Asia Times
Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON - After months of planning and putting pieces in order, aspects of the new United States strategy in Afghanistan are beginning to be concretely implemented - including a surge of troops and attempts to curtail the poppy trade that allegedly funds insurgents.
But some aspects of the new strategy are lagging behind, and questions linger about the feasibility of winning by concentrating new US forces in Afghanistan's south and east, where the Taliban has largely established full control.
On Thursday, 4,000 US Marines made their way by helicopter into Afghanistan's enormous Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold in the south where poppy cultivation runs rampant.....
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