Our Washington Independent colleague Spencer Ackerman is embedded with U.S. troops on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border through Sept. 19. We’ll reprint his dispatches from the field over the next eleven days.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Since Afghans took up arms against the Soviet occupation in 1979, insurgency in war-torn Afghanistan has followed a cyclical pattern. The spring and the summer are for fighting. The winter — which, particularly along the mountainous, porous eastern border with Pakistan, can feature six-foot snowbanks — is for regrouping. Until, perhaps, now.