The New York Times published this article by Scott Shane about a month ago, but I think it continues to be relevant now, as Obama just announced his new/revised Afghanistan policy of the “surge” (which another commentator mentioned is the war strategy formerly known as “escalation”.)

The article essentially lays out how there are two different groups called “Taliban” that the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan, with quite different motivations and constituencies:

At the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

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