Word: kabul
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Saboor isn't taking any chances. The bus conductor, 30, prepares for his twice-weekly Kabul-to-Kandahar trips by exchanging his city outfit for the filthy tunic and voluminous trousers of a poor mechanic, the better to fool potential robbers. He rubs grease and dirt on his face to conceal from possible Taliban attackers that he is clean-shaven. These precautions, Saboor says, have saved his life. Just the other day, a gang of thieves robbed his passengers at gunpoint. Two weeks ago, Taliban insurgents pulled some 50 passengers off a bus and slaughtered 27 men they falsely claimed...
Seven years after the war to topple the Taliban regime, Afghans are starting to wonder if anything has been achieved. The highway between Kabul and Kandahar was supposed to be a success story. Completed in 2003, it has instead become a symbol of all that plagues Afghanistan: insecurity, corruption and the radical Islamic insurgency that feeds off both. If Afghanistan is ever to fulfill the promise that beckoned when the U.S. first went to war there, those trends will have to be reversed...
...service members in Afghanistan now rival those in Iraq--though there are about a quarter the number of troops there. Insurgent groups have spread to previously peaceful regions. "We are not exactly in a stalemate, but we are still marching uphill," says a NATO military commander in Kabul. He compares Afghanistan today with "about where we were in Iraq in 2004 to 2005"--which is just before it started to get really...
...what is to be done? For most Afghans, the right road starts with better security. Eating pomegranates in a tea shop in Sarobi district, just east of Kabul, Saeed Shah says he was not fond of the Taliban when it was in power. But his once peaceful district has witnessed a wave of criminality and violence--10 French soldiers were slaughtered by insurgents in August--that has him longing for the old regime and its harsh but effective justice. "Yes, there was hardship, but there was also peace," he says. "You could leave your shop open all night...
...While there have been several attempted and successful suicide bombings on the fringes of Kabul against Afghan and NATO army convoys, this is the first attack in the city since July 7, when a suicide bomber in a vehicle set off explosives outside the gates of the Indian embassy, killing at least 60 people, including an Indian diplomat. Some observers have warned that the mounting violence in the capital may in fact get worse in the coming weeks, following recent changes at the Interior Ministry, which historically been riddled with corruption. The replacement of the former Minister of the Interior...