By Dave Anderson
Just a quick something before I have to run. Here is the International Council on Security and Development map on where they estimate levels of Taliban and other anti-Karzai government militant group activities. I'll include a quick description of the data as well as their methodology.
The Taliban now have a permanent presence in 80% of Afghanistan, up from 72% in November 2008, according to a new map released today by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS). According to ICOS, another 17% of Afghanistan is seeing �substantial� Taliban activity. Taken together, these figures show that the Taliban has a significant presence in virtually all of Afghanistan.
�Despite the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan, the return, the spread and the advance of the Taliban is now without question� said Norine MacDonald QC, President and Lead Field Researcher for ICOS....Data detailing the presence of the Taliban in Afghanistan was gathered from daily insurgent activity reports between January and September 2009. ICOS believes that the level of incidents recorded by this methodology is conservative, as it is based on public third-party reports, and not all incidents are made public.
I came across this first-person travel account about the time your post appeared.
ReplyDelete"Coming Anarchy" is a group blog I have followed for some time made up of a small group of academic types. "In real life, �Curzon� is a US citizen from the East Coast who has been a financial analyst, freelance translator, and university professor; he is currently on assignment in Tokyo."
"As an adherent of the Robert D. Kaplan school of travel, I�m a big fan of overland travel. Given the choice and when time allows, I�d much rather travel by boat, train, or bicycle. Flying is convenient�but it rushes you to your destination without letting you appreciate the distance. But like any form of mass public transportation, it can present opportunities to meet people ... Flying from Tokyo to Dubai, I introduced myself to my seatmate and we began chatting. It turns out he was an Afghan national living between Japan and the UAE, and once we spoke a bit and he saw that I knew something about Afghanistan, or at least enough to have a conversation about his country, we spent several hours chatting on world affairs and his life story on our many hours together."
Their conversation revealed his seatmate's unfortunate, traumatic history, and this information about the Taliban:
"He did not have much to say on the future of Afghanistan except that it was bleak. He visited once after the fall of the Taliban and said he would not go back again, and the country will remain poor and chaotic for the next 100 years. The problems? One is education. People have no education and can�t read and are not literate. The other is the different ethnicities. What I took from several minutes of talking on the topic was that the problem was not hatred between ethnic groups, but the loyalty that was exclusive to ethnic groups and clans.
"He also said the Taliban were all foreigners. To paraphrase him, they were Russians, Americans, Indians, and especially Arabs who grew their beards and tried to dress like locals, but who were just foreigners with guns who were the guests of the Taliban bosses.
"Speaking about his family, he reported that he had relatives in his extended family across the world in Los Angeles, London, Japan, Sydney, and New Zealand, many of whom are naturalized citizens...."
Here is the link if you want to read the rest.
http://cominganarchy.com/2009/09/09/recalling-an-afghanistan-nightmare/
The idea that the Taliban were "all foreigners" struck me as significant. It may or not be true, but in the mind of this one man that perception was part of what shaped his view of what we call "Afghanistan."