REFERENCE TIMELINE (To Help You If You Get Confused While Reading)

AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT1

Edward L. Glaeser notes, “there are basically no countries with very low levels of education that have managed to be democratic over the long term, and almost every country with a high level of education has remained a stable democracy. . . . We must worry about the future of a democratic Afghanistan. . . . Given just the historical connection between education and democracy, the fight to foster freedom in that country is likely to be a long, uphill struggle.” Current literacy rates for Afghanistan are estimated at 12.6% for women and 43.1% for men. By contrast, according to a 2003 estimate, 99% of the United States population is literate.

REFERENCE TIMELINE (to help you if you get confused while reading)

1979 – Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.  The U.S. supported the mujahedeen—Islamic extremists fighting against the Soviets—particularly beginning in 1986.

1989 – The Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan.

1996 – Taliban establishes solid control over Afghanistan.

1996 – Al Qaeda sets up headquarters in Afghanistan (welcomed by the Taliban).

Sept. 11, 2001 – U.S. Pentagon and Twin Towers attacked by Al Qaeda.

November 2001 – U.S. invades Afghanistan  Taliban and Al Qaeda forces driven from power, but largely escape and continue guerilla war against U.S. presence.  Hamid Karzai chosen as temporary leader of Afghanistan.

2004 – First Afghan elections. Hamid Karzai, supported by U.S., becomes President.

2009 – Contested Afghan elections. Hamid Karzai re-elected, but fairness of elections is questioned.

2009 – U.S. adds thousands more troops in Afghanistan.

TONS MORE INFO AVAILABLE AT: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT 2

RECENT AFGHAN HISTORY—AN OVERVIEW (from 2009) ADAPTED FROM: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html (2009 version)

OVERVIEW Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country north and west of Pakistan and east of Iran. Its strategic location has long granted it a pivotal role in the region, while its hostile terrain and pugnacious inhabitants have stymied would-be conquerors for centuries. The country's population is 34 million. Its capital is Kabul.

The United States has been involved militarily in Afghanistan since it led an invasion after the Sept. 11 attacks by Al Qaeda, which had been given a safe haven in the country by the Taliban, the extremist Islamic group that had seized control in 1996 after years of civil war. The 2001 invasion succeeded in dislodging Al Qaeda and removing the Taliban from power, but not in completely destroying either group. Fueled by profits from the opium trade and dissatisfaction with the weak and often corrupt new Afghan government, the Taliban has made a steady comeback, particularly in areas populated by Pashtuns where the group started.

In February 2009, President Obama ordered 17,000 additional troops sent to Afghanistan. On Dec. 1, after a lengthy policy review, he announced that another 30,000 American troops would deploy in 2010, and laid out a strategy meant to blunt the Taliban's resurgence. Mr. Obama said that by safeguarding Afghanistan's population centers and speeding the training of Afghan security forces, the troops would create the stability needed for the country's central government to take hold. Saying that the deployment was not an open-ended commitment, Mr. Obama declared that a troop withdrawal would begin in 2011.

The largest obstacle to the success of the plan seems to be the weakness of the goverment led by President Hamid Karzai, who had won re-election in August in a vote marred by widespread fraud on his behalf. A week after Mr. Obama's announcement of a troop increase, Mr. Karzai said Afghanistan would not be able to pay for its own security until at least 2024.

In the months leading to Mr. Obama's decision, some administration officials, led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., argued that the United States should not plunge deeper into the conflict, but limit its mission to preventing Al Qaeda from regaining a foothold and the Taliban from taking over outright. The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, argued for a troop increase of 40,000 to allow for the new strategy of protecting the population. White House officials said after Mr. Obama's announcement that they would be asking NATO allies to supply an additional 10,000 troops, a request that was met with varying degrees of resistance in countries weary of the eight-year war.

THE SOVIET INVASION Three decades ago, Afghanistan was a stable, relatively prosperous and relatively secular country. The turmoil and extremism that have dominated its history since then can be traced to the 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union and the reaction both by Afghans and by their allies in the United States and Pakistan.

In the 19th century, the imperial Russian government vied with Britain for influence in Central Asia in the Great Game — a web of diplomatic intrigue and espionage. But it was almost a century later that Moscow's role in Afghan affairs reached its peak, when the Soviet invasion descended into a prolonged and bloody occupation that was in many ways comparable to the American experience in Vietnam.

The first Soviet troops parachuted into Kabul on Dec. 27, 1979, to assist Babrak Karmal, who had become president in a coup within the Afghan Communist leadership. Moscow insisted that the troops came in response to a plea for help from a legitimately constituted Karmal Government. But most Western analysts say the Soviets engineered the coup as a pretext to replace the Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin, who had lost their trust.

Soviet troops stayed for nine years, fighting a conflict that cost them roughly 15,000 lives and billions of rubles, while undermining the cherished image of an invincible Soviet Army.

The Soviet-backed Kabul Government generally kept a firm grip on the cities, but throughout the war was unable to rout the rebels in the countryside, where the conservative populace was antagonized at the outset by changes in social and land policies that offended Muslim tradition. After 1986, the Soviet Air Force was also rendered largely useless by advanced Stinger antiaircraft missiles supplied by the United States to the rebels.

Eventually, after peace talks moderated by the United Nations, the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989. They left behind a country that was not only devastated by the war but that had become a beacon to Islamic extremists from across the globe who had come to assist in the fighting, including Osama bin Laden and the group he started, Al Qaeda.

THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER After Soviet forces departed, Afghanistan descended into a widespread civil war, and by the summer of 1994 power was anarchically divided among competing warlords.

The Taliban eventually gained control. They had grown out of a student movement dedicated to purifying the country, based in the southeast, the home of the dominant ethnic group, the Pashtun. In a story that is now part of Afghan folklore, the group's first action occurred when Mullah Omar, a Pashtun who had lost an eye fighting the Soviets, gathered a small band of men and attacked a group of warlords who had raped a girl and shaved her head.

By the end of 1994 Mullah Omar had nearly 12,000 followers and was rolling up the warlords to the north and east. With his promise of restoring the centrality of Islam to daily life, he created a genuinely popular movement in a country weary of corruption and brutality.

Aid from Pakistan helped the Taliban who, by 1996, had taken control of Afghanistan, imposing strict enforcement of fundamentalist Islamic law, banning movies and music and forcing women out of schools and into burqas – clothing that completely covers their body.

The Taliban also provided a haven for Osama bin Laden and for his terrorist group – Al Qaeda. Western diplomats say Al Qaeda helped persuade Mullah Omar to order the destruction of several 800-year-old Buddhist statues, an act condemned around the world. International criticism of the Taliban's harsh measures had little effect on the regime.

POST 9/11 INVASION After the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush gave the Taliban an ultimatum to hand over Mr. bin Laden. When it refused, the United States joined forces with rebel groups that had never accepted Taliban rule, notably the Northern Alliance, which represented minority tribes. An air and ground campaign began that drove the Taliban out of the major Afghan cities by the end of the year.

Remnants of Al Qaeda and Taliban retreated to Tora Bora in the mountains along the Pakistan border and eventually escaped after a battle there.

THE KARZAI GOVERNMENT In December 2001, Hamid Karzai, was named chairman of an interim government that replaced the defeated Taliban, making him the leader of the country. Mr. Karzai became interim president in June 2002, saying he hoped to secure peace for Afghanistan and win more international aid; he was elected to a five-year term as president in 2004.

During the Bush administration, Mr. Karzai -- a celebrity in flowing cape and dark gray karakul cap -- was also a White House favorite. His popularity, though, has subsequently plunged, at home as well as abroad. In Afghanistan Mr. Karzai now faces a population that blames him for the lack of economic progress and the corrupt officials who seem to stand at every doorway of his government. In Washington, President Obama has said he is unreliable.

