WHERE TO FROM HERE

"I wish the foreigners would do what they said they would do when they came here and help us create a better life"

Villagers Kandahar province

Now the death toll is 9/11 times two. U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next.

The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,974th to die in conflict. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania

An Associated Press count of the U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 2,696. Combined with 278 U.S. deaths in and around Afghanistan, the 9/11 toll was reached, then topped, the same day. The Pentagon reported Friday the latest death from Iraq, an as-yet unidentified Soldier killed a day earlier after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad.

Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.

Know the line has held, your job is done.

Rest easy, sleep well.

Others have taken up where you fell,

and the line has held.

Peace, peace, and farewell...

The Talaban were ousted in November 2001, a month after US-led military action against their regime and its al-Qaeda allies. Talaban leader Mullah Omar (pictured on the right) was never captured and the hardline Islamic group has since re-emerged, attacking coalition forces and election officials, killing aid workers and kidnapping foreigners.

Afghan terror leader Abu Yehia al-Libi issued a videotaped message that was broadcast today on Dubai-based Al Arabiya television urging terrorists to "attack the White House." Al-Libi also told his terrorist followers in Afghanistan to "train hard and attempt to acquire nuclear technology." Al-Libi, or Mohammad Hassan, a Libyan terrorist, escaped from a U.S. jail at Bagram Air Base in July 2005 after 3 years of incarceration.

WASHINGTON — Nearly five years after the U.S. military drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan, total victory appears as distant and remote as the long-embattled nation itself.

In fact, after several years of relative calm, the Taliban and al-Qaida have staged a dramatic comeback, adopting the insurgent tactics that have been perfected with deadly efficiency in Iraq. More than 70 suicide bombings have

killed scores of Afghan civilians this year, a 400 percent jump over 2005. Roadside bombs have more than doubled.

NATO military officials claim at least 40 percent of the attacks are launched from Taliban camps across the border in Pakistan, where both the Taliban and al-Qaida live, train and operate with apparent impunity.

Jim Miklaszewski

The American commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan says the Taleban has increased its influence in some southern areas, but he predicts that as NATO increases its forces in the country during the next few months the situation will change.

General Karl Eikenberry

Afghanistan hit by wave of suicide bombings

Canadian soldiers among 19 killed in three attacks
Taliban launches reply to Nato claims of success

A chain of suicide bombings killed 19 people, including four Canadian soldiers, across Afghanistan yesterday, in guerrilla violence bearing an increasing resemblance to the conflict in Iraq. The blasts came a day after Nato claimed it had scored a victory after killing more than 500 insurgents in two weeks of fighting in the Taliban's southern heartland.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A militant group claiming responsibility for kidnapping three foreign U.N. workers said Saturday that it will execute them unless Britain withdraws its troops from Afghanistan and two other governments stop supporting U.S. policy here.

Bloodshed continues

In the weeks preceding the coalition's handover to NATO, more than 10,000 U.S.-led troops have fanned out across southern Afghanistan, killing more than 600 suspected Taliban militants

NATO said two of its soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan on Saturday after militants ambushed the troops with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire. Three soldiers were also wounded in the battle in Kandahar
province Saturday afternoon, The nationalities of the soldiers were not released, though the majority of troops in Kandahar are from Canada.

On Friday, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed van into a NATO military patrol on a busy commercial street in Kandahar city, firing shrapnel at nearby storeowners and shoppers. One NATO soldier and eight Afghan civilians were killed.

Six Afghan policemen, died after a roadside bomb hit their convoy Friday elsewhere in eastern Afghanistan, said Gen. Anan Roufi, the police chief of Paktia province. The explosion happened in Jaji district, near the border with Pakistan.

In the southern province of Kandahar, a suicide car bomb exploded near an Afghan army convoy, injuring three soldiers, said Dawood Ahmadi, the governor's spokesman

A roadside bomb exploded outside a provincial governor's compound on Saturday — the third attack in five weeks against a provincial leader. The governor of the eastern Afghan province was not hurt but another official was killed, police said.

"For those that will fight for it....Freedom...has a flavor the protected shall never know".

U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan should be doubled to 40,000 from the approximately 20,000 U.S. troops deployed there today. These troops should be sent from Iraq to Afghanistan under NATO leadership as reinforcements to complete the work left unfinished by the Bush administration.

World underestimated resurgent Taliban, NATO says

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 29, 2006

KABUL (Reuters) - The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said on Thursday the international community had underestimated a resurgent Taliban, partly because the war in Iraq diverted attention and resources.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since 2001, but the NATO commander, Lieutenant General David Richards, said he was optimistic the insurgency could be dealt with. "There's no doubt there is a resurgent Taliban problem," Richards told the BBC in an interview.

