advertisement

Notes from 'Jihadistan'

Editor's Note (5:51 p.m. ET, Monday, Nov. 13): This piece was promoted as airing tonight, Monday, but has been bumped from the rundown. It will, however, air later this week.

I guess Sen. John Warner, R-Va., summed it up when he said, in reaction to the sea change in Washington, that it’s an appropriate time to review U.S. military strategy in Iraq, and ‘we mustn’t forget Afghanistan.’ With so much focus, and so many resources spent on Iraq, many Americans, it seems, have forgotten the war in Afghanistan. And they’ve forgotten – at least according to some counter-insurgency experts – that we’ve been losing the war there. The Taliban is back, stronger than ever, while U.S. and NATO soldiers are dying at an unprecedented rate.

To assess the situation in the remote, rugged country where the 'War on Terror' began, we’re launching a three-part special series. "The Haven" airs Monday - the 5th anniversary of the fall of Kabul, effectively ending the Taliban’s 5-year regime.  But, five years after the collapse of al-Qaida’s sanctuary, another haven has cropped up, every bit as lawless and threatening. "Jihadistan" as some call it -  an expanse of merciless land the size of Texas - stretches across Southern and Eastern Afghanistan, and over the border into the fearsome tribal belt inside Pakistan. There, in areas like Waziristan, the Taliban has free reign. We see armed fighters control the streets. Al-Qaida-linked fugitives like Mohammad Faquir – a good friend of al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al Zawahiri – boast brazenly to our cameras about future attacks on U.S. and Pakistani forces. Teachers are assassinated, girls’ schools are burned. Edicts that ban clean-shaven faces or impose tax collection for holy war are on the rise. It is like old Taliban days.

"You’ve got not just jihadis," explains one of our Afghanistan experts. "You’ve got drug dealers, you’ve got warlords, you’ve got criminals of every description. But certainly this belt is probably one of the biggest challenges the U.S. has to face in trying to stabilize Afghanistan."

Taking a closer look at that challenge, digital videographer Kyle Eppler and I take our thermals and computers on an embed with the 132nd Infantry of the 10th Mountain Division, high in the mountains of Afghanistan’s Kunar province (where some believe Osama bin Laden is hiding).

Part 2 of the series, "The Hunt," reflects on what U.S. soldiers are doing right – and wrong – in the hunt for Taliban and "high value targets." They’re trying to extend the authority of the central government back in Kabul, which many Afghans see as corrupt. I get a chance to talk, not only to commanders who are having to shift tactics to adjust to a more lethal enemy, but with intelligence officers who explain the challenges they face in tracking down – and taking out – the Taliban’s command and control, increasingly found out of bounds … inside Pakistan.

Our third report is a profile of an inspiring American-Iranian volunteer who is truly "making a difference." Fary Moini, from San Diego, Calif., runs a school for hundreds of boys and girls in Jalalabad, Eastern Afghanistan -- once a headquarters for bin Laden, and even today, still on the edge of "Jihadistan." Fary came up with the idea back in 2002, at the beginning of the war, when she visited  - and was overcome by – poor Afghan children in refugee camps inside Pakistan. She says she had a calling, then and there, to give these kids something that would change their lives: an education.

Many fellow Rotarians, back in San Diego, thought she was nuts. Others were moved to help her find the funding. We catch up with Fary on a recent visit to her dream-come-true. We talk to students who have a new lease on life, as well as to school officials who worry, day and night, about threats from the Taliban to burn down the school – in the Taliban’s world, education for females is banned by Allah.

Please join us over the next two weeks, when Kyle and I will be sending our reports via laptop. There’ll be a lighter side, too. We’re spending Thanksgiving Day with some 10th Mountain soldiers at their forward operating base in Jalalabad. There won’t be much turkey, we’re told, but it will be a great opportunity to connect with those Americans fighting a "forgotten war."

Read more from Jim Maceda

Veterans Day

EMAIL THIS