Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, has known little peace since 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded. Now it is the scene of what has become the central military struggle for the United States, as American forces try to help a weak and corrupt government tame a stubborn insurgency.
Aftghanistan's strategic location, at the crossroads of Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, has long granted it a pivotal role in the region, while its terrain and population have stymied would-be conquerors for centuries. The country's population is 34 million. Its capital is Kabul.
The United States has been militarily involved in Afghanistan since 2001, when it led an invasion after the Sept. 11 attacks by Al Qaeda. The group had been given safe haven in the country by the Taliban, the extremist Islamic group that had seized control in 1996 after years of civil war.
The 2001 invasion succeeded in dislodging Al Qaeda and removing the Taliban from power, but not in eradicating either group. With American military efforts focused on Iraq, the Taliban made a steady comeback, fueled by profits from the opium trade and dissatisfaction with the weak and often corrupt new Afghan government. By 2009, Kabul was encircled by Taliban forces and there was talk of the capital's falling to the insurgents.
President Obama has made Afghanistan the central military focus of his administration, drawing troops out of Iraq and increasing the number in Afghanistan by almost 50,000. He put Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the 2007 "surge'' in Iraq, in command of American forces in Afghanistan, and the pace of American operations stepped up enormously, initially in the Taliban's strongholds in the south.
In March 2011, General Petraeus said that NATO forces have been able to halt or reverse Taliban gains not only in the south but also around Kabul, and even in the north and west of the country. And President Hamid Karzai is to announce on the Afghan New Year, March 21, the beginning of the transition to Afghan control of some districts around the country, part of the plan to pass responsibility for security to the Afghan government by 2014.
But between tactical success on the ground and the strategy of handing off to Afghan forces lies what one colonel called "the great disconnect.'' The Taliban and the groups it collaborates with remain deeply rooted; the Afghan military and police remain lackluster and given to widespread drug use; the country's borders remain porous; Kabul Bank, which processes government salaries, is wormy with fraud, and Mr. Karzai's government, by almost all accounts, remains weak, corrupt and erratically led. And the Pakistani frontier remains a Taliban safe haven.
Even a successful military campaign is seen from the ranks as unlikely to untangle this knot of dysfunction, much less within the deadlines discussed in Washington.
The relationships between the United States, the Afghan government and the Afghan people have often been tense, and repeatedly damaged by civilian casualties. On April 1, 2011, thousands of protesters, angry at the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, overran the compound of the United Nations in a northern Afghan city. Seven U.N. workers were killed in the attack, and at least 24 others died during protests which continued across the country for days.
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