THE TALIBAN RESURGENCE Despite their defeat at the hands of the West in 2001, the Taliban continued to exist, living as a guerrilla warfare operation based in the mountainous and largely lawless tribal area on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. As time passed, and the American military focus was diverted to the invasion and occupation of Iraq (beginning in 2003), the Taliban regrouped and began to extend its influence in the southern part of Afghanistan. Their rise was assisted by a resurgent opium (illegal drugs) trade, which helped to fund the group. The American-led coalition continued to hold the cities and highways, but was forced to give up large parts of the countryside to the Taliban. The Taliban also began to spill over into Pakistan, raising concerns about that country’s stability.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION POLICY Mr. Obama's plan to widen United States involvement in Afghanistan was shaped by a debate in which Vice President Biden warned against getting into a political and military quagmire, while military advisers argued that the Afghanistan war effort could be imperiled without even more troops. In February 2009, President Obama said that he would send an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan in spring and summer. The order added nearly 50 percent to the 36,000 American troops already there.

In addition to the troop increases, Mr. Obama appointed Richard C. Holbrooke, a former United Nations ambassador, as special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke has more than 45 years of foreign policy and diplomatic experience, including brokering an agreement between warring factions in Bosnia that led to the 1995 Dayton peace accords.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, is responsible for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and across the region. General McChrystal, an expert in counterinsurgency warfare, is the head of the operation in Afghanistan. General McChrystal's strategic assessment was that the task would require 40,000 or more troops if Mr. Obama wants to create true security in the country's major population centers.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION The Aug. 20 Afghan election was the second in the nearly eight years since an American-led invasion ousted the Taliban, but security in the country had deteriorated so sharply, and the credibility of the Afghan leadership had sunk so low, that the ability of the government to hold the election at all was in doubt.

American officials were quick to declare the poll a success -- worth the expanding commitment of troops and money to an increasingly unpopular and corruption-plagued government. But the low turnout was compounded by evidence that a large number of ballots were fraudulent, and that the tampering was almost entirely in favor of Mr. Karzai. After heavy pressure from American officials, Mr. Karzai agreed to a runoff with his most serious challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. But the runoff was scrapped when Dr. Abdullah withdrew from the race, accusing the government of corruption and electoral fraud. Afghan officials on the following day declared Mr. Karzai the winner.

With Mr. Karzai's reelection, Mr. Obama faced a new challenge: helping Mr. Karzai change the way he governs, at a moment when he is politically weaker than at any time since 2001.

THE OBAMA PLAN In a speech delivered Dec. 1 at West Point, Mr. Obama announced his plan to deploy 30,000 additional troops. He vowed to start bringing American forces home from Afghanistan in the middle of 2011, saying the United States could not afford and should not have to shoulder an open-ended commitment.

Promising that he could "bring this war to a successful conclusion," Mr. Obama set out a strategy that would seek to reverse Taliban gains in large parts of Afghanistan, better protect the Afghan people, increase the pressure on Afghanistan to build its own military capacity and a more effective government and step up attacks on Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

In his 33-minute address, he sought to convince an increasingly skeptical nation that the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the continued existence of Al Qaeda across the border in Pakistan -- what he called a "cancer" on the region -- were direct threats to the United States, and that he could achieve the seemingly contradictory goals of expanding American involvement in the war even as he sought to bring it to a close.

He delivered a pointed message to President Karzai, saying, "The days of providing a blank check are over." But he did not spell out what his administration would do if the Karzai government failed to deliver on its promise to change its ways. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT 3

FROM http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/opinion/29kristof.html?_r=1 More Schools, Not Troops By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: October 28, 2009

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.

The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.

Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons).

In short, there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan. These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilizing societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.

In Afghanistan, for example, we have already increased our troop presence by 40,000 troops since the beginning of last year, yet the result has not been the promised stability but only more casualties and a strengthened insurgency. If the last surge of 40,000 troops didn’t help, why will the next one be so different?

Matthew P. Hoh, an American military veteran who was the top civilian officer in Zabul Province, resigned over Afghan policy, as The Washington Post reported this week. Mr. Hoh argues that our military presence is feeding the insurgency, not quelling it.

Already our troops have created a backlash with Kabul University students this week burning President Obama in effigy until police dispersed them with gunshots. The heavier our military footprint, the more resentment — and perhaps the more legitimacy for the Taliban.

Schools are not a quick fix or silver bullet any more than troops are. But we have abundant evidence that they can, over time, transform countries, and in the area near Afghanistan there’s a nice experiment in the comparative power of educational versus military tools.

Since 9/11, the United States has spent $15 billion in Pakistan, mostly on military support, and today Pakistan is more unstable than ever. In contrast, Bangladesh, which until 1971 was a part of Pakistan, has focused on education in a way that Pakistan never did. Bangladesh now has more girls in high school than boys. (In contrast, only 3 percent of Pakistani women in the tribal areas are literate.)

Those educated Bangladeshi women joined the labor force, laying the foundation for a garment industry and working in civil society groups like BRAC and Grameen Bank. That led to a virtuous spiral of development, jobs, lower birth rates, education and stability. That’s one reason Al Qaeda is holed up in Pakistan, not in Bangladesh, and it’s a reminder that education can transform societies. When I travel in Pakistan, I see evidence that one group — Islamic extremists — believes in the transformative power of education. They pay for madrassas that provide free schooling and often free meals for students. They then offer scholarships for the best pupils to study abroad in Wahhabi madrassas before returning to become leaders of their communities. What I don’t see on my trips is similar numbers of American-backed schools. It breaks my heart that we don’t invest in schools as much as medieval, misogynist [woman-hating] extremists.

For roughly the same cost as stationing 40,000 troops in Afghanistan for one year, we could educate the great majority of the 75 million children worldwide who, according to Unicef, are not getting even a primary education. We won’t turn them into graduate students, but we can help them achieve literacy. Such a vast global education campaign would reduce poverty, cut birth rates, improve America’s image in the world, promote stability and chip away at extremism.

Education isn’t a panacea [cure-all], and no policy in Afghanistan is a sure bet. But all in all, the evidence suggests that education can help foster a virtuous cycle that promotes stability and moderation. So instead of sending 40,000 troops more to Afghanistan, how about opening 40,000 schools? AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT4

FROM http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/how-many-troops-to-secure-afghanistan/ How Many Troops to Secure Afghanistan? By ROBERT MACKEY September 21, 2009, 7:02 pm

Now that word has leaked out that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American military commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that he will need more than 68,000 American troops to defeat the Taliban, the natural question is: how many foreign troops does it take to secure Afghanistan?

The fast answer is that no one really knows, since, as even late-night comics have noticed recently, armies have been failing to do it for centuries.

On Saturday the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar, weighed in with an op-ed of sorts posted on a Taliban Web site — helpfully made available in English, as well as Pashto, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Finnish, German, Spanish, Russian, French, Somali and Malay/Indonesian — noting that history has not been kind to foreign forces seeking to control Afghanistan, “from the time of the aggression of Alexander.”

Mullah Omar invoked a somewhat more recent example as well, pointing out that the Afghans “fought against the British invaders for eighty years from 1839 to 1919 and ultimately got independence by defeating Britain.”

While the world has obviously changed a good bit since Alexander arrived in Afghanistan with an army reinforced by elephants, or the British seized temporary control of the country in 1878 with 33,500 troops, it has only been 20 years since the Soviet military tried and failed to fend off an insurgency by Islamic militants against an Afghan government they had supported.

In February 1989, when the Soviets finally withdrew from the country a report in The Times by Bill Keller noted:

Today’s final departure is the end of a steady process of withdrawal since last spring, when Moscow says, there were 100,300 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. At the height of the Soviet commitment, according to Western intelligence estimates, there were 115,000 troops deployed.

On Monday, my colleagues Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker reported that the largest troop increase currently under consideration would bring the total number of American troops there to 113,000 — almost exactly the same size as the Soviet force:

Pentagon and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy say General McChrystal is expected to propose a range of options for additional troops beyond the 68,000 American forces already approved, from 10,000 more troops to as many as 45,000.

As The Lede noted in March, when Mullah Omar issued a call for help from Pakistani militants, there are an estimated 15,000 Taliban fighters on each side of the exceedingly porous border. On the day the Soviets departed in 1989, the BBC reported that “Kabul is surrounded by a mujahedeen force of around 30,000.”

It seems reasonable to ask if a force roughly the same size as the Soviet one, aided by about 30,000 NATO troops, is big enough to defeat this Afghan insurgency. The Americans do have some advantages the Soviets lacked. In this struggle, Pakistan’s military and intelligence services are, to some extent, helping to undermine the insurgents, who are not being armed by a rival superpower. Despite signs of rising discontent with the current Afghan government, the Taliban may also have less popular support than the mujahedeen enjoyed in the 1980s. Although it is hard to conduct accurate surveys in Afghanistan, in one opinion poll carried out earlier this year for British and American broadcasters, just 4 per cent of Afghans surveyed said that they would like to see the Taliban return to power.

