Word: talibans
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...fight against al-Qaeda. The benefits of nation-building programs are often indirect, and hard to measure. (Ultimately, the hope is that access to banking will make farmers less reliant on loans from drug smugglers, and so less likely to grow opium, which helps finance al-Qaeda and the Taliban.) (Read "Is the Taliban Stockpiling Opium...
Then there's the question of priorities. Should energy and money be spent on supporting a media commission to monitor bias, or on recovering territory under Taliban control? Jason Campbell, an Afghanistan expert at the Brookings Institution, lauds the lofty goals of nation-building, but says, "when you drill down, our resources are finite, and we have to start making priorities." Rather than be "overly concerned with quality-of-life issues," the Administration should right now focus on "reducing the violence and helping establish legitimacy of the [Afghan] government...
...pictures of the battle against the Taliban...
That Afghanistan is even holding an election is practically a miracle. The year is far from over, but it's already the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Large swaths of the southern and eastern regions of the country are under the control of militants, while some security analysts estimate that the Taliban has a permanent presence in at least 70% of the nation. As the election nears, the frequency and ferocity of attacks by insurgents have spiked. The U.N. reports that in the first six months of 2009, civilian casualties from such attacks - as well...
...year-old, Kosar has just returned from three years of studying in a Bangalore university, on a scholarship from the Indian government. At age 2, Kosar lost his father in the war against the Soviets. His mother, a member of the Hazara ethnic group heavily persecuted by the Taliban regime, saw her sons' education as the family's ticket out of desperation. Kosar thought his fluent English and new bachelor's degree in human resources and management would guarantee him a good job in a country crying out for professionals. When he got an interview as a human-resources assistant...