The commander of U.S.-led forces, General Karl Eikenberry, said on Wednesday Taliban forces had grown stronger and more sophisticated, and were directing operations from neighbouring Pakistan

"Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

Sgt. Jim Baker

Field report Conclusions

With civilians being killed on a regular basis, Afghans are angry that the majority of international aid has been spent on the military purposes rather than poverty relief. Many believe that the military missions are misguided, having lost faith in the ability of the "foreigners" to bring stability to the country. A perceived lack of respect from international military troops has fuelled Afghans’ resentment towards the international community.

International troops’ apparent unwillingness to study Afghan culture and co-operate with locals, has caused mass hatred of the "foreigners". Some believe that the ongoing fighting in Iraq and recent clashes in Lebanon are proof that the West is attempting to re-colonise the Muslim world. Many Afghans are now looking to the Taliban for leadership, declaring that they will "die fighting the foreigners".

"Things are very difficult here for us. Things were better for us during the Taliban I cannot a get job now"

Villager Kandahar Province

"We can tell that you don’t really care about Afghanistan"....Villagers

Kandahar province Afghans now believe that the international community lied to them five years ago. In 2001, the majority of Afghans enthusiastically welcomed the international community in Afghanistan as "freedom fighters" and were optimistic that their economic situation would improve, and that their poverty would be relieved.

Yet five years on, Afghans are now severely disillusioned with the international community, and describe their initial promises of stability, reconstruction and development as "lies". In particular, villagers in Kandahar districts speak of foreigners’ broken promises of aid and development, with one villager stressing "I have lost all trust in the foreigners".

An 11,500-member U.S.-led fighting coalition is in the country hunting down al Qaeda fugitives and remnants of Taliban insurgents.

Escalating violence in Iraq prompts UN aid official to call for urgent help from leaders

There are now thought to be 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) within Iraq, as well as an estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries.

"Everyone in the country has a weapon and is not afraid to use it," said Sgt. 1st Class Kevin Aker, with Triple Deuce Headquarters Company

"Terrorists try to operate in the shadows. They try to hide. But we're going to shine the light of justice on them. We list their names, we publicize their pictures, we rob them of their secrecy. Terrorism has a face, and today we expose it for the world to see."

"Democracy is just talk here. "There is no freedom. The Islamic extremists control the government."

Every checkable piece of that intelligence that has come to public notice has proven to be false or at least self-serving in the extreme.

JOHN BRADY KIESLING

Corruption and coalition failures spur Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan

BY JAMES RUPERT
Newsday Staff Correspondent

June 17, 2006, 11:06 PM EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United States and its allies have been forced to launch their biggest military operation of the war here because in the 55 months since ousting the Taliban movement from power, they neglected to establish minimal security or governance in the country's south, analysts say.

That failure has let the Taliban walk back in through an open door, say Afghan and foreign officials in Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar. Afghan officials estimate thousands of Taliban guerrillas, many recently infiltrated from Pakistan, are in the five southernmost provinces, where their attacks culminated this spring in a spasm of bombings, ambushes and assassinations against scattered government targets.

The Taliban have won much of their support by intimidating villagers or buying them off with money gained through the opium trade, said officials and residents interviewed in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city. But critically, the Taliban have been able simply to fill a political vacuum because the United States and its allies failed to do it instead.

"I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since." -

Karzai: Taliban Pose No Long-Term Threat

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taliban do not pose a long-term threat to Afghanistan's stability, President Hamid Karzai

In his latest speech on the war on terrorism, President Bush acknowledged problems in Afghanistan but predicted ultimate victory over the resurgent Taliban. He again lashed out at critics who claim the Iraq war is making the terror threat worse.

"If we are going to reconstruct Afghanistan, we have to have the resources. The problem has been that the resources have been desperately stretched by the invasion of Iraq. Instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan after 2001, the West went blundering into Iraq"

THE British commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has revealed he expects the military campaign against the Taliban to last another three to five years.

A British Army officer in Afghanistan has highlighted the desperate shortage of resources and described the efforts of the RAF in the conflict as "utterly, utterly useless"

I have no doubt that America may, in a few years, find Osama and make him pay for the death and destruction he has caused. But what concerns me is the time it may take to nab him. How many more 9/11s are we yet to see? How many more deaths are we yet to witness?

Anthony D'Souza
Mumbai

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.