On the other hand, Afghanistan’s population is estimated to have doubled since 1979, so this foreign force now has to find away to police and provide basic security to about twice as many people as the Soviet one.

Instead of looking just at failed occupations of Afghanistan, it might be worth looking at how many troops were deployed during the successful occupation of postwar Germany in the 1940s. According to a Rand corporation study called “America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq,” the U.S. peacekeeping force in the one-quarter of postwar Germany it controlled in 1945 (an area that then had a population of about 17 million people and no active insurgency) included more than 290,000 soldiers and “a constabulary or police-type occupation force” of 38,000.

Looking closer to home, consider that there are nearly 38,000 police officers in New York City, patrolling an area of just 300 square miles, with a population of 8.3 million. Given that, it is no wonder that Gen. McChrystal thinks it might be tough to provide security to 30 million Afghans and police 250,000 square miles of mostly mountainous terrain with even 100,000 troops.

Then again, it is also possible that too large a force, rather than subduing Afghanistan, could serve to provoke the Afghan people.

One man who has suggested that more American troops are not the answer is Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, who was a K.G.B. agent in Kabul during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Last October Mr. Kabulov told my colleague John Burns that the U.S. had “already repeated all of our mistakes,” and moved on to “making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright.” One of the biggest mistakes the Soviets made, Mr. Kabulov said, was letting the force grow too large. “The more foreign troops you have roaming the country,” he said, “the more the irritative allergy [annoyance] toward them is going to be provoked.” AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT 5 Not in Our Son’s Name Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez’s son Greg was one of the World Trade Center victims. The Rodriguezes have asked that people share as widely as possible copies of this Sept. 15 letter they distributed to the media. It was written before the bombing of Afghanistan began. BY PHYLLIS AND ORLANDO RODRIGUEZ Our son Greg is among the many missing from the World Trade Center attack. Since we first heard the news, we have shared moments of grief, comfort, hope, despair, fond memories with his wife, the two families, our friends and neighbors, his loving colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald/ESpeed, and all the grieving families that daily meet at the Pierre Hotel. We see our hurt and anger reflected among everybody we meet. We cannot pay attention to the daily flow of news about this disaster. But we read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands, dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. It will not avenge our son’s death. Not in our son’s name. Our son died a victim of an inhuman ideology. Our actions should not serve the same purpose. Let us grieve. Let us reflect and pray. Let us think about a rational response that brings real peace and justice to our world. But let us not as a nation add to the inhumanity of our times. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT 6 Afghanistan: The Route to Riches BY ANDY ROWELL

As the war in Afghanistan unfolds, there is frantic diplomatic activity to ensure that any post-Taliban government will be both democratic and pro-West. Hidden in this explosive geo-political equation is the sensitive issue of securing control and export of the region’s vast oil and gas reserves. The Soviets estimated Afghanistan’s proven and probable natural gas reserves at 5 trillion cubic feet — enough for the United Kingdom’s requirement for two years — but this remains largely untapped because of the country’s civil war and poor pipeline infrastructure. More importantly, according to the U.S. government, “Afghanistan’s significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian Sea.” To the north of Afghanistan lies the Caspian and central Asian region, one of the world’s last great frontiers for the oil industry due to its tremendous untapped reserves. The U.S. government believes that total oil reserves could be 270 billion barrels. Total gas reserves could be 576 trillion cubic feet. The presence of these oil reserves and the possibility of their export raises new strategic concerns for the U.S. and other Western industrial powers. “As oil companies build oil pipelines from the Caucasus and central Asia to supply Japan and the West, these strategic concerns gain military implications,” argued an article in the Military Review, the journal of the U.S. Army, earlier in the year. Host governments and Western oil companies have been rushing to get in on the act. Kazakhstan, it is believed, could earn $700 billion from offshore oil and gas fields over the next 40 years. Both American and British oil companies have struck black gold. In April 1993, Chevron concluded a $20 billion joint venture to develop the Tengiz oil field, with 6 to 9 billion barrels of estimated oil reserves in Kazakhstan alone. The following year, in what was described as “the deal of the century,” AIOC, an international consortium of companies led by British Petroleum, signed an $8 billion deal to exploit reserves estimated at 3-5 billion barrels in Azerbaijan. The oil industry has long been trying to find a way to bring the oil and gas to market. This frustration was evident in the submission by oil company Unocal’s vicepresident John Maresca, before the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998: “Central Asia is isolated. Their natural resources are landlocked, both geographically and politically. Each of the countries in the Caucasus and central Asia faces difficult political challenges. Some have unsettled wars or latent conflicts.” The industry has been looking at different routes. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) route is 1,000 miles west from Tengiz in Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk and came on stream in October. Oil will go by tanker through the Bosporus to the Mediterranean. Another route being considered by AIOC goes from Baku through Tbilisi in Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey. However, parts of the route are seen as politically unstable as it goes through the Kurdistan region of Turkey and its $3 billion price tag is prohibitively expensive. But even if these pipelines are built, they would not be enough to exploit the region’s vast oil and gas reserves. Nor crucially would they have the capacity to move oil to where it is really needed, the growing markets of Asia. Other export pipelines must therefore be built. One option is to go east across China, but at 3,000 kilometers it is seen as too long. Another option is through Iran, but U.S. companies are banned due to U.S. sanctions. The only other possible route is through Afghanistan to Pakistan. This is seen as being advantageous as it is close to the Asian markets. Unocal, the U.S. company with a controversial history of investment in Burma, has been trying to secure the Afghan route. To be viable Unocal has made it clear that “construction of the pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place in Kabul that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.”

The above was condensed from an Oct. 24, 2001 article in The Guardian newspaper in Britain. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT7 Background on Afghanistan Geography Afghanistan is about the size of Texas. It is traversed east to west by the Hindu Kush Mountains, which rise to heights of 24,000 feet. Valleys between the mountains, and plains in the north and southwest, hold the scarce topsoil that can be farmed (only 12 percent of the land is arable). The fabled Silk Road, linking India and the Far East with Europe, passed through valleys and mountain gaps, making Afghanistan a hotspot for the transport of goods (both legitimate trade and smuggling) and international intrigue. The climate is dry, winters are cold, and summers are hot. The nation is landlocked, surrounded by six countries: Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and China.

People and Culture The population is about 26 million. Over 3 million Afghan refugees now live in bordering nations – Iran and Pakistan.

There are three main ethnic groups (Pashtuns are 38 percent of the population, Tajiks 25 percent, and Hazaras 19 percent). Uzbeks make up 6 percent, while other minorities (Aimaks, Turkmen, Baluchis, and others) make up 12 percent. These groups arise from independent, nomadic tribes. More than twenty separate languages are spoken; the major ones are Afghan Persian or Dari (spoken by 50 percent of the population), Pashtu (35 percent), and Turkic dialects, such as Uzbek and Turkmen (11 percent). The Pashtun group has traditionally provided the country’s top leadership, but the elites of other groups have been involved in the nation’s administration.

Islam is the religion observed by 99 percent of the population (Sunni Muslims comprise 84 percent, Shiite Muslims 15 percent). Traditionally, Islamic culture was a unifying force, providing a common bond among the many different ethnic groups. The Koran, the holy book of Islam, has long been the basis of not just religious practices, but also cultural and political norms.

Several statistics tell the story of poverty in Afghanistan today. Nearly half the population is under 15 years old. The average life expectancy is only about 45 years. Adult illiteracy is 69 percent for men and 84 percent for women. Less than one-quarter of all young women attend primary or secondary school. Infant mortality is 151 deaths for every 1,000 live births (in the United States, the ratio is 7: 1,000). There is one telephone, on average, for every 1,000 inhabitants.

Brief History The kingdoms and oases of Afghanistan were major stops along the Silk Road during Europe’s Middle Ages. Empire- builders have desired control over the mountain passes (such as the famous Khyber Pass) that allowed travel from India (and thus from all of the Far East) to the Middle East (and thus to all of Europe). For example, the British Empire’s covert struggle against Russian influence in Afghanistan in the 1800s was immortalized in the works of British author Rudyard Kipling (author of The Jungle Book).

