Word: talibans
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...Eikenberry, who is coming to the end of his second tour in the country but will leave Afghanistan later this month, argues that 2007 is critical. The Taliban has returned with a vengeance, Pakistan has become a safe haven for insurgent attacks, NATO has failed to send as many troops as initially pledged, and indications are that the enemy is gearing up for a new offensive. "It is going to be a violent spring," Eikenberry told a small group of reporters in Kabul on Tuesday...
...violence in Afghanistan has reached the worst levels since the U.S. attack against the Taliban in 2001-2002. In a briefing for several reporters in Kabul earlier this week, a U.S. military intelligence officer disclosed grim statistics on insurgent attacks in Afghanistan: 139 suicide attacks in 2006, up from 27 in 2005, and 1,677 roadside bombs last year, compared with 783 in 2005. So-called direct attacks (small arms, grenades and other weapons) tripled from 1,558 in 2005 to 4,542 last year. In one area on the Afghan-Pakistan border, the focus of a peace pact signed...
Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of harboring leading elements of the Taliban. And, they say, the confession of a leading Taliban spokesman arrested in Afghanistan on Monday further bolsters their claim. Abdul Haq, better known as Dr. Hanif, was caught just hours after crossing the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan in Nangahar province. His capture, after he was followed from the border on a tip, was a success for the beleaguered National Defense Services (NDS), Afghanistan's intelligence branch, which has long been unable to prevent suspected Taliban militants from treating the poorly guarded border as a revolving door...
...Afghan investigators say that under questioning, Dr. Hanif, who had been working with the Taliban for the past 14 months, told them that the organization would never have been able to challenge Afghan military and NATO forces without the direct assistance of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. "This means that according to his confession, the ISI of Pakistan is directly involved in funding, arming and supporting the Taliban and other opposition groups against the government of Afghanistan," says NDS spokesman Sayed Ansari...
Though the global drug trade is heating up, expect a lighter U.S. enforcement presence on the streets. The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that opium production in Afghanistan, which not only provides 90% of the heroin consumed globally but also funds Taliban activities, rose 61% last year over 2005. Some 670 tons of heroin are expected to flood the market, and that should slash the street price of a kilo of Southwest Asian heroin, now about $90,000 in Los Angeles. Yet the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which annually loses some...