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This post is by Anup Kaphle

HELMAND - I am not used to my appearance working in my favor. But one of the most frequent compliments I've bagged in Afghanistan is that I look like an Afghan, talk like an Afghan, and without my heavy load of body armor could possibly pass as one. (Graeme has this affliction, too, and is often taken for a freakishly tall Hazara.)

HELMAND - Residents of Helmand, the southern Afghanistan province that the US Marines are currently storming in their biggest operation since Fallujah 2004, knew this was coming. I just returned with Anup Kaphle from a short trip there and observed not only a highly fragile, Taliban-friendly land, but also one being steadily and conspicuously stocked with men and materiel, and prepared for an invasion like the one now underway.

KANDAHAR -- Afghanistan, where I have just landed, is filled with illusions of space and of time. A distance that looks on a map like a short afternoon drive can take eight hours to traverse, and a face lined with a century of wrinkles often turns out to have earned them in just forty years.