Historically, the Afghan tribes have not taken kindly to invaders or would-be rulers. For example, the army of Alexander the Great was almost destroyed in the mountains in 329 B.C. Genghis Khan conquered the region in 1219 A.D., but could not hold onto it. The British stormed Kabul and set up a puppet ruler in 1839, but two years later their 16,000 soldiers were slaughtered in retreat, except for one wounded survivor.

In 1747, a Pashtun tribal leader, Ahmad Shah Abdali, was chosen by tribal chiefs to be ruler. He is widely considered to be the father of the Afghan nation. Pashtun clans provided leadership for this loose confederation of tribes for the next two hundred years. A leftist coup in 1973 established Afghanistan as a republic. The deposed King Zahir Shah fled to Rome, where he lives in exile today. The coup initiated a cascade of political splintering. Just five years later, in 1978, Marxists in the Afghan army staged another coup, but the group split into factions that fought among one another, while also battling anticommunist, Islamic opponents. The civil war had begun.

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to end the chaos and establish a stable communist regime. Initially, Afghans resisting the invasion were armed with outdated weapons. Soon the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) of the United States began providing, with the help of Pakistan, funds, weapons, and training to Afghan Mujahideen resistance fighters. This support was part of the U.S. Cold War strategy against the communist Soviet Union at the time, but it made leaders out of warriors who believed their battle against communism was part of a great Muslim cause. The Mujahideen included boys as young as ten. Civil War The desire for freedom from Soviet rule brought many local quarrels to a halt as leaders of various ethnic groups combined forces to defeat the “Soviet infidels.” Soviet soldiers were easy targets for guerrillas armed with U.S. lightweight missiles and modern guns and familiar with the rugged mountains. By 1988, the Soviets realized that they were in a no-win situation and signed an accord with the United States and Pakistan to end the war. The communist regime, led by President Najibullah, lasted until 1992, when Mujahideen took over the city, forcing the president to take shelter in a U.N. compound.

Amazingly, Afghan foot soldiers had defeated a world superpower, but their country lay in ruins, with 1.5 million dead, 6 million refugees, cities and water supplies wrecked, and the countryside strewn with as many as 15 million active landmines. Significant foreign aid was never forthcoming, from the United States or elsewhere. The various groups that had coalesced to fight against the Soviets immediately began fighting one another for control of the country. The resulting civil war, which continues into the present, brought further ruin to a people already exhausted by war. Factional fighting reduced much of the capital to rubble.

The Taliban In 1994, in the refugee camps of Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, a group of graduates of Islamic schools (madrassahs) founded the Taliban. These young men, mostly ethnic Pashtuns, were dismayed by the ongoing chaos in their homeland. The Taliban seized control of the capital city of Kabul in 1996, executed former President Najibullah, and ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani. Although the Taliban declared themselves the legitimate government of Afghanistan, only three other nations granted such recognition.

This event quickly realigned political forces within the region. The anti-Taliban United Front is a loose coalition of political and ethnic groups, held together primarily by their dislike of the Taliban and fear of Pashtun rule. It is headed by the ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani (who is an ethnic Tajik) and other non-Pashtun political leaders and generals.

Initially, the Taliban were popular because they disarmed petty regional warlords who exploited and abused civilians. But the Taliban, under the leadership of mullah (religious leader) Mohammad Omar, soon imposed harsh laws based on their fundamentalist interpretation of Koranic law. Women are forbidden to attend school, earn a salary, or show their faces in public. Men must grow beards. The depiction of living things (photographs, stuffed animals, statues) is forbidden. Punishments include severing a hand for theft and stoning for adultery. Taliban training camps provide volunteers for the continued fighting in Afghanistan and, allegedly, for acts of terror abroad.

By late 1998, the Taliban controlled 90 percent of the country. Approximately 3.7 million Afghan citizens who fled the civil war are reluctant to return to a war-ravaged nation ruled by a repressive fundamentalist regime. There are over 2 million refugees in Pakistan, 1.5 million in Iran, and about 10,000 camped at the border of Tajikistan.

In July 2001, Human Rights Watch released a report on human rights abuses in Afghanistan, “Crisis of Impunity,” to the United Nations (UN). The report stated:

In the war, all major factions have repeatedly committed serious violations of international law, including killings, indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling, direct attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape, persecution on the basis of religion, and the use of antipersonnel landmines. Most of the recent violations, especially summary executions and indiscriminate aerial bombardment, have been by the Taliban, while the United Front has failed to hold its commanders accountable for past abuses.1

The report asks the UN to impose sanctions on Pakistan, Iran, and Russia in an effort to stem their practices of providing military support to warring factions.

In October 2001, as the United States began bombing Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan as part of its war on terrorism, even more Afghan civilians, tens of thousands, are deciding that they too want to leave the country, only to find that the borders are closed. Many of these people have no food or shelter. The United Front, which is supported by the United States, prepared for a possible assault against the Taliban. It is not clear how the Afghan people will fare in, or the rest of the world will respond to, this next chapter in the tragic recent history of Afghanistan. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT8 FORGING A NEW AFGHANISTAN By Steven S Lapham (published early 2002) An Interim Government On December 22, 2001, an interim government, led by Hamid Karzai, officially became the government of Afghanistan. A 30- member executive council will rule the country for the next six months. Some members of the council will serve as ministers. In mid-2002, a loya jirga, a traditional grand council with hundreds of representatives, will meet to establish a more structured transitional government. Within two years, it is hoped that a new constitution will be drafted and elections held. That’s the plan—but to succeed, ethnically diverse well-armed militia must work together and billions of dollars in foreign aid must be obtained. The UN-sponsored conference that created the interim government aimed for a balance of ethnic and political groups. Nineteen of the filled government posts go to representatives of the ethnic groups united under the United Front (also known as the Northern Alliance): Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmenis, and Tajiks, the last being the most heavily represented, with eight posts. Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group, located in southern Afghanistan, hold eleven posts (including the chair). Some of the ethnic and political leaders who will likely play key roles in the challenging process of rehabilitating a nation are briefly described below. Interim Leaders and their Posts Hamid Karzai, head of the interim government, is a leader among the Pashtun—the ethnic group to which most of the Taliban belong, and from which most of Afghanistan’s national leaders in modern times have come. Karzai is the 43-year-old son of a prominent Afghan politician (his father was assassinated in 1999 while living in exile in Pakistan). Karzai is considered a political moderate and favors democracy and women’s rights. He served as deputy foreign minister of Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1992 and speaks fluent English. In 1994, Karzai worked with the Taliban when they first restored order in the face of feuding warlords, but he soon severed ties as Taliban rule turned brutal. In 2001, Karzai and his militia, aided by U.S. airstrikes, was battling the Taliban near Kandahar, when representatives from Afghanistan’s many factions (meeting in Germany) selected him to lead the interim government. Karzai has asked the United States not to detach itself from Afghanistan as it did in 1989 after the Soviet occupation ended. Afghanistan could prove to be “a trusted friend and ally” in the future. He has also recently said, with regard to feuding ethnic groups, “The gun has to stop ruling the country.” Karzai has awarded three key ministerial positions (defense, foreign, and interior) to ethnic Tajiks: to Mohammed Fahim, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, and Yonus Qanooni, respectively—which has caused some leaders of his own and other ethnic groups to complain. In another decision that is controversial among Afghans, he chose two women as vice chairs (out of five positions at that level). Suhaila Seddiq, a Tajik, will head the Ministry of Public Health. A doctor and former general in the Afghan army (under both king and communists), her challenge is great because of Afghanistan’s dire poverty following years of war and drought. Sima Samar, of the Hazara ethnic group, will oversee women’s affairs. It could be a challenge for Karzai to hold this coalition together. For example, Hussain Anwari, a Hazara leader and the minister for agriculture in the future government, said that foreign troops would be needed in Kabul and in provinces outside the capital to prevent a new round of infighting among the victors. Defense Minister Fahim, himself a militia commander, did not want peacekeeping forces to exceed 1,000 troops or to get involved in disarming former foot soldiers. However, on December 20, the UN Security Council unanimously authorized an International Security Asisstance Force (ISAF) to operate only in Kabul and its environs. Troops are expected to come from twelve nations and to reach 4,500 by mid-January. Although the ISAF is under the day-to-day command of the British, U.S. generals have a supreme “overwatch” role. Political and Military Leaders In the capital city of Kabul, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan president and ethnic Tajik who heads the Northern Alliance, expressed displeasure with the meeting that chose Karzai to lead the interim government on December 5, but has since welcomed Karzai as the nation’s leader. Rabbani’s cooperation with the new government could be crucial to its winning the allegiance of the disparate Northern Alliance factions. Militia leaders of the Northern Alliance, who fought one another in the ruinous civil war of the 1990s, coalesced to defeat the Taliban (who were largely ethnic Pashtuns from the south). Although most of the Northern Alliance warlords have expressed basic support for Karzai’s post-war government, it is often unclear (as we go to press) how much power they will be willing to turn over to it in the regions under their control. For example, Uzbek warlord and former communist army officer Abdurrashid Dostum, who has resumed his rule of Mazar-i Sharif, threatened not to cooperate with Karzai. But Karzai appointed him deputy defense minister, which may neutralize him. The militia of Mohammad Daoud Khan controls the northern cities of Kunduz and Taloqan. The middle of the country has returned into the hands of Muhammad Karim Khalili, a leader of the Hazara ethnic group. To the west, the Tajik former-governor of Herat, Ismail Khan, has taken control of that city. His son has been appointed minister of labor and social welfare in the new government. In the south, a Pashtun leader who had cooperated with Taliban rule, Gul Agha Shirzai, resumed his post as governor of Kandahar against Karzai’s wishes, but the two worked out a compromise, which left Shirzai in charge of the city. A Pashtun leader who is head of the Ittihad-i-Islami [Islamic Unity] Party, Abdul-Rasul Sayyaf, wanted, but did not receive, the interior department, which controls domestic security. The Pashtun leader of the National Front of Afghanistan, Sayed Ahmad Gailani, says that the Cabinet does not fairly represent those who fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. The aging but popular exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah (currently living in Rome) will open the loya jirga in the summer of 2002 to set up a more established transitional government. Even that symbolic role for Pashtun royalty is opposed by some members of other ethnic groups and those with republican convictions. The ex-king is often represented at meetings by his grandson, Mustapha Zahir, or by his military representative, Rahim Wardak. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT 9 Analysis: Who are the Taleban? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/144382.stm Wednesday, 20 December, 2000

