Word: kandahar
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...most Afghans, who have long considered his brother, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to be an American puppet. The revamped allegations that Karzai frère is deeply involved in Afghanistan's annual $4 billion drug industry isn't much of a shocker either - on the streets of Kabul and Kandahar, the name Wali has long been synonymous with someone who can get away with a crime because he has friends in the right places. Diplomats, counternarcotics officials and commanders from the International Security Assistance Force, NATO's military wing in Afghanistan, have all privately (and not so privately) expressed frustration...
...Afghanistan, and so has the military, but having a six-month strategic review is not one of them. No doubt, the President should have spoken with McChrystal more than once over the summer. The military's mistake was going ahead with a flawed battle plan that did not secure Kandahar, the second largest Afghan city and the fulcrum of the insurgency. That mistake made the six-month strategy review necessary, as did two other factors: the disastrously corrupt Afghan presidential election and a vastly improved capability to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda, which has resulted in the killing of more...
...menu like that, we know what they usually pick. I'd be willing to bet that the plan Gelb laid out is close to what the Administration will decide to do in the next few weeks - two brigades, or 10,000 troops, will probably be sent to secure Kandahar city and environs, and two other brigades will be sent to train and advise the Afghan security forces. (See pictures from the Afghanistan election...
...main Kabul-Kandahar highway was once a showpiece for how Western aid would modernize Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Repaved in 2003, the 300-mile highway is now pocked with craters from roadside bombs. Travelers face three or four Taliban checkpoints along the way. A Western businessman says his trucking firm pays a local commander from $5,000 to $6,000 for the safe passage of each fuel tanker along the highway, a sum which he suspects the Taliban get a share of. He also claims that in order to ship fuel from Kandahar to a Dutch base...
...With reporting by Aryn Baker / Kabul and Muhib Habibi / Kandahar...