Afghanistan - The New Auschwitz

In addition to the 3,572 bombing raids in 2007, suicide bombings climbed to a record 140, compared to five between 2001 and 2005. The Taliban's base is increasingly the umbrella for a revived Pashtun nationalism on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, as well as for jihadists and others committed to fighting foreign occupation. The UN estimates the Taliban have just 3,000 active fighters and about 7,000 part-timers, in contrast with more than 50,000 US and NATO troops. Their command structure is diffuse and when it comes to guerrilla tactics - suicide attacks, roadside bombs, kidnapping and assassination - the militants have become frighteningly proficient.

"Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," said a report issued 30 January by the Atlantic Council of the United States, chaired by retired General James Jones, who until 2006 served as the supreme allied commander of NATO in Afghanistan. "It remains a failing state. It could become a failed state," warned the report, which called for "urgent action" to overhaul NATO strategy in coming weeks before an anticipated new offensive by Taliban insurgents in the spring.

The Afghanistan Study Group, created by the Center for the Study of the Presidency, which was also involved with the Iraq Study Group, concluded, "the United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," and lack a clear strategy to "fill the power vacuum outside Kabul and counter the combined challenges of reconstituted Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a runaway opium economy, and the stark poverty faced by most Afghans."

Whoa. Did it ever occur to these thinktankers that just maybe they can never "win"? That the US invaded Afghanistan illegally, and the Taliban, still the legitimate government there, will continue to battle on, to wait it out, no matter how many bombs and dollars the US et al throw at it?

As if these reports aren't enough for the frazzled president, on 15 January rebels attacked Kabul's swish five-star Serena Hotel, targeting the ex-pat elite in the most fortified site in the capital, killing seven guests and staff. This was no straightforward suicide bombing, but an armed attack which allowed the gunmen to carry out a shooting spree before they were stopped, the one phenomenon security agencies have no defence against. Kabul, relatively incident-free in the first two years after the removal of the Taliban, now sees regular rocket attacks, shootings, kidnappings, explosions and suicide bombings. More