The world first became aware of the Taleban in 1994 when they were appointed by Islamabad to protect a convoy trying to open up a trade route between Pakistan and Central Asia. The group - comprised of Afghans trained in religious schools in Pakistan along with former Islamic fighters or mujahedin - proved effective bodyguards, driving off other mujahedin groups who attacked and looted the convoy. They went on to take the nearby city of Kandahar, beginning a remarkable advance which led to their capture of the capital, Kabul, in September 1996. Anti-corruption The Taleban's popularity with many Afghans initially surprised the country's warring mujahedin factions. As ethnic Pashtuns, a large part of their support came from Afghanistan's Pashtun community, disillusioned with existing ethnic Tajik and Uzbek leaders. But it was not purely a question of ethnicity. Ordinary Afghans, weary of the prevailing lawlessness in many parts of the country, were often delighted by Taleban successes in stamping out corruption, restoring peace and allowing commerce to flourish again. Their refusal to deal with the existing warlords whose rivalries had caused so much killing and destruction also earned them respect. Islamic state The Taleban said their aim was to set up the world's most pure Islamic state, banning frivolities like television, music and cinema. Their attempts to eradicate crime have been reinforced by the introduction of Islamic law including public executions and amputations. A flurry of regulations forbidding girls from going to school and women from working quickly brought them into conflict with the international community. Such issues, along with restrictions on women's access to health care, have also caused some resentment among ordinary Afghans. Extending control The Taleban now control all but the far north of the country, which is the last stronghold of the ethnic Tajik commander Ahmed Shah Masood. With 90% of the country under their control, the Taleban have continued to press claims for international recognition. But the Afghan seat at the United Nations continues to be held by former President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The UN sanctions which have now been imposed on the country make it even less likely that the Taleban will gain that recognition. The sanctions are intended to force the Taleban to hand over the Saudi-born militant Osama Bin Laden, who is accused by the United States of plotting the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 250 people. The Taleban say that Osama Bin Laden is a guest in their country, and they will not take action against him. Afghanistan has suffered 20 years of war, and this year has brought the worst drought in decades. There is little sign that sanctions will change the Taleban's policies, or weaken their position within the country. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT10 Inside Afghanistan: Behind the veil http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1410061.stm Wednesday, 27 June, 2001

An undercover documentary film about the Taleban movement in Afghanistan has shown shocking footage of mass executions, and an insight into the oppression suffered by Afghan women. Dressed in an Afghan veil, reporter Saira Shah used a hidden camera to film life for ordinary Afghans under the Taleban. "I had to wear the burqa which looks like a great big tablecloth. It covers absolutely everything" Saira Shah told the BBC. The Channel Four crew went undercover because of restrictions on their visa, saying they were only allowed to film inanimate objects. They were helped by an underground women's group, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which runs secret clinics and schools for girls. "From the moment that I was across the border I felt the restrictions on women," said Ms Shah, a British journalist who is half Afghan. She described how the veil was so thick that it was difficult to breath, and the little crocheted grill for her eyes made it difficult to cross roads. If she tripped and showed her face or ankles, she risked arrest. The woman next to her in the car was violently car sick, but was still not allowed to take her head out of her veil. "I suddenly wasn't an objective reporter anymore; I was someone actually participating in this, I was actually being subjected to the same restrictions," she said. Female resistance In disguise, Ms Shah was able to gain unique access to women's lives, and record the horrendous conditions in which they live. "The first thing you notice when you come into Kabul is the ghost-like figures in their blue shroud-like burqas, begging in the streets," she told the BBC. In Kabul alone, she said, there are over 40,000 widows as a result of the Afghan Civil War. Because the Taleban forbid women from working, they are forced into begging - and sometimes prostitution - in order to support themselves and their families. But the film, Behind the veil, also documents the resistance of some women. Members of the opposition group, RAWA, risk their lives to run secret schools for girls, giving them educational opportunities they would otherwise be denied. Some women also set up underground beauty parlours in their apartments. Even wearing nail varnish is a crime in Afghanistan. "You can make a woman wear a veil, but this is our way of showing they haven't crushed our spirit," said a woman in the beauty parlour. Executions The crew also acquired secretly-filmed footage of a public execution in a football stadium financed by the West. The footage shows a veiled woman dragged to the centre of the pitch, and forced to kneel facing the goal posts. She is shot dead to the cheers of the watching crowds. The team then ventured to the north-west corner of the country, which is still in the hands of the opposition. Earlier in the year, the Taleban briefly took control of four villages. The survivors told stories of how dozens of civilians were rounded up and executed. Footage obtained from a local wedding photographer showed the villagers burying their dead. Three girls sitting huddled in brightly coloured veils outside one house described how they saw their mother being shot dead. Their father said they have not stopped crying for weeks. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT11

The Strategy in Afghanistan and Recent Reports Excerpt from Congressional Hearing, The Strategy in Afghanistan and Recent Reports by the Afghanistan Study Group and the Atlantic Council of the United States: Statement of Hon. Richard A Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs

[Afghanistan] is a subject of vital national interest to all of us. I think it’s also good to keep in mind the opportunities of creating a stable, peaceful, strategic hub in Afghanistan for Central and South Asia and also the opportunity to see to the welfare of some 30 million people in Afghanistan. …

We’re doing this task. … The focus is, increasingly, on the people of Afghanistan. They’ve seen too much fighting, and, frankly, too little benefit from government. That’s the situation we’re trying to change. I think to stabilize Afghanistan as a peaceful nation, we need to provide those people with security, with justice, with economic opportunity, and with good governance. …

We’ve seen, now, more and more police, more and more military available to the Afghan population to provide them with security. As you travel around Afghanistan … you see the green police trucks that we’ve provided with our supplemental funding from last year, new policemen out on the streets, new trucks out on the street. We know the numbers are still low, the quality is still not what it should be, but they’re getting out there, and they’re more and more visibly providing security for the population.

