Mohammad Sadiq Rishtinai is a journalist with RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.
The Taliban is exerting its control over thousands of rural classrooms as it tightens its stranglehold on education in Afghanistan.
Residents of Kandahar, southern Afghanistan's Pashtun capital, are filled with uncertainty following the recent assassinations of key political figures. Many Kandaharis are looking to Kabul to quickly fill the regional leadership vacuum before tribal competition and strongman rivalry invites a Taliban victory.
The fate of former Taliban members who recently signed on to the Afghan government's integration efforts is being closely watched by others considering defection.
Although NATO and the Afghan government are credited with driving the Taliban out of key rural strongholds in Kandahar Province, their slowness in delivering on promised reconstruction and stability threatens the future of the joint effort to establish stability in southern Afghanistan.
The story of Regey -- a small dusty village in Afghanistan's volatile southern province of Helmand where an alleged NATO missile recently killed 50 civilians -- illustrates the difficult road ahead for the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan.
