Circled by high terrain and nations struggling with their own Islamic unrest, Afghanistan is among the hardest places on earth to fight. Other worries: millions of land mines, a harsh climate and a population famous for resisting invasion
WHO ARE THE TALIBAN?
The militia that dubbed itself the Taliban, Pashtu for Islamic students, emerged in 1994 from the rural southern hinterlands of Afghanistan, under the guidance of the reclusive onetime village preacher Mullah Mohammed Omar. Fed by recruits from conservative religious schools across the border in Pakistan attended by destitute refugees from the 1979-89 war against the Soviet invasion, the Taliban...
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