Terror, opium, democracy: Afghanistan at the crossroads

For an update on what's going on in Afghanistan (remember that place?), see this article at The Independent. Elections are scheduled for September, but President Hamid Karzai is essentially the ruler of a divided country: "The US-backed President, who was democratically elected in November 2004 nearly three years after being appointed interim leader, rarely ventures outside Kabul. The country is virtually cut in two, with the northern provinces relatively quiet while conflict continues in the south, where the US-led coalition is on the trail of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar." I suspect that we all need to be paying much more attention to this now-forgotten frontier in the war on terror. After all, that's where the action really is, and surely 7/7 reminds us that that's where the focus needs to be.