Word: talibanism
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...fact, it reminds me a lot of how Kabul was when I was last here. The foreigners - diplomats, aid workers, journalists, assorted mercenaries and adventurers - disported themselves quite oblivious to the fact that this was a conservative Muslim country just emerging from the Taliban's medieval totalitarianism. You could find booze in shops. On weekends, you could go picnicking and horseback riding in the country. Many embassies moved into gaudy narco-mansions rented out by warlords loyal to President Hamid Karzai. For dining, you had a choice of Mexican, Balkan, Lebanese, Indian, Thai, American and Chinese restaurants. The Chinese places...
...also includes the main Kabul-Kandahar highway, which was supposed to be a symbol to Afghans of the benefits of an American-backed government. If you're a foreigner or a rich Afghan, you can fly to Kandahar. Otherwise, ordinary Afghans have to take their chances with the Taliban and the bandits along the highway. "Three years ago" one foreign academic and longtime Kabul resident told me, "Afghans had hope for the future. Now they don't." (Read a story about how roadside bombs have devastated Afghanistan...
...pickup trucks and demand money and food villagers. But, says local resident Abdul Matin, 28, the militants simply filtered back into the area when the Germans returned to base and police are nowhere in sight. The insurgent efforts accelerated ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential elections, which the Taliban had vowed to disrupt. President Hamid Karzai's running mate, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, was nearly assassinated in late July while traveling through Kunduz province. Rockets were fired into the city of Kunduz on the day of the vote, though no one was killed. Less than a week later, the head...
Lieut. Col. Carsten Spiering, spokesman for Germany's Kunduz PRT, counters that avoiding harm to civilians is a mission priority, even if it means letting the Taliban slip away from time to time. "We take extra care and would rather save the fight for another day than risk killing one innocent person," he says. "That's not how we operate here." (Another German officer, who asked not to be named, insisted the damage done by past U.S. airstrikes has made "everyone's job more difficult...
More and more, however, the fight is coming to the Germans. Some analysts even speculate the Taliban is deliberately ramping up hostilities ahead of the Sept. 27 German election, much as they intimidated Afghan voters last month. On Saturday, a day after the airstrike, three German soldiers were injured when a car packed with explosives exploded next to a passing convoy three miles outside of Kunduz. Indeed, Berlin's continued role in Afghanistan has become the crux of a heated public debate back in Germany. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister bidding to oust chancellor Angela Merkel, has openly called...