Word: talibans
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...been nearly impossible to coax Taliban fighters into turning in their weapons and cooperating with the Afghan government? The story of Mullah A stands as an all-too-common example...
...years back, the Taliban commander thought his personal war with the Americans was over when he surrendered his Toyota Land Cruiser, a stack of rocket-propelled grenades and his personal weapons to the police chief in Kandahar. Mullah A, who prefers not to be identified, was exhausted. In late 2001, when U.S.-backed forces were pushing into northern Afghanistan, the commander saw most of his men wiped out by heavy American bombardment. He was one of the few survivors, and he fled south, back home to Kandahar, convinced that his fighting days had come...
...were arriving in Helmand. "The ship was moving in that direction," a military expert told me, "and it would have been difficult to turn it around." Indeed, it would have taken months of planning to change course. The additional troops were needed immediately to blunt the momentum of the Taliban and also to provide security for the Afghan elections. The trouble was, the troops would have been better deployed in Helmand's neighbor to the east - Kandahar province, especially in Kandahar city and its suburbs. "Kandahar is the center of gravity in this insurgency," says John Nagl, a retired lieutenant...
...Kandahar is the capital city of Afghanistan's Pashtun majority, home of both the Karzai family and Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. It is where the Taliban began. It has been run, in a staggeringly corrupt manner, by Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai - who, according to U.S. investigators, has extensive links to the opium trade. As the Karzai government has grown more unpopular, the situation in Kandahar has deteriorated. The Taliban own the night, slipping death threats under the doors of those who would cooperate with the government. In Iraq the military's counterinsurgency strategy turned around...
...country told me this story: a member of the Barakzai tribe was recently installed as a district leader in a Pashtun area. He was told to hire his top staff by merit. Instead, he hired only Barakzais - which caused the tribe's leaders to switch sides from the Taliban to the government ... and caused most of the other tribes in the district to switch from the government to the Taliban. Afghanistan, it turns out, befuddles even Afghans. And for foreigners, "victory" there is a handful of smoke...