Word: talibanizing
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...there are no real national figures who are serious alternatives. He could conceivably run against a largely symbolic opposition, as Yasser Arafat did in the Palestinian elections of 1996. Although there was an opposition candidate, the main opposition - Hamas - stayed out of the race. So, too, would the Taliban, and the political contest would be between voting and boycotting an election associated with an increasingly unpopular foreign military presence. On the other hand, a renewed Western focus on creating a more viable Afghan government as the anchor for its counterinsurgency strategy may yet see other candidates step forward to challenge...
Afghanistan: Karzai, Solution or Problem? President-elect Obama has always emphasized Afghanistan as "the right war"and vowed to divert resources from Iraq to better fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But that war effort has not been going well, and many analysts warn that one of its key weaknesses is that it is focused on propping up the Western-friendly government of President Hamid Karzai - a government many analysts see as a liability because of its corruption and ineffectiveness, which have alienated it from the local population in much of Afghanistan. The weakness of the Karzai government...
...Afghan border, or risk losing its war on terror. "No matter who the President of America will be," Yousuf Raza Gilani told the AP earlier this week, continued strikes will fuel "anti-American sentiments." Such ire could doom Washington's efforts to rid Pakistan's lawless frontier of the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces that regularly launch attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in nearby Afghanistan. Highlighting how Afghanistan has eclipsed Iraq as a strategic issue, Baghdad didn't demand anything more of Obama than, in the words of a government statement, to work together to achieve "security and stability...
...lagged because not enough resources have been devoted to them, he argued. That's because the Administration has relied too much on tanks, and not enough on steamrollers. More paved roads could be built more quickly if more Afghans were hired to build them. "It's quite true that Taliban use the roads as well, but it's harder to implant an IED on a paved road than it is on a gravel road," Danzig said. Such improvements also could convince Afghan farmers to plant their fields with something other than opium poppies - the taxing of which has been...
...Iraq in 2009 will be sent to Afghanistan instead. Already, Obama has indicated that he approves the general direction in which Petraeus is heading. Unlike President Bush, Obama strongly supports nation-building in both Afghanistan and Pakistan; and, like Petraeus, he favors negotiations with some of the pro-Taliban tribes (at least those who are not al-Qaeda). Unlike McCain, Obama will not be reluctant to continue the current cross-border strikes, via Predator drone, against selected terrorist targets in Pakistan...