Given current dynamics, Afghanistan will remain a weak and fragmented state, easily controlled by outside powers, its economy broken, its common people mercilessly exploited, suffering from a low-simmering but ineffective insurgency. One place to see this is unfolding is on the border with Pakistan.

The road from Kabul east to Jalalabad is an abysmally rutted dirt track that ascends and descends in switchbacks up high mountains, with thousand-foot drops at the road's edge, then passes down through some parched valleys into a desert strewn with huge boulders. The trip takes a full day. Roadside bombs are not uncommon here: Numerous NGO workers and journalists have been killed on this stretch of road in the past year.

This is Nangarhar province, which juts like a peninsula into Pakistan and contains the infamous Al Qaeda stronghold of the Tora Bora mountain range. Most of the province's districts are classified as no-go areas for internationals. All the NGOs have left. The place is crawling with US Special Forces, out hunting. When their convoys of Humvees and white Toyota trucks lurch past on the dusty back roads, they look like landlocked pirates, wearing costumes of mismatched camouflage, Afghan scarves, beards and assorted bush hats.

A security expert in Jalalabad tells me that there's been at least one IED attack every day for a month, and that the local US garrison, or Provincial Reconstruction Team, was recently besieged for five hours straight. Even so, US casualties around here have remained fairly light.

Officially the Taliban are a big problem, but in private, security experts acknowledge that the Taliban and their allies are isolated and under pressure from both US troops in Afghanistan and Pakistani forces across the border. Once backed by the Pakistani state, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are now said to rely only on a network of retired Pakistani intelligence officers.

Although villagers warn that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are around and looking for targets, the insurgency seems to have little support. "They are in Pakistan, but they come into Nangarhar to attack," says a local journalist. "The people here do not want them."

On our second day of driving we leave Jalalabad and head northeast into the district of Kuna. This is poppy country, occasionally traversed by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters but thoroughly controlled by two warlords: Hazrat Ali, the security chief, and Haji Din Mohammed, provincial governor.

In Khakhi village, we meet with a group of four maliks, or village leaders. All of them farm opium poppy and were mujahedeen during the anti-Soviet jihad, but now all speak openly of their hatred for the commanders.

"They have big houses and the best land. They will take a man's daughter if they want. And what do we have? Nothing," says Askar Khan, who sits hunched over on a wood and rope cot beneath a grape arbor. "All of us were wounded fighting the Russians. We fought for America, and now we are jobless. That is not good."

Another man shows me some gruesome scars and says he was taken to Indiana for treatment back when he was fighting the Red Army. Once these mujahedeen liked the United States, but now they are growing resentful. "Why does America give these commanders positions in government?" asks Askar Khan, the chief malik, who is slumped on the cot.

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