Kabooms

Well, the insurgents are stepping up the attacks during what is normally a quieter time, well outside the fighting season.  Today it was in Kunduz to the north, with at least 30 killed.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/21/us-afghanistan-bomb-idUSTRE71K19220110221
 On Sunday it was a bank in Jalalabad; reports vary, but there are somewhere between 40 and 70 dead.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/02/20/afghanistan.attack/?hpt=T2

Before that, the suicide car in Khost killing ten, and the attack in Kandahar on the police station, killing quite a few more.
http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/home/2011/02/taliban-explode-10-afghan-muslims-wound-40.html

The attacks are, unfortunately, cleverly targeted.  The bank attack came as Afghan soldiers and policemen were cashing their paychecks - and so they not only killed a number of people who had volunteered for the security forces, they discouraged untold more.  Today's hit where people have to get their government ID cards in order to enlist for the police or army - again, not only taking out volunteers but certainly discouraging would-be volunteers.  The insurgency in Afghanistan is cruel and vicious, but it is not stupid.