You do see economic growth. … [Y]ou see different products being sold; you see Internet cafes starting up; you see oranges in the market; better quality stores; people no longer selling from containers, but selling from buildings. There’s economic growth. The legitimate economic growth last year was estimated to be 13 percent, really remarkably high. There are now 4,000 kilometers of roads, versus 50 in 2002—50 kilometers of roads to 4,000. Those roads have a transforming effect. …

You see education, healthcare being delivered to the population—5 million kids in school now, versus about 900,000 in 2001. Health care now reaches 80 percent of the population. The real effect of this is that there are 85,000 babies and children every year who survive in Afghanistan who would not have survived without that service.

All those things said, all those achievements listed, you can see them have an effect in districts and provinces, where they’ve been done in a coordinated and concentrated fashion. But, we still have enormous challenges through the country as a whole.

The Strategy in Afghanistan and Recent Reports by the Afghanistan Study Group and the Atlantic Council of the United States: Hearing Before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, One Hundred Tenth Congress, Second Session, February 14, 2008. Washington: U.S. GPO , 2008. HathiTrust. Web. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT12

Excerpt from Congressional Hearing, The Afghan Elections: Who Lost What? From opening statement of Hon. Gary L. Ackerman, the chairman of the subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, Committee on Foreign Affairs, October 1, 2009

There is, of course, no such thing [as an effective Afghan government]. Yes, Afghanistan has a President. Yes, there are ministers and ministries. Yes, there are security forces. But to confuse those accessories of governance with an actual, capable effective government is to confuse Pinocchio with a real, live little boy. They might look alike, but the similarities stop there. The Afghan Government, after 8 years of international sponsorship, is a disaster. Its writ extends only as far as foreign troops can carry it. Its policemen are mostly thieves. Its troops still cannot provide security to its people. Its ministries are mostly empty, and the ones that are staffed often focus chiefly on graft. Not fighting it, but pursuing it. Much of its decision-making is non-deliberative, non-transparent, and mostly ineffective, or not intended to benefit the public at large.

What was crafted in Bonn in 2002 as a grand bargain of governance has fallen apart. The people of Afghanistan, who have endured 30 years of warfare, salted with heavy doses of drought and misfortune, and are thoroughly exhausted, but are still not supporters of the Taliban.

But neither are they fans of the system that we and our allies have been propping up. There is no strong center. There are few strong governors. There is almost no effective representation. There is little law and less justice.

Afghans are not only living in something akin to anarchy, but in a kind of conflict-saturated anarchy, and all the while, they hear of the billions-$38 billion from the United States alone—that is being poured into their desolate and desperate country. They must wonder, as I do, where has all the money gone? Not-withstanding the near complete absence of tangible or meaningful signs of success, or security, or development, we are not in year one of this conflict. We are in year eight.

The Afghan Elections: Who Lost What? Hearing Before the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, First Session, October 1, 2009. Washington: U.S. GPO , 2010. HathiTrust. Web. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT13 Excerpt from Media and Conflict: Afghanistan as a Relative Success Story

During the Taliban regime, media outlets were banned almost entirely. Only one radio station operated under strict control of the Taliban in Kabul, and it operated solely as a channel for conveying religious messages. Television and the Internet were banned altogether. Left with few alternative sources of information, the Afghan people grew accustomed to tuning in for news and information to the ad hoc radio stations operating secretly within Afghanistan or those they could pick up from abroad. Through necessity Afghanistan developed a strong radio culture over the years.

Several socioeconomic factors have contributed to the persistence of radio culture in Afghanistan even now, during the country’s reconstruction. Electricity is generally available only in larger cities and even there only in the afternoon. In addition the majority of households cannot afford a television in a country where the annual gross domestic product is $8.8 billion ($800 per capita). Despite the emergence of broadcast and cable television in Afghan cities today-—and some limited access to satellite television more remotely—television has made relatively little headway. Newspaper and magazine industries are also profoundly challenged because of difficult terrain and devastated infrastructure that effectively limit print media distribution and make consistent delivery nearly impossible. Literacy rates in Afghanistan, in the range of 29 percent for men and below 12.6 percent for women, further challenge the capacity of print media.

Local radio could play a role in bonding the citizens of Afghanistan and building social networks of trust and reciprocity in ways that the central government could not. Faced with a new reality, government lacked communication capabilities; thus it was up to radio outlets to lead citizens in this new environment. In such a socially and ethnically divided country, local media were one of the few civil-society actors that could bring together different languages, ease regional tensions, and educate without bias. International organizations rushed to help create local media outlets in Afghanistan. Local media development accelerated under the aegis of Internews, which provided support from 2002 to 2004. Official radio stations operated by the Taliban were tools of propaganda and indoctrination. The Internews project challenged the notion of radio as a tool to control the content and timing of information made available to the people. Since the fall of the Taliban, Internews has established thirty-two radio stations with an estimated reach of about 11 million listeners (approximately 37 percent of the population). These stations were diverse in their programming and content. This diversity reinforced the idea that the consumers are the citizens and they, rather than the producers of information, control what information they receive and when they receive it.

Not only did these stations exponentially increase the variety of information available to local communities, but the increased flow of information also offered a wide range of differing opinions and views. The stations mixed languages within the same programs and offered interviews and popular-culture pieces. It became common, for instance, for the local stations to air an interview in which questions were posed in Dari and responses were given in Pashtu. The practice of mixing languages underscored the need for ethnic acceptance and reconciliation in the country.

In many communities these local radio stations were the first local media. Citizens were intrigued by their novelty and became eager to play active roles in organizing and managing the stations. As a result of such participation, each local news and programming segment developed its own personality, reflecting the interests of a particular community. The variety of programs that arose throughout Afghanistan in response to local demands was unprecedented: quiz shows, drama series, poetry, geography, and special reports on a range of development topics such as women’s health and agriculture. Through syndication, communities could hear popular shows from other communities, creating shared interests and knowledge across the country. The radio stations not only served to inform the citizens about the latest news developments but also played an increasing role in community building by launching talk shows that helped people confront taboo social issues as a community.

However, issues such as Islam, ethnic tension, the role of the warlords in crime, are all subjects that journalists must approach with utmost caution. The government in Kabul, under increasing pressure from the resurrected Taliban in some parts of the country, does not hesitate to intervene and prevent media outlets from broadcasting stories. Journalists have been detained and intimidated by the authorities because of stories they have covered and challenges they have made to the authorities in Kabul.

Bajraktari, Yll, and Christina Parajon. Media and Conflict: Afghanistan as a Relative Success Story. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2008. HathiTrust. Web. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT14

Excerpt from Congressional Hearing, U.S. Promotion of the Afghan Economy: Impediments and Opportunities from the opening statement of Hon. John F. Tierney, chairman of the subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs on July 14, 2009

After the fall of the Taliban and the arrival of the United States and NATO, there has been modest economic gain. Afghanistan has experienced rapid growth on the strength of the international donor community. …

Today, after almost 10 years, and $37 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds, Afghanistan is still one of the five poorest countries in the world. Transparency International rates Afghanistan as one of most corrupt countries in the world, 176 out of 180. … [A]fter a year in operation [in Afghanistan], some of the companies that we have funded have been able to increase their employment by as much as 50 percent; they have increased their wages by as much as 30 percent, and they have taken what are largely unskilled employees and trained them. … We have invested in several companies in the agribusiness sector. We’ve got a licorice root and extract processor that is exporting to China. Dried fruit and nuts that were manually being processed and sorted, now we’ve helped them acquire production equipment, so they’ve got a processing line. Their daily production is 20 times what it was, their gross sales are up 400 percent. …

We’ve got two companies that are producing construction inputs in-country. So instead of importing circuit panel boxes and metal pipe, they are being fabricated locally in Afghanistan, going into construction projects, so that more value again is being created in the country. The overall cost of the construction is going down, you’re getting training in terms of the workers, and you’re seeing better prices overall, in terms of the projects that are being built.

We have a renewable energy company that’s quite interesting. They are producing wind and solar panels; and they have a new, unique design that is being deployed for the Afghan police in their border posts. They are doing it on a pilot basis now. They’ve got five under way. If that’s successful in replacing diesel generators, we could see in the future that this company will be able to expand to 70 or 80 additional posts. We have a technology and Internet service provider that’s providing cheaper, more reliable access to the Internet, outreaching to schools, hospitals, government, [and] military … institutions that will make good use of it.

