Word: talibanize
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...goes into effect, even though U.S. and NATO commanders have long warned that the rampant corruption and inefficiency of the Karzai government are undermining the war effort. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer recently wrote in the Washington Post that "the problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance" and warned bluntly that the alliance expects Karzai to do a better job. Vice President Joe Biden visited Kabul shortly before the Inauguration and reportedly warned Karzai that the new Administration would hold his feet to the fire over governance complaints. (See pictures...
...Kabul. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned during congressional testimony this week that the U.S. would have to narrow its objectives, abandoning any ideas of turning Afghanistan into "a Central Asian Valhalla." The immediate priority of the Administration's new war plan for Afghanistan is simply to stop the Taliban's momentum...
...Today, the radical militia dispersed by the U.S. invasion in late 2001 is back with a vengeance, able to operate freely in much of the countryside and moving closer to the major cities. And as the Taliban well knows, in a rural society dominated by local warlords, the impression of military might functions as a force multiplier: back in 1996, the Taliban (with extensive backing from the Pakistani military) raced across Afghanistan to seize power in Kabul by trouncing mujahedin rivals in a few early battles and then simply allowing word of their military prowess and momentum to discourage further...
...Holbrooke's unenviable task, then, will be to persuade Pakistan's security establishment to abandon such accommodations with Taliban militants operating on their territory and to reorient itself away from preparing for war with India and toward counterinsurgency at home. Tackling the Kashmir issue would be a start, but that's more easily said than done. India has long rebuffed the principle of international mediation on what it insists is an internal issue. As long as the question of where Pakistan's and India's borders are drawn remains a point of potentially hostile contention, Pakistan's ambiguous relationship with...
...example, two key Taliban commanders in South Waziristan, Maulvi Muhammad Nazir - who helped the Pakistani army mount an attack on his tribal rival, Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud - and Hafiz Gul Bahadur have nonaggression pacts with the Pakistani army. The military defends these arrangements on the grounds that it is unable to operate in areas where there are "hostile tribes" like Mehsud's and that it is prioritizing offensives in other parts of the border region. Some are unconvinced. "It appears that unless the militants are attacking Pakistani forces, the army doesn't consider them a problem," says one senior...