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Their goal, Afghan military officials say, is to capture small districts in Afghanistan's lawless hinterlands from which they can harass the U.S. and its allies. "They haven't yet secured bases in the cities to begin operations," says General Khan Mohammed, a corps commander in Kandahar. "But in the rural areas they are back."
Afghan security officials complain that their Pakistani counterparts continue to tolerate — and even encourage — militancy by the Taliban, which Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, helped create in the mid-1990s in a bid to make Afghanistan a client state. At the highest levels, Pakistan's Establishment remains "nostalgic" for the Taliban, says a Western diplomat. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has cooperated in the hunt for al-Qaeda's top officials but has shown less enthusiasm for rooting out the Taliban. Until Pakistan's security services stop sheltering Taliban leaders, U.S. officials say, Afghanistan will never be free from the threat of their return. U.S. intelligence officials in Washington told TIME that the U.S. possesses satellite photos that purportedly show Pakistani army trucks picking up Taliban troops fleeing back across the border after a failed attack. After the U.S. confronted Pakistani officials with the photographs, signs of visible Pakistani aid to the rebels ceased. U.S. and Afghan officials say the U.S. has also provided Islamabad with specific locations of two dozen suspected Taliban hideouts in the tribal badlands. But so far no fugitives have been arrested.
Will the U.S. Stay the Course?
No one is more cognizant of the threats to the future of Afghanistan than the 11,000 U.S. soldiers who call its deserts and redoubts home. Deployed at the front line of Washington's war on terrorism, the U.S. commanders believe they have the enemy on the run even if bin Laden remains at large. "I don't think we're facing 'good' al-Qaeda," says Lieut. Colonel Mike Howard, who commands the 10th Mountain Division's two bases at Orgun-e and Shkin, referring to the battle-tested brigades that faced off against the U.S. forces when they first arrived. "I wouldn't have said that two years ago." Members of the 10th Mountain Division who have returned to Afghanistan for their second tour of duty say the change is noticeable. "It's a different environment today from what it was then," says Lieut. Colonel Bentley. "We might be treading water, but we're not sipping air through a straw like before."
While they sound upbeat, the commanders are worried that one catastrophic event — like an attack on Karzai, who will be campaigning outside Kabul this spring — could shatter the current fragile peace. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan remains the only guarantor that the country will not fall apart. "If we left," says a U.S. official, "Karzai would be dead within days." So the troops are staying — and attempting, at least, to kick-start the reconstruction of a country the U.S. has now effectively inherited.