Return of the TalibanAmerican incompetence continues to fuel anti-American movements in Afghanistan, and may soon make them very popular with the people:
Twenty minutes south of Kabul, along one of Afghanistan's few newly paved roads, lies Logar Province. In another country Logar's desert villages and accessible mountains might be a place city dwellers would use for quick rustication. But in Logar the Taliban are back, coming out at night to burn schools, assassinate liberal imams, launch rocket attacks on government buildings and plant mines to kill NATO soldiers.
...
In recent months insurgent violence has even started in Kabul. Over five weeks this fall the city suffered four suicide bombings, three of which killed or wounded international troops. One attack hit just outside the American Embassy: Three US Humvees were bombed, killing two GIs and sixteen others; twenty-nine people were wounded. The US military now says there are Kabul-based suicide cells.
September saw numerous IEDs uncovered in the capital and some rocket attacks--including one against the airport an hour after I arrived--while security forces arrested several urban-based Taliban, including a group of university students who were storing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and propaganda.
In the south, kidnapping has begun: One German and three Macedonian NGO workers were abducted and murdered in Helmand Province this past spring. Their corpses were booby-trapped, and nine Afghan National Police officers died in the recovery effort. In September a Colombian aid worker and two Afghan nationals were kidnapped in Wardak, west of Kabul, then released three weeks later.
This new pattern of political violence is seen as the "Iraqization" of the Afghan insurgency, which some fear could also lead to an Iraq-style meltdown or ethnically based fragmentation. Even the top NATO general here recently warned that most Afghans will soon support the Taliban if development and security do not significantly improve over the next six months.