The Forgotten War...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

The situation is dire. The Taliban offensive in the south and the counteroffensive by British, Canadian and U.S. troops under NATO has escalated into a full-scale war, with a dozen attacks every day and 700 lives lost since mid-May. Most Afghans are angry with the United States and the West for ignoring the alleged sanctuary provided to the Taliban by Pakistan, and with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for apparently supporting Karzai and the Taliban at the same time.

Papering over the cracks between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to do in her recent visit to the region, is clearly not enough. The charges and suspicions on both sides have to be addressed. Ordinary Afghans say the Taliban virus is spreading. The Taliban have been reported just 25 miles from Kabul, and they have attacked in the north and the west -- hundreds of miles from their main bases in the south. According to the United Nations, every single day somewhere in Afghanistan a girls' school is burned down or a female teacher killed by the Taliban.

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After reading this, I Googled to discover that the British are deploying 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan. By the way, a bomb killed 8 female students at a Herat University today...it's assumed that the bomber doesn't particularly care for educated women.