COMBAT OUTPOST SABARI, Afghanistan -- “Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!” droned the cold, mechanical voice of the warning system as the combat outpost’s radar detected another Taliban rocket launch.
Soldiers ran for cover in the shelters that dot this little American army camp near the Pakistani border. Then three deep booms shook the ground as the rounds hit the hill behind the outpost. The Taliban almost always miss, but they try and try again almost every day, only to disappear afterward among the dusty Afghan hills.
With the United States and its NATO allies looking ahead to 2014 as the date when they can declare the war in Afghanistan over, in the country’s troubled southeast, there is little evidence that President Barack Obama’s surge of troops has yielded significant results since it was implemented in 2010.