Things don't look so good.
Fisk is a great writer, and even where I disagree with his POV, his analysis is generally right on the money. He's one of our finest foreign correspondents writing in English today.
The Taliban are winning, at least in Kandahar. The Afghan "Army" leaves the Kandahar streets by 4 PM every day. The Afghan Police are lethargic and barely even check passengers anymore at the Kandahar Airport.
Everyone is against the occupation and the extremely corrupt and shitty Afghan government, but no one will say a word against the Taliban.
Ominously, there are rumblings that indicate that forces other than the Taliban, such as the Taliban's old Islamist enemies, may also take up arms against "the foreign occupiers" soon. Fighting the foreign infidel occupiers. In Afghanistan, a tradition as old as dirt.
If it's still on sale, check out the latest Rolling Stone, with an article by Israeli expat (now living in the US) journalist Nir Rosen (one of the fast-moving runners' up behind Fisk). This leftwing anti-Zionist Israeli-American Jew (an Iranian Mizrachi) has a lot of balls.
He goes to South Lebanon after the Lebanon War in 2006, to Fallujah right before the US devastates the town, and then to the Andar District in Ghazni Province, for all intents and purposes controlled by the Taliban. The last time, he gets captured and comes close to getting executed. He's got his nerve all right.
I hate the Taliban, but they aren't losing this war.
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