Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The Taliban Resurgent (NPR link)

According to this story, the Taliban have been more and more active of late, and the government of Afghanistan expects plenty of violence this summer (the "fighting season"). It's not a very in-depth report, but lest you thought Afghanistan was over and done with, it's time to think again. We didn't finish the job in Afghanistan before rushing off to Iraq, and we're paying the price now in an endless insurgency there. See also this article for a story about how the strength of the Taliban may be directly related to the weakness of Hamid Karzai's government.

See also this article for more info on Taliban attacks.

3 comments:

Bravo 2-1 said...

Agreed, we've made a major mistake leaving Afghanistan in the flank. But that increasing insurgency is actually a world wide one, just like bon Laden wanted.

Bravo, Dubya.

Alexander Wolfe said...

What's truly sad is that Afghanistan, which appears to slowly be descending into lawlessness-thus becoming a national security issue again-is superseded by the urgency of the situation in Iraq, a problem which we have made for ourselves. And we appear capable of dealing fully with neither. Only time will tell which one will pose the greatest threat to our security as the home of Islamic jihadists.

Nat-Wu said...

Well, at least we can do something about Iraqi insurgents while we're there. But all we have is something like 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, and they're talking about numbers in the thousands for Taliban fighters again. How are we going to deal with that short of re-invading when we're done with Iraq in 10 or 15 years?