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From the Los Angeles Times
Where Taliban Rules Again
The fundamentalist fighters have regrouped to spread fear in one south Afghan province mired in poverty and the drug trade.
By Paul Watson
Times Staff Writer

June 24, 2006

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — In the sun-blasted badlands of Helmand province, the Taliban insurgency has grown so strong that frightened Afghan police turn to sympathetic drug lords' militias for protection.

When police escorted civilians into the desert village of Changer, half an hour's drive from Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, the convoy of SUVs stopped at an abandoned Soviet-era military base that is now a drug lord's outpost.

A few police officers armed with old Kalashnikovs fanned out to guard the perimeter, while an edgy officer roused the militia fighters resting in the shade of a tree. He explained his concerns, asked for backup, and six young men armed with old AK-47 assault rifles and a battered grenade launcher joined the entourage in a rusting Toyota Corolla.

There were no foreign troops for miles around. Villagers said the Taliban controlled the area, and most of the province outside Lashkar Gah.

More than four years after U.S.-led forces helped push the fundamentalist Taliban regime out of power, the Islamic militia's fighters have regrouped and staked out a base of operations in Helmand, where the main cash crop is opium poppies for the heroin trade, and where few foreigners dare venture beyond the provincial capital.

A tangled web composed of drug lords, insurgents and the many inhabitants living in poverty has made Helmand the Afghan war's key battleground.

The U.S.-led coalition says it has launched a fresh offensive against insurgents across four southern provinces, including Helmand. But the struggle to win back parts of Afghanistan's south is proving difficult....

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Jun 23, 10:18 PM EDT

Karzai: War Not Getting at Terrorism Cause

By TINI TRAN
Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- One of America's closest allies says the war on terrorism fails to address its root causes.

Experts agreed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, saying Friday the major military offensive against the Taliban will not fix Afghanistan's larger crises - a lack of reconstruction and jobs, a booming drug trade, and a weak government.

"You won't win unless you can convince people that progress is being made," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department analyst now a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

"One of the things we recognize is that we have failed to improve on the development side, especially in the south. In the areas with the greatest need, we have not gotten the reconstruction that was necessary."

On Thursday, a clearly frustrated Karzai criticized the coalition's anti-terror campaign, deploring the deaths of hundreds of Afghans and appealing for more help for his government. The coalition has killed hundreds, mostly Taliban militants, since May.

Karzai spokesman Khaleeq Ahmad said Friday the president wanted the international community to reevaluate its approach....

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