What's going on in Afghanistan?

[Torrere]

I had hardly heard a word about Afghanistan in the year since this Iraq circus began. Last I heard, interm President Hared Karzai was starting an Afghani military.

According to Google news, there is both good and bad news about Afghanistan these days. The Loya Jirga (Legislative body) has recently met, and is attempting to decide upon a constitution for Afghanistan. The Pashtun (Karzai) are pushing a strong presidency, while many Tajiks (Northern Alliance) are seeking a parliamentary system. The presidential notion seems to have the upper hand for now. One quarter of the presidential nominees are women. On the other hand, the proposed constitution has been lambasted by an international thinktank (The Crisis Group) as being detrimental to democracy.

US officials boast of the success that all of the delegates of the Loya Jirga were able to make it to Kabul without dying.

Afghani officials hope that the successful capture of Saddam Hussein will lead to the capture of notorious Taliban officials such as Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Taliban (Mullah Omar) and the Taliban Prime Minister of Afghanistan. Sightings of ObL and Omar have been reported along with border with Afghanistan. Karzai has described at least one sighting as "reliable".

On the gripping hand, the Taliban seems to be coming back from the dead. They have adopted guerilla (these days, the word is terrorist) warfare tactics, and have recently introduced suicide bombings into their repitoire. Every news source describes the Taliban as "resurgent". Heroin production, once banned by the Taliban, is now used to generate funds to fight the interim government (which is starving for cash).

The UN is threatening to pull it's agencies out of Afghanistan if the United States cannot ensure their safety. According to Independent.co.uk, the Taliban has begun systematically killing aid workers. The threat to leave is 'understood to be a last-gasp attempt to halt Afghanistan's slide'. United Nations aid workers pulled out of the Taliban southeast months ago, and most have now been pulled back to Kabul. The once-worrisome process of retreating Alliance power to the capitol is nearly complete: the nation outside of Kabul is in a state of general lawlessness.

"US military officials in Afghanistan admitted the Taliban had adopted the same devastating roadside bombing technique employed by guerrillas in Iraq, from which the UN has already mostly withdrawn. "

Southeast (Pashtun) Afghanistan is infuriated, following another bungled military operation wherein 15 children were killed by US air strikes. The United States military recently launched it's largest offensive (in terms of soldiers [2000]) aganst the Taliban, but hundreds of soldiers have returned home to the United States.