FEATURE: "How the Taliban Thrives: It isn't just drugs," by Aryn Baker, Time, 14 August 2009.

What gives an insurgency legs is also what limits its ideological appeal and thus spread. After a while, nobody can remember what they're fighting for; they just know they don't know how to do anything else and that the money's pretty good. Everybody gets hit in Afghanistan: aid projects, companies, the government, anybody who moves anything. All pay "taxes" to the Taliban in one form or another. Telling:

In fact, protection payments are so widespread that one contractor I interviewed responded incredulously to questions about how the system worked. "You must be the only person in Afghanistan who doesn't know this is going on," he said.

This is why pouring more money in will have little effect. It sure won't cure the Afghan government's corruption.