, The New York Times, 6 February 2011
EXCERPT: "As part of the Obama administration's campaign to subdue a sprawling insurgency and create a durable Afghan government, the military sent thousands of soldiers last year into rural areas under the influence, if not outright control, of the Taliban. One of those task forces, the Third Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment, arrived in Miri in September to help establish a government presence in a place ? though it is the official seat of the Ghazni Province's Andar District ? where government had been sporadic for a decade. Almost five months later ? through prisoner interrogations, informants? reports, intercepted radio chatter, surveillance of fighters? funerals, Taliban documents, nearly 200 gunfights, and captured photographs, equipment and bombs ? the Americans have assembled an expanding portrait of how the latter-day Taliban functions here. The battalion's sense of its enemies is far from complete. Officers say they do not have detailed profiles of most fighting cells. Important questions, including whether outside financing flows to the insurgents in this area, remain unanswered. But its analysis, built nearly from scratch and revealed through interviews with commanders, soldiers and analysts, nonetheless sketches a tactical, social and visual map of an organization that is at once widespread but rarely seen by outsiders."
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Related articles:
District chief shot dead in eastern Afghanistan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 7 February 2011
Battle for control of Ghazni, ABC News, 6 February 2011
, AFP, 12 January 2011
U.S. troops clash with Taliban in east Afghanistan, The Washington Times, 29 December 2010
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