Word: kabul
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...large presence in Afghanistan. The longer the U.S. stays, propping up embattled President Hamid Karzai while continuing to stage the dangerously scattershot hunt for bin Laden, the more Afghans will grow to resent the Americans. But with reconstruction efforts stalled and various warlords stirring up opposition to the Kabul government, the alternative is a return to chaos. And so in recent weeks the U.S. military has assumed the kind of peacekeeping duties that the Bush Administration has sought to hand off to the 5,000-person International Security Assistance Force. Last month Lieut. General Dan McNeill, the commander...
...working yet. The U.S.'s chief security interest lies in shoring up the Kabul government and helping set up a national army that can solidify the central administration's authority in the lawless countryside. But to accomplish those tasks, the U.S. will have to navigate a thicket of ethnic rivalries and blood feuds--and there is reason to doubt that the U.S. is committed to doing the dirty work. Western diplomats in Kabul say protecting Karzai, a member of the majority Pashtuns, should remain the top priority for U.S. forces; but the military is preparing to take special-ops troops...
...next such attack, conceivably with weapons of mass destruction. A President and Congress's first obligation is to protect America, regardless of how many abroad approve. Yet many will--starting with the Iraqi people, who will soon be dancing in the streets of Baghdad like those liberated in Kabul. Beyond obvious allies such as Britain and Kuwait, other nations will join with us as Bush's resolve grows clear. In 1990 the much vaunted "international coalition" developed only after Bush Sr. dispatched 540,000 troops to the Persian Gulf. We enlisted others precisely because we were willing...
...Once grown and pressed, Afghan hash is sold to freelance truck and jeep drivers who take it to Tajikistan or Kabul, where it is resold at four times the price. It's then smuggled via Central Asia or Pakistan to the West, where Afghan hash finds many eager buyers. But as dope smokers celebrate the new "enlightened" view of pot, any thought of the distant, parched land where it is grown has been lost in the haze. Back in the dust-bowl fields around Mazar, the growing foreign demand and new freedom to exploit it translate into a rare chance...
...choice to grow drugs may be financially astute, but the effect on water supplies is disastrous. There hasn't been significant rain in most of Afghanistan for five years. Action Contre la Faim says even in Kabul only 30% of residents have sufficient water, defined as 15 liters a day for washing, cooking, farming and drinking and less than 250 people per water access point. That figure drops to 10% in large swaths of the north and even zero across the south. With dope growers exacerbating the shortage, centuries-old water holes and underground courses have evaporated. Crops downstream...