anticipated. lashkar gah, a name we all know from british news broadcast over many years, the capital of helmand province where troops were stationed now large parts of it are being contested by taliban forces pushing the government forces back. this is a horrible situation and, while i think it is the case that the afghanistan of today is not the afghanistan of 20 30 years ago, there was a much wider middle class established, the cities are much bigger and stronger within the political economy of the country, and women have really come into their own. but how much these kinds of economic and social bulwarks will stop a traditional taliban islamist takeover and a reversion to the type of maoist policies that they adopted last time around is hard to tell.