Word: taliban
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...Only 17, he was terrified. Not only because of an uncertain fate, but perhaps more so because the world was not as the Taliban had described it. The Taliban indoctrinated him well, convincing him the Americans were stealing the faith of Afghan Muslims. Turning them into kafirs. I asked him if he hated the governor. No, it was simply that in working with the Americans he'd fallen away from Islam. He deserved...
...President Pervez Musharraf as a stalwart ally in the war on terrorism, providing as much as $10 billion in aid to his government. The U.S. believes Musharraf's autocratic rule is preferable to what might replace it: a nuclear-armed, fundamentalist regime sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. But there are growing doubts about how long Musharraf can hold on to power. Al-Qaeda's leadership has regrouped in Pakistan's tribal areas, while the country's middle class has taken to the streets to protest Musharraf's decision to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. (A suicide attack...
...Outside the airport, though, the illusion evaporates. For a start, the distance between the terminal and the parking lot is at least a hundred yards. No surprise there. On the average these days there is a suicide car-bombing a day in and around Kabul. The Taliban started firing rockets at Kabul. They go unreported in the news because they aren't doing damage. It takes the murder of NATO troops to generate a wire report, like last week's murder of six Canadian soldiers in Kandahar...
...surprisingly, the Afghans resent their second-class citizenship but so far tolerate it - it's better than the savagery of the Taliban. On the other hand they wonder how long it's going to last. The insurgency - that's the word a briefer at NATO headquarters used instead of the Taliban or al-Qaeda - understands it needs to win over the hearts and minds of the average Afghan. Unlike suicide bombers in Iraq, the insurgents don't intentionally target civilians, although many have died in attacks. And this summer they have started to adjust their tactics, purposely operating from villages...
...Although in recent years, terror experts had believed that the U.S.-led military ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had scattered al-Qaeda and forced it to assume a more decentralized form, there is now growing concern that Bin Laden's network has managed to regain its footing. "These groups feel somewhat freer to plot and plan along the Afghan-Pakistan border, where they have what amounts to a refuge," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told TIME. Indeed, the central role of NATO in fighting the Taliban-Qaeda alliance in Afghanistan has also raised the incentive for the jihadists...