Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Many Afghans wonder whether Karzai is tough enough to rule a land long defined by tribal rivalries and blood feuds. "Karzai?" says a waiter at a kebab restaurant in Kabul. "He's too nice. He should be a schoolteacher." Educated in India, the President, 46, says he was influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, which may account for his conciliatory style. He seems more at ease asking questions than he does issuing orders. "No one is close to having Karzai's control and popularity," says Khalilzad. "He has moral authority, and he's not seen as ethnically prejudiced." But that's different...
...best, Karzai's government has managed to restore dignity to parts of the country brutalized by the Taliban's tyranny. The sky above Kabul is filled with kites, which were banned as un-Islamic under the Taliban. Giggling teenagers pack the capital's 40 or so Internet cafes. Since 2002, some 3 million new students have enrolled in Afghan schools, partly as a result of the lifting of the Taliban's ban on education for girls ages 10 and older. A few young women in Kabul have shed the burqas that were the most obvious symbols of the Taliban...
That said, there's still plenty to complain about. Afghanistan is years away from stability. The new national army has enlisted just 5,700 soldiers and last year suffered a 22% desertion rate, according to NATO officials. It doesn't venture far outside Kabul. In an interview with TIME, Karzai acknowledged that he needs help. "Afghanistan is not yet capable of standing on its own feet, of defending or sustaining itself," he says...
...Karzai government has attempted to rein in recalcitrant warlords. Most recently Karzai appointed Kandahar strongman Gul Agha Sherzai, a U.S.-installed warlord who has been dogged by accusations of corruption and nepotism, to a Cabinet position in Kabul as a way of keeping him under close watch. But Afghan officials say Karzai is wary of cracking down too hard for fear that the warlords will lash back. In Kabul alone, militias loyal to former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and current Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim number nearly 50,000. That's enough to overwhelm, if they wanted...
...this year's crop to yield 3,600 tons of opium--75% of the world's heroin. According to the U.N., the combined income of poppy farmers and opium smugglers last year was $2.32 billion--equal to half of Afghanistan's official GDP. A Western anti-narcotics expert in Kabul estimates that 60% of the country's regional warlords are profiting from the drug traffic, using the cash to fund their armies and, in doing so, weakening the reach of Karzai's government in the provinces. A Cabinet minister who tried to stop traffickers two years ago was assassinated...