Will Taliban Insurgents in Afghanistan Set-Up Shadow Government?”
Taliban Insurgents in Afghanistan Set-Up Shadow Government The Times of London Corruption and incompetence in President Karzai’s Government — particularly at local level — have forced a growing number of people to seek the services of the Taliban. The shadow government is not limited to justice. In Helmand, in August, Taliban commanders issued printed travel permits on headed notepaper from the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” to let people through checkpoints on the roads in and out of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. A senior NATO intelligence official admitted this week that the Taliban “has a government-in-waiting, with ministers chosen,” ready to take over the moment the current administration failed. He warned, in a bleak assessment of the insurgents’ strength: “Time is running out. Taliban influence is expanding.” More at the link below.
Reporting from Kunduz Province, in the north of Afghanistan about 125 miles from Kabul, Laura King of the Los Angeles Times said Thursday that “residents of a widening arc of territory a half-day’s drive from the capital, Kabul, describe daily lives fraught with danger as the militants’ foothold becomes stronger.”[1] — The political situation is extraordinarily complex: “The plethora of insurgent groups operating in Kunduz and Baghlan offers a rare glimpse of the shifting rivalries and alliances between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. A key link between the two is the feared Soviet-era insurgent commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Kunduz native. — Hekmatyar’s fighters frequently stage attacks against Western troops and Afghan security forces in the north. But . . . President Hamid Karzai . . . is cementing ties with powerful warlords such as Hekmatyar, ignoring Western discomfort over such alliances.” — So it is scarcely surprising that “In the north, even more than elsewhere in Afghanistan,
