Afghan War Enters 10th Year
LEMON: As we mentioned at the beginning of this show, the war in Afghanistan enters its tenth year today. The battle rages over vast areas of the country. No end is in sight. So, the question is, what happens next? What does the year 10 look like? CNNs Ivan Watson has covered this war from day 1, and he joins us now from the Afghan capital. What does the tenth year look like, Ivan?</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's dramatically different from what it was nine years ago, Don. Nine years ago, the first shots of the U.S. war on terror were fired here in Afghanistan, beginning with the series of air strikes on Taliban positions. The Taliban ruled more than 90 percent of the territory in this country. And within a month, the combination of U.S. air strikes, a fair amount of CIA dollars to buy off Taliban commanders and a rebel rug tag army of northern alliance troops were able to shatter the Taliban government. Well, fast forward to today. There are some 150,000 foreign troops on the ground here, nearly 100,000 U.S. soldiers on the ground here. This has been the bloodiest year yet of this nine-year conflict, for not only the U.S. troops with more than 300 American soldiers killed over the course of this year, but also for Nato forces as well. Meanwhile, the Afghan government is once again trying to give in to the Taliban to sit down for peace talks. It launched what it calls a high peace council, a council of elders, and they are being assigned the task of trying to find somebody within the Taliban movement who is willing to sit down at the negotiating table with them and trying to reach an end to this bloody conflict -- Don.</s>LEMON: So, here's the question. There are many people in this country who believe, whether it is true or not, that the U.S. and NATO forces can't trust, really, the Afghan government or the Pakistani government, because they believe in some way that they are harboring the Taliban and other insurgents. So, even after nine years that there is no progress because of this or little progress.</s>WATSON: Well, certainly there are a lot of accusations thrown against the Pakistani government. And if you need evidence, Afghan and western officials will say, well, we know that serious Taliban commanders have been captured on Pakistani territory. The Afghan government, it's lost a lot of lives due to insurgent attacks. There are governors and high-level officials who are assassinated every week here. So, it's unlikely that they are actually harboring any Taliban militants or Taliban commanders. I think there's some distrust also from the side of the Afghans toward the U.S. government, believe it or not, which is providing a lot of money here, because of some criticism of U.S. policies to supply money and/or weapons to certain war lords which are viewed to subvert the authority of the central Afghan government as well. What we can point out are a couple of trends here, Don. As we've ramped up the number of U.S. troops, of international troops and international aid coming to Afghanistan, for some reason, the violence has only continued to spread. And I don't have an answer for why that is happening -- Don.</s>LEMON: Ivan Watson, thank you very much. We appreciate your reporting. Straight ahead here on CNN, what women are not telling their gynecologist could end up hurting them? Elizabeth Cohen tells you what you should never keep secret.