Taliban Challenge U.S. in Eastern Afghanistan

A member of the 101st Airborne Division, on a Dec. 15 mission to flush the Taliban out of Jumah Kala, a village of about 1,000 people in a strategically vital part of Afghanistan’s east.

By RAY RIVERA
NYT

JUMAH KALA, Afghanistan — The villagers gathered on mounds of dirt to watch as the American armored vehicles rolled in. The streets were narrow and banked by high mud walls; the bulky vehicles could barely squeeze through. The villagers had not seen a coalition patrol here in at least two years, they told the American commander as he stepped out to greet them.

“And how long has it been since you’ve seen the governor?” the commander, Capt. Aaron T. Schwengler, asked the villagers as they crowded around him.

“Ten years,” one man said through an interpreter.

But the villagers do see the Taliban, and on a nightly basis. Insurgent leaders here and in many of the other small farming villages that dot much of the Andar District in Ghazni, one of Afghanistan’s more troubled provinces, have filled the void left by the government. They settle land and water disputes and dictate school curriculums. They issue curfews and order local residents, by way of “night letters,” not to talk to foreign forces.

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