The Taliban's Baghdad Strategy

摘要

Faridoon Stares In alarm at the two news-week reporters who just walked into his shop. "You guys better get out of town fast," the 21-year-old Afghan says as quietly as possible. "There's Taliban everywhere." Lying in the street outside are the burned-out hulks of a gasoline tanker and a shipping-container truck that someone set ablaze two nights before, right in front of Faridoon's motor-oil shop in Maidan Shar, the tiny, dust-blown capital of Maidan Wardak province, barely 25 miles south of Kabul. Only daysearlier and a few miles farther down Highway 1, Taliban fighters ambushed and burned a 50-truck commercial convoy that was carrying fuel and supplies for the U.S. military. Even during the day, Faridoon and other townspeople warn, it's not safe to visit the area.