US Media On The Ball In Afghanistan

Team America Cleaning Up the Last Talibs in 2005

From the Washington Post 13 March, 2005.

'The conventional wisdom, however, is about a year past its sell-by date. Karzai is a genuinely popular leader who won 55 percent of the votes in Afghanistan's October presidential contest, against more than a dozen other candidates in a reasonably fair election -- arguably a greater margin of victory than President Bush won against just one main challenger in 2004. The Taliban, the Islamist fanatics who ruled the country and harbored Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, are spent as an effective military force, which their inability to disrupt the Afghan elections clearly demonstrated. Neighboring Pakistan suffers far more from political violence than Afghanistan. And Karzai has proven a deft politician who has edged out the warlords or "promoted" them to politically irrelevant positions. (Take Karzai's former defense minister, Marshal Mohammed Fahim, who is now without a job; the potentate of western Afghanistan, Ismail Khan, has lost the key governorship of Herat and received instead the consolation prize of the Ministry of Energy.)' More here if you're not sick of similar drivel from the US newsfeeds for the last 11 years.