Word: afghanization
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Some people, however, play down the warnings from Haider and the militants. Abdul Qader Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commsion in Kandahar province, says people "are tired of the Taliban's threats and don't take them as seriously" after repeated promises of suicide attacks never came. He notes that the militants' stated intent is to avoid civilian casualties in order to cast in sharper relief U.S. culpability for the deaths of Afghans in errant air strikes and night raids. (Insurgents have been responsible for 60% of civilian deaths so far this year, according to U.N. figures...
Bashardost rejects the numbers, and may be alone in thinking he can still win. His campaign is unrelenting. As the sun crept over the mountains to the east of the city, he and a small entourage headed for the airport to catch a free flight on an Afghan Army plane to Herat, in western Afghanistan, for another day on the road...
Bashardost believes that mounting disgust with warlord-dominated patronage networks has led Afghans to begin to shift away from traditional ethnic-tribal politics toward issues of substance like jobs and education. He says that the fact that he has never fought in a war or joined a faction makes him more appealing to disillusioned voters. "You can't find another candidate who thinks about all the national interests of the Afghan people more than Ramazan Bashardost," he says, lapsing into the third-person as is his habit. Few, however, share his assessment of the way Afghan politics works...
...good guys" who waste money on bogus projects while parading around in expensive sport utility vehicles. Still, he estimates the cash-guzzling NGOs to be about 90% of the total based in the country. "So I am the candidate of the American taxpayer," he says, "not just the Afghan people...
...questions his frugality. Bashardost, never married, sometimes sleeps on a rickety bed by his tent and fields calls on a cracked cell phone. He distributes most of his $2,000 monthly government salary to the poor, he says. And his campaign, funded by donations and Afghans living abroad, has cost less than $25,000 so far. (Other sources of funds: posters and promotional DVDs sold to supporters for twenty cents each.) "Bashardost has campaigned very effectively, traveling around the country, reaching out to the poor as a populist on a bicycle," says Haroun Mir, director of the Afghan Center...