U.S. Promotion of the Afghan Economy: Impediments and Opportunities: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, First Session, July 14, 2009. Washington: U.S. GPO, 2010. HathiTrust. Web. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT15

Excerpt from Congressional Hearing, Afghanistan: Progress Report from statement made by William D. Delahunt, Representative from Massachusetts and member of the subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on International Relations, March 9, 2006

It was clear that we have considerable challenges ahead of us. I think there was uniform opinion among the panelists that we are at a crossroads now, and a crossroads that will either allow Afghanistan to revert to a failed state, which would bring us back to the same conditions that existed prior to 9/11—or we can choose to again work in a multilateral fashion to secure improvement, with a recognition that it will take a long term, sustained commitment on the part of this Administration, succeeding Administrations, and this Congress, as well as future Congresses. In the testimony of one of the panelists, [the panelist] makes the observation that some Afghan officials say the world thus far has put Afghanistan on life support, rather than investing in a cure. He suggested that we tally up the current conditions. Let me read some of them into the record, because these are our challenges: “An ever more deadly insurgency, with sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan, where leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban have found refuge. …”

We have to address with the Pakistani Government that tragic reality.

“ … a corrupt and ineffective Administration, without resources, and a potentially dysfunctional Parliament; levels of poverty, hunger, ill-health, illiteracy, and gender inequality, that puts Afghanistan near the bottom of every global ranking.”

“Levels of aid that have only recently expanded above a fraction of that accorded to other post-conflict countries. An economy, an Administration, heavily influenced by drug traffickers.”

Afghanistan: Progress Report: Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on the Middle East and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, One Hundred Ninth Congress, Second Session, March 9, 2006.Washington: U.S. GPO, 2006. HathiTrust. Web. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT16 President Bush Addresses the Nation (excerpts) Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001

Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. … On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war, but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning.

Americans have known surprise attacks, but never before on thousands of civilians.

All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.

Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, ``Who attacked our country?''

The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda. They are some of the murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and responsible for bombing the USS Cole.

Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money, its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.

The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.

The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans and make no distinctions among military and civilians, including women and children.

This group and its leader, a person named Osama bin Laden, are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries.

They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction.

The leadership of Al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan we see Al Qaeda's vision for the world. Afghanistan's people have been brutalized, many are starving and many have fled.

Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.

The United States respects the people of Afghanistan--after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid--but we condemn the Taliban regime.

It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists.

By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban.

Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al Quaeda who hide in your land.

Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate authorities.

Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate.

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.

The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.

Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

Americans are asking ``Why do they hate us?''

They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa.

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way. … We have seen their kind before. They're the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

Americans are asking, "How will we fight and win this war?''

We will direct every resource at our command--every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war--to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network.

Now, this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success.

We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.

And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. Our nation has been put on notice, we're not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans. … And tonight a few miles from the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military: Be ready. I have called the armed forces to alert, and there is a reason.

The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.

This is not, however, just America's fight. And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.

We ask every nation to join us. We will ask and we will need the help of police forces, intelligence service and banking systems around the world. The United States is grateful that many nations and many international organizations have already responded with sympathy and with support-- nations from Latin America to Asia to Africa to Europe to the Islamic world.

Perhaps the NATO charter reflects best the attitude of the world: An attack on one is an attack on all. The civilized world is rallying to America's side.

They understand that if this terror goes unpunished, their own cities, their own citizens may be next. Terror unanswered can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments.

And you know what? We're not going to allow it. … We're in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith. … The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

Fellow citizens, we'll meet violence with patient justice, assured of the rightness of our cause and confident of the victories to come.

In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom and may he watch over the United States of America. Thank you. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT 17

Now We All Agree the Afghan War Was Not Worth Fighting By Hamilton Nolan 4/12/12

For the first time since we invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, a majority of Republicans say that the war was not worth fighting. Even the superpatriots, the military do-or-die-ers, the America Firsters, the my-country-right-or-wrong crowd, have come to the conclusion that this war should never have happened. They're right.

At this point, more than a decade on from the events that inspired us to invade Afghanistan in the first place, the burning sense of rage and desire for retribution and need to just do something have all faded away. We are more clear-eyed now. For almost every American that died in the Twin Towers, another American soldier has been killed in Afghanistan. Fifteen thousand more have been wounded. And tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded in the fighting as well.

And was it worth it? No. It was not worth it. It was clearly not worth it. No rational person could say it was worth it. September 11 was a horrible tragedy. Our response to it, starting with a decade-long war in a nation that Americans neither know nor care about, was a tragedy as well. We have poured our blood and treasure into a desolate, poverty- stricken and already war-torn country halfway across the world—not to improve it, but to further destroy it. For this, we have gained nothing that we could not have gained with a much more limited and rational response.

You don't send in the U.S. Army to invade an entire nation to find one man. You don't send in the U.S. Army to invade an entire nation to deal with one numerically small terrorist group, for the same reason that you don't use an M1 Abrams tank to tackle your household mouse infestation. You don't cause tens of thousands of violent deaths to poor civilians to prove some vague notion of national toughness on a world stage. It is insane. The urge to lash out in a muscular fashion after 9/11 is perfectly understandable. But it is not rational, or ethical, or even, it is now clear, to our own national benefit. Such impulses are the reason that we need strong leaders. To prevent us from doing things like invading Afghanistan.

In the end, it turns out, America's entire post-9/11 response was exactly wrong. The much-derided idea of treating the terrorist attacks as a crime would have been the rational thing to do. Doing our best to launch a world war was not to our benefit. It was not to the benefit of geopolitical stability. It was not to the benefit of the kids who entered the military, full of patriotism and love for their country, and ended up dead halfway around the world. It was not to the benefit of Afghan civilians, people who had nothing to do with any of this, who ended up bombed, shot, maimed, driven from their homes, victims of circumstance. We can fight, if we like, another decade in Afghanistan. When we leave, Afghanistan will still belong to the people who live there, and they, not us, will determine its future. Our stated goal took far too long to accomplish. Now that it's been accomplished, we're still in Afghanistan. And we'll be there for years more.

A small group of bad men attacked targets in America. For this, we invaded an entire nation. Where they weren't. Let's not do that again. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT18 Afghanistan: Ending a Failed Military Strategy: A Briefing Paper by September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows (EXCERPTS)

RECOMMENDATION: Go to http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/downloads/Afghanistanprimerjan09final.pdf to read about these in more detail.

Ten Reasons to End the Occupation of Afghanistan 1. US and NATO occupation creates civilian casualties, angering Afghans. 2. Military occupation has hampered humanitarian aid and reconstruction efforts. 3. Afghan women continue to face violence and oppression under the occupation. 4. US policy has empowered warlords, drug lords and the Taliban. 5. The occupation contributes to violence and destabilization for ordinary Afghans, including refugees. 6. NATO allies and military leaders are questioning the occupation. 7. US troop casualties in Afghanistan are on the rise. 8. Afghans are calling for a negotiated end to the war. 9. Military escalation will only increase the violence, and potentially lead to a wider war involving nuclear-armed Pakistan. 10. Military occupation of Afghanistan does not curb terrorism

From http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf 2,193 US deaths in Afghanistan so far. 18, 429 wounded in action. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT19 US Mayors to Obama: Bring War Money Home! Ban the Bomb! By Gar Smith Wednesday June 22, 2011

'That we would build bridges in Baghdad and Kandahar and not Baltimore and Kansas City, absolutely boggles the mind.' -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

BALTIMORE (At its annual meeting in Baltimore on June 20, 2011, the US Conference of Mayors passed two historic resolutions. One called on Washington to end of our current wars to "bring … war dollars home to meet vital human needs." The other, introduced by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on behalf of Mayors for Peace, called for nuclear disarmament, which would free billions of dollars to address unemployment in America’s cities.

The last time the USCM issued an “anti-war” proclamation was during the height of the Vietnam War. The resolution came at a critical time — with President Obama preparing to announce the scale and pace of his promised withdrawal from Afghanistan, the House of Representatives considering amendments to block funding for the Libya War, and Dennis Kucinich and nine other congress members filing suit against the White House in an attempt to challenge to America’s costly military adventures.

