Embattled US troops take cynical view of progress in Afghanistan
None of this happened in the southern badlands of Afghanistan
where the Taliban are exacting a seemingly relentless death toll
from mostly US and UK forces, but in Bala Murghab, in Badghis
province in the far north-west.  A backwater in the war in
Afghanistan, nine miles south of the border of Turkmenistan, it
has been neglected for years by both Nato and the Afghan
government. But it is places like Bala Murghab, in a supposedly
more secure corner of the country, that expose the immense
difficulties the country has ahead of it in building self-
reliant ­security forces and persuading a new breed of
increasingly competent Taliban fighters to lay down their arms.
Webmaster's Commentary:   We are in Afghanistan to achieve two
outcomes, and two outcomes only; to install oil pipelines, with
which to control Eurasian oil, and the control over the drug
crops, from which so many profit so handsomely.