Word: kandahar
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...night of Feb. 23, a Taliban bomber sneaked through the vineyards near Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, carrying an explosive device hidden in an old cement sack. He planted his bomb by the road, primed to go off just as a U.S. convoy came rumbling past. The bomber must have thought he was on home turf. His chosen site was just a kilometer or so away from the madrasah where a one-eyed cleric named Mullah Mohammed Omar launched a movement of young religious zealots in 1994. Within two years the Taliban controlled nearly all of Afghanistan, and Omar had forged...
...That's a small indication of a big change. Six months ago, Afghans around Kandahar were either too loyal to the Taliban, or too scared of them, to have tipped off U.S. soldiers. Sure, bin Laden is still at large, probably hiding somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and the trail for him has gone cold. But U.S. military officers, Afghan officials and even several ex-Taliban commanders say that the Taliban itself is on the run. "The Taliban is a force in decline," says Major General Eric Olson, who conducted the U.S. military's counter-insurgency battle in Afghanistan...
...make [a bomb], and it's gone off in their hands, so they come to our hospitals for treatment," says Major David Flynn, a Bostonian from the 25th Infantry Division, whose men have yet to fire a single shot at the Taliban during their year-long duty in Kandahar. Proof of the Taliban's decline comes from those who were once in its own ranks, too. A former Taliban governor, Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi is trying to persuade his former comrades to give up their guns. "Many Taliban want to come back in," says Rocketi. But he cautions: "The Taliban...
...years ago, say U.S. soldiers and their Afghan army colleagues, the Taliban would come over from their Pakistani hideouts in groups of 60 to 100; now they're making the crossing with platoons of five men or less. Says Major Mike Myers, a spokesman for the U.S. forces in Kandahar, "The Taliban class of 2004 was smaller than the class...
...Taliban's paymasters are losing interest. Al-Qaeda's rich backers have "focused their attention elsewhere," says Olsen-by which he means Iraq. Without al-Qaeda's funds to support them, groups of Taliban can now be seen roaming the streets of Quetta begging for food. Khaled Pashtun, the Kandahar security chief, says the Taliban still get a cut of the opium trade and receive donations from sympathizers in Pakistan and the Gulf. But for Islamists wanting to fund jihad, Iraq has become a bigger game than Afghanistan...