– New York Times – C.J. Chivers writes that if the American-led fight against the Taliban was once a contest for influence in well-known and conventionally defined areas – the capital and large cities, main roads, the border with Pakistan, and a handful of prominent valleys and towns – today it has become something else. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the United States military has settled into a campaign for scattered villages and bits of terrain that few people beyond their immediate environs have heard of.