Word: karzai
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...nation building. Captain Chris McKinney led a company of a hundred men through the bloody strike on Karbala before teaching infantry tactics, and the importance of constant, fierce adherence to Army standards, to West Point cadets. Major Jason Amerine, a Special Forces officer who fought alongside now-President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, uses his international relations class to shake his cadets out of any comfortable misconceptions about the U.S. Army and how it's viewed abroad. Conventional wisdom says that American teenagers are unshakably obsessed with instant celebrity, pimped rides and video games. But West Point kids-valedictorians, football captains...
...indeed? The U.S. believes that nation-building efforts and the success of last October's presidential election have drained local support in former Taliban strongholds. There's irony in that, since the Taliban initially gained power because of its ability to quell fractious warlords and restore order. Now Hamid Karzai's government is sending out feelers to former Taliban fighters, offering some of them amnesty if they take a public oath of loyalty to the new Afghan constitution...
...Last October's Presidential elections were crucial. Eight million Afghans swarmed to the polls, defying Taliban threats of sabotage and terror. "It was a moral and psychological defeat for the Taliban," Olson told TIME. Karzai helped the process along, clipping the wings of regional warlords such as Ismael Khan in Herat province and Uzbek strongman Rashid Dostum, enemies of the Pashtun tribes that are the main backers of the Taliban...
...mullah said that the Taliban would come out fighting after this year's snowfall melts. Olson, too, expects the Taliban to step up their activities during this spring, and worries that they might combine with al-Qaeda to try a "strategic blow," such as an assassination attempt on Karzai. But the Taliban's ability to carry out such attacks is waning. Two 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...
...Kabul, Karzai is hoping that the Taliban are now demoralized enough to consider an amnesty. Soon, Karzai is expected to announce a "reconciliation" with all Taliban except Omar and his top commanders. The president's envoys are sending out feelers to former fighters. Olson claims that more than 30 former Taliban officials have accepted the terms, but sources caution that these were bureaucrats, not true commanders. Karzai has been using money and tribal blood ties to split Taliban commanders away from Omar, insiders say, promising them a chance to run in this fall's parliamentary elections...