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Jonathan S. Landay has been reporting on Afghanistan for 23 years. Now that the U.S. Administration plans a new surge into the country, Landay says that in Afghanistan, “there’s a great deal of apprehension.” Landay says he believes that, “most Afghans don’t want the Taliban back, at least not the way they ran the country in the 1990s. And yet, because of the fact that these last eight years have been squandered by the previous administration, and because of its misguided policies towards Pakistan, and because of Pakistan’s policies, people are very much sitting on the fence in Afghanistan. He says this is, “because they’re not convinced anymore that the United States is there to “rebuild” their country, they are convinced that the U.S. is there to occupy their country as part of a war against Islam.”

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Jonathan S. Landay is McClatchy Newspapers' national security and intelligence correspondent. He has written about foreign affairs and U.S. defense, intelligence and foreign policies for 15 years. In 2005, he was part of a team that won a National Headliners Award for How the Bush Administration Went to War in Iraq. He also won a 2005 Award of Distinction from the Medill School of Journalism for Iraqi exiles fed exaggerated tips to news media.