Deepening insurgency threatens Afghanistan, 5 years into US-led war
DASHTAK, Afghanistan -- The village of Dashtak sits on a bumpy, washed-out specter of a road, an hour's drive off the main highway between Kabul and Afghanistan's lawless southeast.
It has 16 new wells financed by an aid agency. But some village men offer a litany of complaints: no paved roads, no running water, no electricity, and the closest health clinic is two hours away by donkey.
Their frustration boils over when talk turns to 10 villagers recently arrested on suspicion of aiding insurgents.
``I swear to you, I have not seen a single dollar bill. I do not know its size or color," said Shah Mahmood, a 55-year-old with a long white beard and stark black turban. ``We are dying from lack of food and water -- and they call us Al Qaeda or Taliban."
Five years into the US-led war in Afghanistan, the country is far from won over, or even safely on the path to stability and democracy.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in rising violence this year. Suicide bombers are targeting ordinary Afghans and Western troops. Militants are assassinating key political figures, burning down schools, and using roadside bombs to deadly effect.
The 40,000 US and NATO troops appear further away from bringing stability than they did three years ago when their number was 2 1/2 times smaller. And Osama bin Laden, whose presence here was a trigger for the US-led attack, is still at large.
That Afghanistan's future would still remain in doubt was almost unthinkable when the US-led rout of the Taliban began on Oct. 7, 2001. The military campaign that captured Kabul, the capital, in just over a month resulted in a wave of optimism across Afghanistan, a country that had known little except war for a quarter-century.
Emerging from the Taliban's repression, the nation embraced renewed freedoms. Millions of Afghans voted for a new president in 2004 and a parliament in 2005.
But despite billions plowed into roads, clinics, and schools, development lags in the ethnic Pashtun areas in the south and east, and corruption has helped the Taliban to take root once again.
When 8,000 NATO troops moved to the border area this year to extend the government's control, they were surprised by the intensity of the resistance, often in pitched battles.
More than 3,000 people, mostly militants, have been killed nationwide in 2006, according to an Associated Press count, based on reports from US, NATO, and Afghan officials. The tally, also including Afghan security forces, officials, and civilians, is about 1,500 more than the toll for all of 2005.
