Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...effort. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer recently wrote in the Washington Post that "the problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance" and warned bluntly that the alliance expects Karzai to do a better job. Vice President Joe Biden visited Kabul shortly before the Inauguration and reportedly warned Karzai that the new Administration would hold his feet to the fire over governance complaints. (See pictures of soldiers in Afghanistan...
...thus far that Washington believes Afghanistan's fledgling democracy might produce a more capable successor. But pressure on Karzai from Washington - and even the planned "surge" of three new U.S. combat brigades into Afghanistan starting this summer - may set the U.S. on a collision course with its client in Kabul. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned during congressional testimony this week that the U.S. would have to narrow its objectives, abandoning any ideas of turning Afghanistan into "a Central Asian Valhalla." The immediate priority of the Administration's new war plan for Afghanistan is simply to stop the Taliban's momentum...
...also sets more realistic expectations. Ultimately, the U.S. will have to cut a deal--or lots of little deals--with the bad guys to flip those Taliban members who will renounce al-Qaeda from enemies to allies. That will mean empowering local warlords who don't truly report to Kabul and may not win any awards from the ACLU. But that's essentially what we've done over the past two years in Iraq, where the Bush Administration both temporarily increased American power and quietly downsized expectations so we were fighting a small number of jihadist terrorists rather than...
...Perhaps it should. While the death toll was low compared with other recent attacks, the bomber - Shamsullah Rehman, according to the Taliban spokesman who took credit for the blast - was able to penetrate the very center of Kabul. He detonated his Toyota Corolla in front of the German embassy and across the street from a U.S. military base on one of the most well-guarded roads in the capital. The attack took place less than two months after a similar bombing in front of the U.S. embassy that killed four, and just over a year after an audacious commando-style...
Suddenly in Kabul, DJs are in demand. Ball gowns are being brushed off and red, white and blue outfits picked out. American expatriates are debating the relative merits of competing inaugural balls, one hosted by Democrats Abroad, another by the U.S. embassy. Tickets for both are sold out, and for those who are neither Democrats nor American, viewing parties have been planned across the capital. Afghans with access to satellite television are charging car batteries to ensure that not one minute of the inaugural festivities will be lost to the city's chronic power outages. Not even Saturday's suicide...