5 years later, major gains for Taliban in Afghanistan

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5 years later, major gains for Taliban in Afghanistan

By Fisnik Abrashi and Jason Straziuso

The Associated Press

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.07.2006

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DASHTAK, Afghanistan — The village of Dashtak sits on a bumpy, washed-out specter of a road, an hour's drive off the main highway between Kabul and Afghanistan's lawless southeast.

It has 16 new wells financed by an aid agency. But the village men who gather around a visiting journalist offer a litany of complaints: no paved roads, no running water, no electricity, and the closest health clinic is two hours away by donkey.

Their frustration boils over when talk turns to 10 villagers recently arrested on suspicion of aiding insurgents.

"I swear to you, I have not seen a single dollar bill. I do not know its size or color," said Shah Mahmood, 55, with a long white beard and stark black turban. "We are dying from lack of food and water — and they call us al-Qaida or Taliban."

Poverty paves way for Taliban

Five years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the country is far from won over, or even safely on the path to stability and democracy.

The hard-line Islamic Taliban that appeared down and out has returned with a vengeance, taking control of large swaths of countryside.

Widespread poverty has smoothed its way, shaking what little confidence Afghans have in their democratically elected government.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in rising violence this year. Suicide bombers are targeting ordinary Afghans and Western troops. Militants are assassinating key political figures, burning down schools and using roadside bombs to deadly effect.

The 40,000 U.S. and NATO troops appear farther away from bringing stability than they did three years when their number was 2 1/2 times smaller.

And Osama bin Laden, whose presence here was a trigger for the U.S.-led attack, is still at large, possibly hiding in the mountains along the Afgha-nistan-Pakistan border.

"This is likely to be a long war," said Seth Jones, an analyst with the U.S.-based RAND Corp.

That Afghanistan's future would remain in doubt today was almost unthinkable when the U.S.-led rout of the Taliban began on Oct. 7, 2001.

The military campaign that captured Kabul, the capital, in just over a month resulted in a wave of optimism across Afghanistan, a country that had known little except war for a quarter-century.

Emerging from the Taliban's repression, the nation embraced renewed freedoms.

Millions of Afghans voted in a new president in 2004 and parliament in 2005.

Afghan girls once banned from schools became free to attend class, and citizens could again fly kites or listen to music without risking the wrath of the Ministry of Vice and Virtue.

But despite billions plowed into new roads, clinics and schools, development lags in the volatile ethnic Pashtun areas in the south and east, and endemic corruption has helped the Taliban take root once more.

Making matters much worse, drug production that was essentially wiped out by the Taliban by 2001 has skyrocketed.

Afghan farmers grew enough opium in 2005-06 to make 610 tons of heroin — more than all the world's addicts consume in a year.

Profits from the trade go to Taliban supporters — and to corrupt government officials and police, who like teachers and soldiers, make only $70 a month.

"Our police are doing all those crimes that they have a duty to stop," said Shamsul Haq, 48, a grape farmer and car salesman from the Taliban's former seat of power in Kandahar.

And in some areas, there are no authorities to bribe. Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, noted that Uruzgan, a southern province about the size of West Virginia, has only 45 police officers.

"No one is checking into poppies because there is no police force," Jawad said. "(And) a person who enlists probably is already thinking about abusing his position."

Whole provinces are lost

Large areas of southern and eastern provinces near the Pakistan border are under Taliban control, said Ayesha Khan, an Afghanistan expert in Britain.

Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a current lawmaker and former Taliban commander, ticks off the militant strongholds: Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, Zabul, Paktika, Khost, Kunar and Ghazni provinces.

When 8,000 NATO troops moved to the border area this spring to extend the government's control, they were surprised by the intensity of the resistance, often in pitched battles.

More than 3,000 people, mostly militants, have been killed nationwide this year, according to an Associated Press count, based on reports from U.S., NATO and Afghan officials. The casualty count, also including Afghan security forces, officials and civilians, is about 1,500 more than the toll for all of 2005.

Western casualties have been rising, too — 152 foreign troops killed this year, according to the Web site icasualties.org that tracks foreign troop fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's almost triple the number that died in 2003 or 2004.

The war's cost for U.S. taxpayers: $97 billion, and Congress just appropriated an additional $70 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unlike in Iraq, where the United States makes up the overwhelming majority of the international force, Afgha-nistan is a broad coalition.

The world's most powerful nations continue to work side by side in pursuit of the same declared aim: stabilizing the country and bolstering economic recovery.

But Richard Norland, the U.S. deputy ambassador to Afghani- stan, said the "sense of progress has kind of abated lately.

Man our president sucks. Why'd we have to get this moron in office, we could be doing so much better in Afghanistan.