Word: afghanization
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...Alliance will need to sustain that outlook if plans for rebuilding a viable Afghan society free of the Taliban are to be realized. "We will have [attacks of this kind] for a long time," warns Karzai. "The enemy is defeated, but it is not eliminated. The elimination part is what we should continue to work on. And that needs patience. That needs perseverance and that needs hard work...
Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former frontline Mujahedin commander in Afghanistan, earned a surname that reflects his prowess with rocket-propelled grenades and spent eight months in detention after U.S.-led forces drove out the Taliban in 2001. Now, as a member of the Afghan parliament, he encourages his former Taliban comrades to reconcile with the government of President Hamid Karzai. But he can't visit his constituency in the southern district of Zabul because security is terrible and he's received too many assassination threats. Rocketi is grateful for foreign aid, but frustrated that donors regularly cough up so much...
...Afghan forces are hardly ready to take up the slack. Retired U.S. General Barry McCaffrey, after an inspection trip in June, calls the Afghan army "miserably under-resourced," with "no mortars, few machine guns, no grenade machine guns and no artillery. Many soldiers and police have little ammunition and few magazines." The police are even worse off. Mohammad Akhunzada, the former governor of Helmand province in the south, says the police "are overwhelmed. They are fighting the Taliban with no support, with one magazine [of ammunition] between them. Sure, they call in the coalition forces, but they take 24 hours...
...operational structures have been badly disrupted by the arrest or killing of hundreds of its operatives. Its Afghan sanctuary has long ago been destroyed, and it no longer has a central campus where recruits drawn from all over the world by the allure of global jihad can be trained. Instead, the movement has been forcibly decentralized, subject to ongoing harassment by intelligence and security services in all of its traditional stomping grounds and target zones; the ease with which Mohammed Atta and his consort of hijackers were able to operate in the U.S. prior to 9/11 is a thing...
Alas, statesmen can't be wished into existence. In 31/2 years of covering Iraq, I have not come across a single leader who has seemed able to rise above petty political or sectarian interests. Never mind a Mandela; there's not even an Iraqi Hamid Karzai. The beleaguered Afghan President has more credibility with his people than any Iraqi politician can honestly claim. In the absence of statesmen, I fear the sectarian furies that have been unleashed in Iraq will hack away at the last vestiges of sense and decency and drag the country into a final fight...