More on Afghanistan

I just did a follow-up google news search on last week's Zabul story, and found this Sun Network story about a change in governorship. The outgoing governor claimed the Taliban insurgency news is exaggerated, but I somehow don't believe him. Even though it now seems the Karzai government retains control of the capital city, when I sit back and run everything through my mind I still think the Taliban or their sympathizers have more influence in Zabul than we do, and certainly have as much as they need to wage a guerrilla war. This dovetails with RFE-RL, which in their Weekly Afghanistan Report from last Thursday quoted the Stratfor reports as confirming Taliban control of most of the province.

I should also add here a disclaimer: News reports from most of Afghanistan do not come with 100% reliability guarantees. I post about what seems credible from reading a lot of them and having done some graduate coursework on Afghanistan, but in a sense this is like making projections on election night: Some may be retracted. And if that happens, it should not obscure the serious worsening violence in that country.