Word: talibanism
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...chances. The bus conductor, 30, prepares for his twice-weekly Kabul-to-Kandahar trips by exchanging his city outfit for the filthy tunic and voluminous trousers of a poor mechanic, the better to fool potential robbers. He rubs grease and dirt on his face to conceal from possible Taliban attackers that he is clean-shaven. These precautions, Saboor says, have saved his life. Just the other day, a gang of thieves robbed his passengers at gunpoint. Two weeks ago, Taliban insurgents pulled some 50 passengers off a bus and slaughtered 27 men they falsely claimed were Afghan soldiers...
Seven years after the war to topple the Taliban regime, Afghans are starting to wonder if anything has been achieved. The highway between Kabul and Kandahar was supposed to be a success story. Completed in 2003, it has instead become a symbol of all that plagues Afghanistan: insecurity, corruption and the radical Islamic insurgency that feeds off both. If Afghanistan is ever to fulfill the promise that beckoned when the U.S. first went to war there, those trends will have to be reversed...
...intelligence community seems to share that assessment. While still a "work in progress," the National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan, due out after the U.S. elections, portrays a country on a "downward spiral," says a Pentagon official who was briefed about the report. The key reasons: a revitalized Taliban, inadequate U.S. and NATO forces, the funds generated for the Taliban by narcotics, and a government so consumed by corruption and inefficiency that it cannot offer a reasonable alternative to the insurgents...
...what is to be done? For most Afghans, the right road starts with better security. Eating pomegranates in a tea shop in Sarobi district, just east of Kabul, Saeed Shah says he was not fond of the Taliban when it was in power. But his once peaceful district has witnessed a wave of criminality and violence--10 French soldiers were slaughtered by insurgents in August--that has him longing for the old regime and its harsh but effective justice. "Yes, there was hardship, but there was also peace," he says. "You could leave your shop open all night...
...unlikely to arrive fast enough or in sufficient numbers. Afghanistan is a third larger than Iraq in size, and its terrain is a lot more difficult. Counterinsurgency expert John Nagl has estimated that there should be 600,000 troops--including Afghan ones--inside the country to quell the Taliban and al-Qaeda threat. Currently there are only about 65,000 coalition forces (including 33,000 U.S. troops) on the ground, in addition to some 70,000 Afghan army personnel--of whom fewer than half can fully function on their own--plus an ineffective police force. Iraq, by contrast, has some...