Afghanistan: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government also remains very weak, and he still cannot exert much control in vast stretches of Afghanistan. "The penetration of the Afghan government throughout the country has been slow," says one U.S. official. In many areas, Taliban elements have moved in to fill the gaps. Opium cultivation has reached record levels and Afghanistan now accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's supply. U.S. officials have been focusing their counterdrug operations on a few provinces, leaving some of the biggest production areas for later.
The Ugly
The Taliban is in the midst of perhaps its strongest spring offensive since U.S. forces ousted the regime in late 2001. A recent United Nations report described an "insurgency emboldened by their strategic successes, rather than disheartened by their tactical failures." Even worse, the report found that the Taliban's leadership structures "remained intact."Insurgent violence in January was more than double the levels of a year ago. Suicide bombings rose throughout 2006 as well. Coalition deaths are also running higher-51 soldiers in the first four months of this year versus 36 in the same 2006 period.
Chaos in the tribal areas of Pakistan is only fueling the Taliban's resurgence. Overhead imagery from several months ago of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan illustrates how severe the problem is. U.S. spy cameras picked up images of a long column of more than 100 people being led across the border into Afghanistan. The men, clad in rags and wearing plastic bags on their feet instead of shoes, were being led by a small group of crack Taliban fighters. In an effort to avoid detection, the double-file column of men was stretched out over nearly a mile. U.S. officials believe these were a new batch of recruits for the Taliban. "It was clear that this was the fodder for the suicide bombs," says one U.S. official.
advertisement
