The Rise of Jihadistan

No: it's that Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups now have a place from which to hatch the next 9/11. "This standoff could go on for 40 or 50 years," says a retired U.S. general who served in Afghanistan, speaking only on condition of anonymity. "It's not going to be a takeover by the Taliban as long as NATO is there. Instead this is going to be like the triborder region of South America, or like Kashmir, a long, drawn-out stalemate where everyone carves out spheres of influence." Eikenberry disagrees, though he refused to put a time frame on Afghanistan's recovery. "It won't be dec-ades," he says.

The Taliban doesn't always share Al Qaeda's goals or tactics, although some units have taken up suicide bombing. But a guerrilla calling himself Commander Hemat, a former anti-Soviet mujahedin fighter who now works closely with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, says foreign Arabs are being welcomed again. "Now the money is flowing again because the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are producing results," he told NEWSWEEK. Zabibullah, a Taliban operative who has proved reliable in the past, says the Qaeda operatives "feel more secure and can concentrate on their own business other than just surviving."

Pakistan fostered the Taliban movement in the 1990s as a way of holding sway over Afghanistan and undercutting India's influence there. Those ties persist. Despite Bush's praise of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf--"We're on the hunt together," Bush said at a joint news conference on Friday--U.S. and British military officials say Musharraf has allowed the Taliban to set up headquarters near the southwestern city of Quetta. Musharraf has also cut a deal giving militants free rein in north Waziristan; since then cross-border attacks have increased. Senior U.S. officials say that Musharraf caved in to Qaeda sympathizers who fiercely resisted the Pakistani Army's incursion into the tribal region last year. Musharraf reassured Bush last week that the Waziristan tribal leaders had agreed not to permit Taliban or Qaeda cross-border activity, but the militants say no such commitment was made. "Instead of eliminating the militants, the Pakistani military operation only added to their strength," says Ayaz Amir, a respected political columnist for the daily Dawn newspaper. The Afghan Taliban's recent offensive has only raised the morale of their Pakistani brethren.

General Eikenberry says that Al Qaeda or its successors have nothing like the liberty that allowed them to plot 9/11 in the open. "They have no safe haven inside Afghanistan that if we find it, we will not strike against them," he said. But conclusive victory will depend on a "political solution" arising from a far more effective Afghan government, Eikenberry says. Asked whether terrorists will always have a place to root there, Eikenberry pauses for long seconds before answering. "You reach a tipping point" where military superiority no longer counts as much, he said. "There's always going to be another valley for terrorist forces or extremists to hide in."

No one knows this better than Eikenberry himself, a genial soldier-scholar with degrees from Harvard and Stanford. Two weeks after NEWSWEEK's visit to Ghazni province's Andar district, the American general passed through the same area and urged Afghan security forces to be more active in combating the increasingly aggressive, large and visible Taliban presence.

Days later, Eikenberry launched his major Afghan-U.S. operation in Ghazni, code-named Mountain Fury. Most of the Taliban had easily escaped to the east while a number of insurgents remained behind to engage the enemy, firing automatic weapons and RPGs. According to Afghan officials, about 38 Taliban were killed that day. Interviewed after the action, Momin Ahmad, the Taliban's deputy commander for a cluster of Andar villages, disputes that number. He says he lost only four men: a Pakistani, an Iraqi and two local insurgents who were killed by an Apache helicopter that shot up a local vineyard.