How We Lost the War We Won-A journey into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

[babylonsister]

Long Rolling Stone article that comes highly recommended by Brandon Friedman of VetVoice:

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2065

Embedding with the Taliban
by: Brandon Friedman
Tue Oct 21, 2008 at 11:45:06 AM EDT

I'd be willing to bet that most military readers, both here and elsewhere, would be uncomfortable--to say the least--with an American who embeds with the Taliban in southeastern Afghanistan. I think I'm about as anti-Taliban as one could get, and when I first heard about the recent foray of journalist Nir Rosen into the world of the Afghan insurgency, I was ready to pass judgment.

But I gotta say, if you're against doing what he did, after you read his piece in the newest issue of Rolling Stone, you might change your mind. There's a ton of value in this.

If it weren't for crazy people like Nir, we'd know a lot less about stuff.

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How We Lost the War We Won
A journey into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

NIR ROSEN
Posted Oct 30, 2008 9:19 AM


The highway that leads south out of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, passes through a craggy range of arid, sand-colored mountains with sharp, stony peaks. Poplar trees and green fields line the road. Nomadic Kuchi women draped in colorful scarves tend to camels as small boys herd sheep. The hillsides are dotted with cemeteries: rough-hewn tombstones tilting at haphazard angles, multicolored flags flying above them. There is nothing to indicate that the terrain we are about to enter is one of the world's deadliest war zones. On the outskirts of the capital we are stopped at a routine checkpoint manned by the Afghan National Army. The wary soldiers single me out, suspicious of my foreign accent. My companions, two Afghan men named Shafiq and Ibrahim, convince the soldiers that I am only a journalist. Ibrahim, a thin man with a wispy beard tapered beneath his chin, comes across like an Afghan version of Bob Marley, easygoing and quick to smile. He jokes with the soldiers in Dari, the Farsi dialect spoken throughout Afghanistan, assuring them that everything is OK.

As we drive away, Ibrahim laughs. The soldiers, he explains, thought I was a suicide bomber. Ibrahim did not bother to tell them that he and Shafiq are midlevel Taliban commanders, escorting me deep into Ghazni, a province largely controlled by the spreading insurgency that now dominates much of the country.

Until recently, Ghazni, like much of central Afghanistan, was considered reasonably safe. But now the province, located 100 miles south of the capital, has fallen to the Taliban. Foreigners who venture to Ghazni often wind up kidnapped or killed. In defiance of the central government, the Taliban governor in the province issues separate ID cards and passports for the Taliban regime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Farmers increasingly turn to the Taliban, not the American-backed authorities, for adjudication of land disputes.

By the time we reach the town of Salar, only 50 miles south of Kabul, we have already passed five tractor-trailers from military convoys that have been destroyed by the Taliban. The highway, newly rebuilt courtesy of $250 million, most of it from U.S. taxpayers, is pocked by immense craters, most of them caused by roadside bombs planted by Taliban fighters. As in Iraq, these improvised explosive devices are a key to the battle against the American invaders and their allies in the Afghan security forces, part of a haphazard but lethal campaign against coalition troops and the long, snaking convoys that provide logistical support.

We drive by a tractor-trailer still smoldering from an attack the day before, and the charred, skeletal remains of a truck from an attack a month earlier. At a gas station, a crowd of Afghans has gathered. Smoke rises from the road several hundred yards ahead.

"Jang," says Ibrahim, who is sitting in the front passenger seat next to Shafiq. "War. The Americans are fighting the Taliban."

more...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23612315/how_we_lost_the_war_we_won

[4lbs]

1. 60 Minutes had a somber Afghanistan piece on Sunday.

It concluded that the U.S. Soliders there are bracing for a massive assault this winter from Taliban-favoring groups operating out of Pakistan.

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. It is well worth the read, informative and written well enough to keep my interest.

.
.
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a couple of snips:

In early October, the president's plan for a surge was once again contradicted by his top advisers. American intelligence agencies drafting a classified report on the war warned that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" fueled by worsening violence and rampant corruption. Defense Secretary Robert Gates also admitted to Congress that the Pentagon is stretched so thin in Iraq, it will be unable to meet even a modest request for 10,000 more troops in Afghanistan until next spring at the earliest.

But those closest to the chaos in Afghanistan say that throwing more soldiers into combat won't help. "More troops are not the answer," a senior United Nations official in Kabul tells me. "You will not make more babies by having many guys screw the same woman."

/snip/

But the Taliban have their own faith, and so far, they are winning. On my last day in Kabul, a Western aid official reminds me of the words of a high-ranking Taliban leader, who recently explained why the United States will never prevail in Afghanistan.

"You Westerners have your watches," the leader observed. "But we Taliban have time."

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recommended

[alarimer]

3. Afghanistan is a losing proposition.

Unless of course we WANT to end up like the Soviets.

There must be some non-military solutions to this and I sure hope Obama intends on using them instead of just sending in more troops. It will bog us down and make Iraq look like a cakewalk in comparison.

[babylonsister]

4. I'm in total agreement; this is a no-win situation and the Russians

have already proved that.