a U.S. soldier is killed in an IED attack or a shootout with militants, drug money helped pay for that bomb or paid the militants who placed it. Opium funding helps pay for salaries, weapons, explosives and food. The Taliban is a self-sustaining organization financially...
They are beginning to sound like an organized criminal enterprise that happens to have some echoes of a revolution - like FARC in Colombia or Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers. Right. We often compare the war in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq, and in my opinion, it much more closely parallels the war in Colombia and the transformation of the FARC from a Maoist group into a criminal smuggling organization that came to control a Switzerland-size chunk of Colombia. [Many] of the Taliban commanders have lost their ideological roots and are really just in it to make a buck...
...trying to suggest that they have put aside their intention to drive Western forces out of Afghanistan, and I do not believe that al-Qaeda has put aside its intention to launch further attacks on the West. Far from it. Increasing casualty rates in the region, both among locals and among NATO troops, proves that they are actually more violent and more dangerous. But one opportunity that comes out of this is that they are also far more hated by the local population. If you read the reports coming out of Swat, out of Southern Afghanistan, out of Kandahar, Helmand...
Watch a video on the challenge for the U.S. military in Afghanistan...