It was in 1971, that the conference passed a resolution demanding an end to the war in Vietnam. The resolution was introduced by San Leandro Jack Maltester. Although the resolution was vigorously opposed by Richard Nixon and many USCM delegates, it ultimately passed with the backing of the mayors of Chicago and New York. The new anti-war resolution, submitted by mayor Kitty Piercy of Eugene, Oregon, calls for redirecting $126 billion in military spending to domestic needs. "Our city has had to cut $20 million from our budget in the last three years," Piercy explained. "Our children and families long for, and call for, a real investment in the future of America.”

The USCM may prove the Pentagon’s biggest nemesis. In addition to calling for an end to US wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, the USCM (whose mayors represent cities with populations over 30,000) also passed a resolution (sponsored by Mayors for Peace) that instructs President Obama to join leaders of the other nuclear weapon states to implement the United Nations Secretary-General's 5-point plan to negotiate the elimination of nuclear weapons, by the year 2020. The resolution further calls on Congress to terminate funding for modernization of the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons complex and nuclear weapons systems. (Simply cutting nuclear weapons spending to pre-Cold War Levels, would free billions of dollars that could be redirected to meet the urgent needs of cities.)

The nuclear disarmament resolution was introduced in the final plenary by International Affairs Committee Chair, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. Unlike the “Bring Our War Dollars Home” the Mayors for Peace resolution was adopted without debate. While the anti-war resolution was subject to vote only after surviving a contentious struggle to defeat it, the nuclear weapons resolution passed unanimously.

“No one spoke against the resolution or actually voted against it,” said Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation and the North American Coordinator of Mayors for Peace but the antinuclear resolution now puts the mayors squarely in opposition with President Obama, "who has maintained, and even modernized, nuclear weaponry." Cabasso praised Oakland Mayor Mayor Jean Quan, a member of Mayors for Peace, who noted at the beginning of the session that “the committee has a long history of taking up the issue of nuclear disarmament.”

The Mayors for Peace resolution was boosted by the appearance of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who addressed the Baltimore audience and praised Mayors for Peace, which had gathered more than a million signatures for its “Cities Are Not Targets” campaign. Ban observed that "the road to peace and progress runs through the worlds cities and towns." His words were greeted with a standing ovation. AFGHANISTAN DOCUMENT20 The Other War by Barry Bearak and David Rohde in Kabul The New York Times Upfront, Vol. 140, December 10, 2007

Much of the news from Afghanistan in recent months has been grim: Suicide attacks and roadside bombings are up dramatically, and farmers are growing record crops of poppies that will be processed into opium and heroin. Young girls have been shot leaving school as part of a brutal campaign of intimidation that has shut down almost 100 schools, and 107 American troops have been killed so far in 2007.

While the war in Iraq gets most of America's attention, the situation in Afghanistan—where 26,000 U.S. troops are fighting what many say is the real epicenter of the war on terrorism—is deteriorating.

It's been six years since a U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban, the radical Muslim regime that controlled Afghanistan. The Taliban had given sanctuary to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and its refusal to hand him over after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America prompted the U.S. and its allies to invade in November 2001. Bin Laden has still not been captured, but within a month the Taliban was defeated, and U.S. troops have remained to help stabilize the country. There are now also 35,000 NATO troops there.

Crossroads of Asia

Led by the country's first democratically elected President, Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan has seen significant improvements in health care, education, and the economy, as well as in the quality of life in cities. It has also adopted a new constitution and elected a parliament.

But in the last year, there have been a number of signs that Afghanistan is losing ground. When President Karzai, on a recent trip to the U.S., said that security in Afghanistan had "definitely deteriorated," a former national security official called it "a very diplomatic understatement."

Located in a strategic spot between Pakistan, Iran, and the remnants of the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan has been invaded and fought over, but never really conquered, for centuries. Its recent decades of turmoil began in 1979, when the Soviet Union occupied the country for 10 years, sparking a fierce resistance movement of Islamic fighters known as the mujahedeen. The U.S. helped fund the mujahedeen because the Soviet Union was an adversary of the U.S.

Virtual Police State

When the Soviets gave up and withdrew in 1989, the country descended into civil war. The Taliban took control in 1996, and began a brutal five-year reign in which they ruled Afghanistan as a virtual police state in accordance with their radically rigid interpretation of Islam.

Women were forbidden to work—a particularly devastting prohibition in a country where decades of war had left vast numbers of widows. Girls were forbidden to attend school. Music and TV were banned.

The Taliban also let Bin Laden, who is from Saudi Arabia, set up terrorist training camps in the mountains along the rugged border with Pakistan. From there, he planned the 9/11 attacks.

After the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, the prospects for Afghanistan were promising. U.S. and allied forces remained to provide security for a massive international reconstruction effort. President Bush promised Afghanistan its own "Marshall Plan," referring to the massive U.S. aid program that rebuilt Western Europe after World War II.

But soon, the U.S. began to turn its attention to Iraq. Believing that the Taliban was so decimated that they no longer posed a threat, elite military units and other specialists were moved to Iraq, where war began in March 2003.

As the U.S. became increasingly distracted by Iraq, the Taliban who had found refuge across the border in Pakistan began to regroup. In the spring of 2006, hundreds of Taliban swarmed into the south, setting up checkpoints, assassinating officials, and burning schools. Suicide bombings quintupled. Roadside bombings doubled.

'A Duct-Tape Approach' In 2006, 191 American and NATO troops died, a 20 percent increase over 2005. For the first time, it became nearly as dangerous, statistically, to serve as an American in Afghanistan as in Iraq. This year, Taliban fighters have increasingly forced U.S. and NATO troops back into battles.

Meanwhile, the reconstruction of Afghanistan has stalled. In the last six years, the U.S. has spent an average of $3.4 billion a year reconstructing Afghanistan, less than half of what it has spent in Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service.

"It was state-building on the cheap, it was a duct-tape approach," says Said T. Jawad, Afghanistan's current ambassador to the U.S.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice disagrees: "I don't buy the argument that Afghanistan was starved of resources."

Karzai's government has little control over the country beyond the capital, Kabul. And the growing instability is now threatening the social and economic progress made in the first years after the Taliban's defeat. That early progress was significant considering how backward and oppressive life in Afghanistan had been under Taliban rule.

In their current campaign of intimidation, the Taliban have been using shootings, beheadings, bombings, and burnings aimed at the country's schools.

The Afghan Ministry of Education says there have been more than 400 attacks on schools since August 2006. In one particularly gruesome incident, six girls were shot—two fatally—as they left school in Logar province one afternoon in June.

The Ministry says 6.2 million children are now in school, or about half the school-age population. A third of these students are girls— up from zero under the Taliban. But in parts of the southern provinces where the Taliban are most aggressively combating American and NATO troops, education has virtually come to a halt.

Also worrisome is the soaring production of opium poppies. According to the United Nations, Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year. Last year it produced 6,700 tons of opium poppies 㭘 percent of the world's supply.

Opium is a major source of financing for the Taliban, who gain public support by protecting farmers' fields from eradication, according to American officials, and get a cut of the trade from the drug traffickers they protect.

Despite these setbacks, there is good news in Afghanistan as well. Roads are being built, land mines are being cleared, and four million Afghan refugees have returned home. Entrepreneurs are starting new carpet-weaving businesses, wheat production is surging, new schools are being built, and some mud-brick homes are sporting solar panels.

In a mundane but telling sign that a semblance of normalcy is returning to some parts of the country, many Afghans have become avid TV fans, tuning in to everything from talk shows to soap operas, and even an Afghan version of American Idol.

$9 Billion This Year

This year, the U.S. plans to provide $9 billion in aid to Afghanistan—twice the amount of any year since 2001. Whether that renewed attention on Afghanistan is enough to get the nation back on track remains to be seen.

General James L. Jones, a retired American officer and a former NATO supreme commander, says Iraq caused the U.S. to "take its eye off the ball" in Afghanistan. He warns that the consequences of failure "are just as serious in Afghanistan as they are in Iraq."

"Symbolically, it's more the epicenter of terrorism than Iraq," he says. "If we don't succeed in Afghanistan, you're sending a very clear message to the terrorist organizations that the U.S., the U.N., and the 37 countries with troops on the ground can be defeated."