Below the Radar Screen

So, let's have a quick look at the OTHER country where, according to Dubya, we're "making progress:"

Back home in Kabul [Karzai} is under siege as never before. The Taliban have stepped up their attacks in the south of the country, two months away from parliamentary elections.

Many believe that with the help of their former backers, Pakistan's ISI military intelligence, and infiltrated by al-Qa'ida, the Taliban are bent on returning to power through the gun rather than the ballot box.

Over the past year, the attacks in the south-east have become much more targeted and professional, according to senior British officials who express disappointment that even in Mr Karzai's home region of Kandahar the insurgency is on the rise.

"They are shooting clergy, unarmed clergy. They're killing women. They go and burn a school made of tents," President Karzai said yesterday in an interview, noting that cross-border activity from Pakistan was contributing to the unrest. Twenty-four insurgents were killed on the border last week.

He pointedly declined to praise Pakistani co-operation when asked how helpful Islamabad has been...

Four Arabs believed to be members of al-Qa'ida escaped from the US military's top-security jail at Bagram airport outside Kabul last week. The upsurge in attacks in the Pashtun south has come despite the presence of 70,000 Pakistani troops along the border. "We do see that they would not be able to carry out their attacks, they would not be able to have explosives or bombs or other material if somebody didn't help them. There definitely is help coming to them from somewhere," Mr Karzai said.

The US-backed President, who was democratically elected in November 2004 nearly three years after being appointed interim leader, rarely ventures outside Kabul.

The country is virtually cut in two, with the northern provinces relatively quiet while conflict continues in the south, where the US-led coalition is on the trail of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down an American helicopter in the east of the country last month.

Somebody alert Vice pResident Cheney that he can confidently assert that the Afghan insurgents are "definitely in their last throes"--provided, of course, that we think of throes in the 'violent' sense.