The next Baghdad?

[rpannier]

The Taliban’s Baghdad Strategy
The insurgents are closing in on Kabul, not in order to overrun the capital but to terrorize its residents and drive away investors. It's working.

Faridoon stares in alarm at the two NEWSWEEK reporters who just walked into his shop. "You guys better get out of town fast," the 21-year-old Afghan says as quietly as possible. "There's Taliban everywhere." Lying in the street outside are the burned-out hulks of a gasoline tanker and a shipping-container truck that someone set ablaze two nights before, right in front of Faridoon's motor-oil shop in Maidan Shar, the tiny, dust-blown capital of Maidan Wardak province, barely 25 miles south of Kabul. Only days earlier and a few miles farther down Highway 1, Taliban fighters ambushed and burned a 50-truck commercial convoy that was carrying fuel and supplies for the U.S. military. Even during the day, Faridoon and other townspeople warn, it's not safe to visit the area.

Afghanistan's insurgents have a new target—Kabul, and the belt of towns and villages surrounding the capital. "Today the Taliban are here," says Maidan Shar's white-smocked pharmacist Syed Mohammad, 32. "Tomorrow they may be in Kabul." The supply convoy was attacked in his home village, a dot on the map called Pul Surkh, where he says insurgents now travel freely, packing new AK-47s and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers. A series of spectacular recent terrorist incidents have shaken Kabul, a city that is all too familiar with violence. Blast walls and barbed wire have sprouted to defend against suicide bombers; residents are afraid to travel even a few miles outside the city. To some, the Afghan capital is beginning to feel like a new Baghdad.

That's exactly what the Taliban want. The insurgents can't approach the firepower of the Coalition and its Afghan National Army allies. "No one is going to take Kabul or any provinces or province capitals, or establish the Revolutionary Republic of Afghanistan," says a senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. But the militants seem to have realized what the U.S. military did just before its surge in Iraq: that instability in the capital has an outsized psychological impact on a country. "Personal security is under fire," the Western diplomat admits. "That's an enormous problem."

link:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/148985>1=43002

[SpiralHawk]

1. Thanks a pantload, republicon chickenhawks

This is another fine mess you have crapped out of your grievously-wounded, fear-driven collective psyche.

Epic republicon chickenhawk FAIL.

All over the place.

As usual.

[speedoo]

2. Shit. More rethug chickenhawk failure. More death and destruction.

What a fucking mess.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Nothing says FAIL like republicon

[KharmaTrain]

3. Afghanistan Politics Make My Head Hurt...

It's way beyond the brainstems on the right to even comprehend. This is a country of true tribal loyalties...not an ideology. "The Taliban" is a blanket name given to mostly Pushtan tribes who are totally against any form of nationalism or a centralized government. We've seen over the years how these tribes switch sides when the balance of power in this country gets too heavy on one side. The Taliban rose in opposition to the centralized Soviet-controlled government then the Northern Alliance and other groups rose up against the Taliban when they asserted the same type of control and now it's going against Karzai and his US and NATO defenders. Loyalties switch when it threatens the local tribal chief's power.

The bottom line is the opium trade is flourishing...and in good part due to the turmoil. Karzai's too weak to try to stop the export and I'd bet a bright shinny dime he's got his fingers in those profit. The Tailban in the 90s were able to cut down on the trade as well...so I don't see them over-running the country since no longer they gain too much power, the alliances will shift again.

[SpiralHawk]

5. But, drug profits are WAY UP since the republicons got their stinky fingers involved

...what's with that? More republicon 'family values.' As usual.