U.S. Marines carry a comrade wounded by an improvised explosive device (IED) to a waiting medevac helicopter, near the town of Marjah in Helmand Province, August 21, 2010.BOB STRONG
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the start of American-led combat in Afghanistan, and the war to oust the Taliban regime that hosted Al Qaeda continues. A few hundred Afghans marked it a day early, with a small protest on Thursday against mounting civilian casualties in the conflict.
But the anniversary itself was a normal day – or what passes for normal here.
Domestic politics please almost no one. Samin Barakzai, a former lawmaker from Herat, lies weak but defiant in a tent in front of the lower house of parliament on the fifth day of a hunger strike. She recently lost her seat in a deal meant to end a long-running dispute over election fraud that has paralyzed the government. Ms. Barakzai says she was elected fair and square and will continue her protest to the death.
Violence and revenge take a toll even on the powerful and once-powerful. Abdul Jabbar Sabit, a particularly brutal former Attorney General who once pistol-whipped critics in public and launched an armed raid on a television station whose broadcasts he didn't like, was reported kidnapped in Kabul.
Relations with Pakistan, never easy, are at yet another new low in the wake of American and Afghan accusations that one of the deadliest insurgent groups, the Haqqani network, is a client of Pakistani intelligence. Some Pakistani commentators warn that it's time for Pakistan to "wake up" to the fact it is viewed as part of the problem in the region, rather than the solution. But, as is usually the case, that is far from a universal view. Other commentators say it is not Pakistan that is playing a double-game, as President Karzai recently charged, but the United States.
But bittersweet reflections on the past and trepidation about the future are not the only news out of Afghanistan. This anniversary should also be the occasion for some optimism. A group of Afghans take the sunny view. They've created a website called GoodAfghanNews.