Word: maying
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Such factors are the ones to consider, says S&P analyst Todd Rosenbluth, along with fundamentals, risk, performance track record and cost factors. "Before making a selection, make sure to look at not just the gains the fund may have achieved this year, but also aim to understand the fundamentals of its performance, risk and cost factors," he said, in a statement. "This year's top fund could repeat their success in 2010 or be next year's bottom funds...
...fact that the Taliban is now effectively in control of as much as half of the country eight years after being routed by the U.S.-led invasion is a sign that the local population is at least more tolerant of an insurgency against foreign forces. Expanding the ground war may not solve this problem. As University of Michigan historian Juan Cole wrote last week, "The U.S. counter-insurgency plan assumes that Pashtun villagers dislike and fear the Taliban, and just need to be protected from them so as to stop the politics of intimidation. But what if the villagers...
...Trained to Take Over the Mission The centerpiece of Obama's exit strategy is the training of Afghan security forces to take responsibility for fighting the Taliban, just as Iraqi forces have taken charge of security in Iraq. But Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq, and training may not be the decisive issue: although the U.S. has officially trained 94,000 Afghan soldiers, there's no sign of an effective Afghan security force capable of fighting the Taliban. Desertion rates are high - 1 in 4 soldiers trained last year, by some accounts. So are rates of drug addiction. Most...
...hands of a foreign invader, and Afghans are mostly gloomy about the prospects for reforming it. While Karzai could be forced to respond to some egregious cases of corruption, his instinct will be to continue to use the power of patronage to broker local support. Corruption and nepotism may be just as much as a symptom of the weakness of the central government as its cause. Even in the times of greatest stability, Afghanistan has been governed from the center via a loose consensus among powerful regional and ethnic leaderships. Karzai might, in fact, have been governing...
...target date to begin a troop drawdown, President Obama has encouraged the Taliban to simply wait out the Americans. Supporters counter that by declaring that the U.S. commitment is finite, the President is forcing Karzai and the Pakistanis to take more responsibility for fighting the Taliban. That debate may be missing the point: everyone in the region is already acting on the assumption that the U.S. presence is temporary, knowing that America can't sustain a permanent occupation. One reason Karzai has made common cause with some notorious thugs is that he feels the need to have some muscle behind...