About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.
American warplanes have command of the skies -- at least when they fly at high altitudes, out of the range of the Taliban's antiaircraft guns and shoulder-fired missiles.
American reporters are forced to rely on video from the Defense Department and bits of unverifiable secondhand film sent out by a range of sources: the Taliban, the Arab television channel Al Jazeera, Reuters.
It said American reporters were "forced to rely on video from the Defense Department and bits of unverifiable secondhand film sent out by a range of sources: the Taliban, the Arab television channel Al Jazeera, Reuters".
There have been a few instances of senior Taliban leaders who have defected to the Afghan government, and no doubt there is a range of views within the Taliban leadership about the value of compromise and the pursuit, a la the Muslim Brotherhood, of Islamic politics by peaceful means.
Women, however, express a range of fears about a Taliban return, from political to domestic — that they will be shut out of negotiations about any deals with the insurgents and that the Taliban's return would drive up bride prices, making it more profitable for a family to force girls into marriage earlier.
Meanwhile, it is worth noting that Hurst & Co., which published both Mr. Zaeef's memoir and now this collection of Taliban poems, has published on a range of Afghan themes, including two books by David Kilcullen.
Estimates of the number of Taliban now holding the district center range widely, but NATO intelligence officers said it is about 500, that many had crossed the border from Pakistan and that there were a few Arab fighters among them.
The day before I arrived, Vollick and Khan, after months of long-range firefights across fields and vineyards, had planned an ambush of Taliban who, villagers said, sometimes gathered at a cemetery some five hundred yards from the base.
Amnesty also criticised the Taliban for a range of rights abuses, including the killing of captured soldiers and innocent civilians.
