(2 of 8)
The White House says Afghanistan is on the right track. "The men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free and proud and fighting terror," President George W. Bush said in January's State of the Union address. But that optimistic picture obscures the depths of the country's woes. In interviews with Afghans, diplomats and military commanders across the country, TIME has found that while Afghans have been freed from the Taliban's depraved strictures, their daily lives remain blighted by violence and fear. Because of the paltry number of foreign peacekeepers — about 20,000, in contrast to 130,000 troops in Iraq — and Karzai's inability to extend his grip outside Kabul, most of Afghanistan is under the sway of truculent warlords who in many cases finance armed militias through a resurgent opium trade. The Taliban show signs of a comeback, with forces loyal to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar — believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan — now controlling nearly one-third of the country's territory.
So another military showdown is looming. U.S. military officials believe that Taliban fighters are preparing to launch an offensive against the U.S. and its Afghan allies this spring. "As the weather gets better and as people are better able to travel in the rougher terrain, we expect an increase in violence," says General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A senior U.S. military official told TIME that U.S. forces will soon mount a spring offensive of their own, in the tribal areas along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The goal is to flush out bin Laden from his lair and capture or kill him. The U.S. is not expected to openly announce the true intent of the offensive, which will focus on an area stretching from Jalalabad, near Afghanistan's eastern border, to Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold in the south. The official says a small contingent of special-operations troops taken out of Afghanistan for the war in Iraq — including members of the elite Joint Task Force 121, which helped track down Saddam Hussein — will be reinserted for the offensive. While the U.S. pushes east along a broad front, Pakistani forces will push west, flooding the tribal areas in what Lieut. General David Barno, commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, calls a "hammer and anvil" strategy. "The idea is to come up with O.B.L. in the bargain," says a senior military official. "They are not going to say that's the goal, but it's the goal."