Over a dish of rice and greasy goat-meat in a backstreet Kabul restaurant, a pair of mid-level Taliban commanders were happy to chew the fat. The more senior, a humorous, middle-aged fellow with a pistol tucked slyly into his bulky coat, leads an insurgent force in Marja. That is an area of southern Helmand province which, with much trumpet-blast, American marines claimed to have captured earlier this year. Over the past two decades, this militant has been almost constantly in arms. The Taliban, an Islamist group dominated by southern Pushtuns, was launched in the early 1990s to end a bitter civil war. With Pakistani backing, it almost succeeded, controlling most of the country between 1996 and 2001.
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