[HAL9000]

The Afghan civil wars were always seasonal events. Jihad is out of season now.

I wouldn't expect to see any major problems in Afghanistan until about 2005, as a sideshow to a US-Iran conflict.

And the most formidable Afghan enemies will be Hekmatyar and the Shi'ites in Herat, not the Taliban and Mullah Omar.

[Indy Pendance]

Are you saying, Jihads are so yesterday? I thought it was liberals.....

[Cathryn Mataga]

Afghanistan is a huge mess right now. And the media isn't reporting it at all. Some of this is just that much of the country is run by guys with machine guns and a some poppy fields. So, they may go more to the high bidder -- than to Al Queda. But, still, the government there is not stable at all, and it's not clear to me if the central government of Afghanistan has much power outside a few blocks of Kabul.

With Iraq this is may be a 2 front war, at least. Afghanistan and Iraq, assuming there's some ongoing violence in Iraq.