18 August 2006

Afghan Miscellany

I've posted pretty much nothing but Fly Reports this week, and for that I apologize. In order to make up for it, here are a few stories relating to Afghanistan.

I eventually plan to do a bigger post that will include this story. It discusses the resurgence of the Taliban, and claims not only that they've reached a point where they're better equipped than the Afghan National Army, but that they're also operating in increasingly larger units. The article's worth having a look at, although it's worth pointing out that even with their supposed advantages, the Taliban is still getting its ass handed to it on a regular basis whenever there's any sort of engagement between them and Coalition forces.

Last week, the BBC was running an article about Pakistan's Taliban leader, Haji Omar. The guy seems like a bit of a character, and although he sounds a bit less rabid than Mullah Mohammed Omar, he still sounds very dedicated to waging jihad against the Coalition.

Also, I was looking for something completely unrelated, and ended up finding an old article (about two years old) about Kabul's Colonel Kurtz. It's a well-known fact that numerous bounty hunters are cruising around Afghanistan trying to find bin Laden and win $25 million for their trouble. Apparently, not all of these private security personnel are all they're cracked up to be. I don't know whether the information in the article is still current (the article's twenty-five months old), but it's still worth having a look at. Americans often look at the world and think that every country is either chaos or utopia, failing to recognize that there are shades of grey, and that sometimes both states can exist within the same nation.

Right then, time to get ready for work. It's the weekend, so I'll try to post a news update with some of the stories that have fallen through the cracks lately.

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