Counting the cost of the 9/11 wars, Radical Islamism & Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism & Jihad

24 Aug 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com

Counting the cost of the 9/11 wars

Jason Burke 22 August 2011 If, just over a decade ago, you had looked north through binoculars from frontline Taliban positions 30 miles north of Kabul, you would have seen an old Soviet-built airbase, little more than a cluster of ruined buildings, rusting metal stakes, a single battered jeep and no serviceable aircraft at all on the scarred strip of concrete shimmering in the Afghan sun. The group of scruffy Taliban fighters in filthy clothes who manned the makeshift trenches on the heights above it would probably have served grapes and tea to you as they did to the rare reporters who visited them. If you had come back just a little later, say in the spring of 2002, you would have seen a startling difference. With the Taliban apparently defeated, the airstrip had become the fulcrum of a build-up of American and other international forces in the country that would continue inexorably over the next years. The feverish activity of the bulldozers, tents, jets and helicopters gave a sense that something extraordinary was happening. But its exact nature was still very unclear. http://www.newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/counting-the-cost-of-the-9/11-wars/d/5315