Money in Hand; Back to Bank Hours; Hospitallers; Scratch More Taliban

Michael Ubaldi, September 18, 2003.

As part of his extended tour of the general region, Treasury Secretary John Snow has visited Afghanistan with promises of fulfilling current commitments. The secretary is using this highly visible meeting to call on aid to Afghanistan and Iraq from other countries, including - perhaps not surprisingly - Saudi Arabia. For all the criticism the White House receives on its continuation of pre-9/11 American-Saudi relations (much of it balanced and pertinent), we all have to marvel at the sort of fratricide into which the Bush administration is able to coax pliant dictatorships. As long as US-earmarked Saudi money isn't funneled into the kingdom's current accounts for madrassas and terrorist bribery, Bush may successfully demonstrate how and why despots should be played against each other when circumstances can't provide a wiser alternative.

Also notable to Snow's visit was a ceremony for three foreign banks' receipt of operating licenses, as directed by Kabul.

Whooping cough and cholera have broken out in Badakhshan and Kandahar, respectively, the World Health Organization reports. Both areas are under-industrialized, to say the least - it's an unfortunate hangover for a country in the first stages of trying to wrest itself from squalor. However, the WHO seems confident that quick diagnosis can lead to effective and life-saving measures. Additionally, a weblog is apparently being run from Kandahar by a foreign field logistician.

Taliban and other terrorists continue their determined but yet ineffectual campaign to intimidate Afghans and American troops. More successful at threatening local civilians and killing peaceful humanitarian workers, the latest Islamist military strikes have resulted in several failed missile and bomb attacks, and eleven more of their own number dead. Meanwhile, Afghan-American forces are confident in the ability of ongoing Operation Mountain Viper to "destroy the Taliban's ability to operate in the southern region of Afghanistan." Let's appreciate the graveness of the moment: Are the Taliban in a quagmire?