President Obama is pouring more than 20,000 new troops into Afghanistan this year for a fighting season that the United States military has called a make-or-break test of the allied campaign in Afghanistan.

But if Taliban strategists have their way, those forces will face a stiff challenge, not least because of one distinct Taliban advantage: the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan barely exists for the Taliban, who are counting on the fact that American forces cannot reach them in their sanctuaries in Pakistan.

One Pakistani logistics tactician for the Taliban, a 28-year-old from the country's tribal areas, in interviews with The New York Times, described a Taliban strategy that relied on free movement over the border and in and around Pakistan, ready recruitment of Pakistani men and sustained cooperation of sympathetic Afghan villagers.

His account provided a keyhole view of the opponent the Americans and their NATO allies are up against, as well as the workings and ambitions of the Taliban as they prepared to meet the influx of American troops.

It also illustrated how the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group of many brands of jihadist fighters backed by Al Qaeda, are spearheading wars on both sides of the border in what for them is a seamless conflict.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/world/asia/05fighter.html?_r=1

meanwhile .....

When President Hamid Karzai drove to Kabul airport to fly to America earlier this week, the centre of the Afghan capital was closed down by well-armed security men, soldiers and policemen. On his arrival in Washington he will begin two days of meetings, starting today, with President Barack Obama and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari about their joint efforts to combat the Taliban. Karzai is also to deliver a speech at the Brookings Institution think tank on "effective ways of fighting terrorism."

The title of his lecture shows a certain cheek. Karzai's seven years in power since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 have been notable for his failure to prevent their resurgence. Suppose the president's motorcade this week had taken a different route and headed, not for the airport, but for the southern outskirts of Kabul, he would soon have experienced the limits of his government's authority. It ends at a beleaguered police post within a few minutes' drive of the capital. Drivers heading for the southern provincial capitals of Ghazni, Qalat and Kandahar nervously check their pockets to make sure that they are carrying no documents linking them to the government.

They do so because they know that they will not have travelled far down the road before they are stopped and their identity checked by black turbaned Taliban fighters. Moving swiftly on their motorcycles, squads of six to eight men set up temporary checkpoints along the road. Sometimes they even take a traveller's mobile phone and redial numbers recently called. If the call is answered by a government ministry or, still worse, a foreigner, then the phone's owner may be executed on the spot. The jibe that Mr Karzai is only "mayor of Kabul" has some truth to it. It is not only when travelling south that the Taliban is in control. I wanted to go to Bamyan, the province in central Afghanistan which is inhabited by the Hazara, a minority ethnic group who are central-Asian in appearance and Shia by religion, and who were savagely persecuted and massacred by the Sunni fundamentalist Taliban during their years in power.

http://counterpunch.org/patrick05062009.html

back in the real world .....

The international Red Cross has confirmed finding "dozens of bodies" in graves and rubble in Farah province, where Afghan officials allege US bombs killed civilians.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reported on Wednesday that its officials saw women and children among dozens of bodies in two villages targeted by air strikes, while the US military sent a brigadier-general to investigate. A former Afghan government official said up to 120 people died in the bombing on Monday night.

The first images from the bombings, obtained by Associated Press, showed villagers burying the dead in about a dozen fresh graves, while others dug through the rubble of demolished mud-brick homes. A Red Cross team travelled to Bala Baluk district in Farah on Tuesday where the officials saw "dozens of bodies in each of the two locations that we went to", said a spokeswoman, Jessica Barry. "There were bodies, there were graves ... We do confirm women and children."

Meanwhile, more than 40,000 civilians have fled Mingora, a key town in north-west Pakistan's Swat Valley as fears grow of a fresh military offensive against the Taliban.

In the past few days clashes have flared in Mingora, the main town in the one-time ski resort devastated by a two-year Taliban insurgency, as a peace deal with hardliners appears close to collapse.

The Government scrambled to shelter up to 500,000 people they expect to flee Swat and local officials said tens of thousands streamed out of the Swat district's main town. "More than 40,000 have migrated from Mingora since Tuesday afternoon," said Khushhal Khan, the chief administration officer in Swat. "An exodus of more than 40,000 people is the minimum number. It should actually be more than 50,000," said an intelligence official.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/dozens-of-bodies-found-in-afghan-area-hit-by-us-air-strikes-20090506-avgi.html