Word: afghanization
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Hungry for Afghan pistachios, I stopped by a shop where the owner, a friend, assured me that everything was fine, thanks to Allah, for him and his family. Then, in a whisper, he told me that his brother was kidnapped and held for 20 days before the captors and the family could agree on a ransom. Now he and his brother, who survived the communists, a brutal civil war and the Taliban, are thinking about quitting the business and leaving Afghanistan. "It doesn't look good," he told me, and over the years I've come to trust his merchant...
...bombs now target NATO patrols, so you learn that it's a good idea to pull over and wait for the coalition convoy to rumble by to lessen the risk of becoming collateral damage. You try not to drive by the U.S. embassy or the Afghan ministries where the bombs also tend to go off. And so much for picnics and exploring the countryside: many of the roads out of Kabul are no longer safe for foreigners. That includes the one snaking down into the Kabul Gorge where the British were massacred. More surprising, it also includes the main Kabul...
...sometimes wonder what provocation it would take to unleash the Afghans' latent xenophobia, as happened with the Brits in 1842. The bombing of the tankers can't help, nor did revelations a few days ago that U.S. embassy guards were caught behaving like lewd frat boys around a bonfire. Luckily, in both instances, American officials here moved swiftly to apologize and minimize the damage, but there's no doubt that Afghan resentment toward foreigners is rising fast...
...officials have grumbled about the restrictions observed by Germany and other nations who have contributed troops to the Afghan operation, saying they have not done enough of the fighting. One senior U.S. military officer who has commanded forces in Afghanistan notes the Germans "have not had to fight insurgency or even study it, so [I'm] not sure how culturally ingrained the concept of protecting civilians is to them." With thousands more American troops expected to be deployed once McChrysal makes a formal request to President Obama, the officer indicated that military planners at the Pentagon are "definitely" looking...
More and more, however, the fight is coming to the Germans. Some analysts even speculate the Taliban is deliberately ramping up hostilities ahead of the Sept. 27 German election, much as they intimidated Afghan voters last month. On Saturday, a day after the airstrike, three German soldiers were injured when a car packed with explosives exploded next to a passing convoy three miles outside of Kunduz. Indeed, Berlin's continued role in Afghanistan has become the crux of a heated public debate back in Germany. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister bidding to oust chancellor Angela Merkel, has openly called...