If you haven't caught the PBS Frontline show Return of the Taliban yet, I'd recommend it highly. The whole one-hour show is available online at the link, if you can't wait to see it on your PBS channel.
On location in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, the program gives some sense of just what we're up against in that mountainous Afghan border region where both the British and the Russians eventually gave up on pacifying the locals. There is some gruesome footage early in the show attesting to the depravity of the Taliban, and the whole program conveys the logistic and political difficulties of governing in an area where Osama bin Laden is a hero, and crowds rally in the streets to cries of "Bush is a dog!"
Pakistani government officials lie through their teeth to the Frontline reporter when pressed on the details of attacks on terrorist leadership, claiming credit for the Pakistani military, when the evidence proves that they were the work of U.S. missiles. And even George Bush seems to not believe what he's saying in his public appearances with Musharraf, that "Pakistan is our ally in the War on Terror."
The hell they are.
Posted by dan at January 29, 2008 10:53 PM