Denis Sinyakov / Reuters

Opposition leader Vladimir Ryzhkov speaks during a protest demanding fair elections in central Moscow on March 5, 2012.

MOSCOW – Vladimir Ryzhkov’s body language said it all. 

The veteran Russian opposition leader was up on stage during the first mass  protest after Vladimir Putin’s big presidential election win. And he looked like a man on auto-pilot as he introduced one speaker after another, half-heartedly peppering his remarks with calls for “taking power back” and “Russia without Putin.”

A month earlier, Ryzhkov had seemed as energized as Jumpin’ Jack Flash as he barked down his microphone in minus-10 degree Fahrenheit weather and looked out on a sea of humanity chanting for a “New Russia.” But on this much warmer night in the modest Pushkin Square in central Moscow, Ryzhkov’s spirit seemed to freeze over as he gazed on a crowd a fraction of the size of the earlier one. Surrounded by phalanxes of riot police, the protest seemed much smaller than the police estimate of 14,000.

“I’m optimistic and pessimistic,” he told me as the two-hour rally drew to a close.

“If Putin blocks our protests, we will come back in the hundreds of thousands [to commit acts of] civil disobedience.”

Did he think there would be violence? “Yes – I’m afraid there’s no other way,” he said, looking dejected.

Level playing field
This week has been a moment of truth for the mostly middle-class activists who say they want nothing more than what most of us in the West take for granted: a civil society and a level political playing field. The re-election of Putin came with many claims of election fraud from both domestic and foreign observers.

Dmitry Astakhov / AFP - Getty Images

Russia's outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev, right, and President-elect Vladimir Putin, left, attend a training session as they visit the luging sport center at the alpine ski resort in Krasnaya Polyana, some 30 miles from Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, on Friday.

Sergei Strokan, a foreign affairs writer for the popular Kommersant daily newspaper, seemed to put it best. “The big question for the Russian opposition is whether there is life after March 4.”

As we sipped coffees in the up-market Moscow bistro where many say the protest movement was born, I asked Strokan what the protesters could possibly do next. After all, according to the final tally, Putin won almost 64 percent of the vote. Even factoring in all of the alleged cheating, he still would have garnered a majority of ballots.

“Before they do anything truly effective,” Strokan replied, “they must first admit one simple fact: That Vladimir Putin still enjoys the support of the vast majority of Russians.”   

Yevgeny Tinchenko, a 25-year-old, unemployed Russian from Siberia, summed up the reasons behind that support. I met him in Zagorsk, about 50 miles outside of Moscow, where he was looking for a job in a traditionally pro-Putin religious center.

“Putin inspires trust as a person,” Tinchenko told me. “I simply like him. When I see him on TV I think things will improve if he is running the country.” But Tinchenko went on to say that he only saw Putin on state-run TV, and knew next to nothing about the other candidates.

There no doubt Putin used all of the ideological and propaganda weapons at his disposal to exploit those feelings  and win big, in the first round of the vote. Now he needs to fulfill the almost $170 billion in campaign promises he made over the past month – from pay raises for school teachers to more housing for war veterans. 

Putin power plays
Meanwhile, from his renewed position of strength, Putin is doing everything he can to diminish the opposition’s authority, in part by proffering a whole tree of olive branches.

For instance, the Kremlin called on Russia’s chief prosecutor to review the charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil oligarch and Putin arch-enemy, imprisoned since 2003 because he dared challenge Putin’s authority. This is seen as a sign they may be softened or dropped. 

It’s an example of how, firmly back in the driver’s seat, Putin can maneuver in a chess game he arguably plays better than anyone (except, perhaps, former world champion – and opposition leader – Gary Kasparov).

In another deft Putin move, he reached out to a rival candidate, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, after the latter said the election results were “unfair.” Putin called Prokhorov and asked him if he’d accept a cabinet post in the new government. (It’s unlikely, though, that Prokhorov, who came in a strong third in the election, will accept the offer.)

The moves underscore Putin’s clever attempt to peel away the center of the protest movement.

‘Two Russias’
But, unfortunately for Putin, this opposition goes much deeper than a clutch of hard-core extremists. It’s a whole emerging Russian middle-class – millions of people with money and property – but no voice. 

Mikhail Metzel / AP

Russian police officers block a street near the site of a protest in downtown Moscow, Russia on Monday.

“We are on the verge of losing stability for the single reason that society has already split,” said Strokan. “The crack is growing wider and wider, and what we see now is not one Russia, but two Russias. And neither listens to the other.”

Kremlin watchers like Strokan worry about a collision course that Putin and the protesters seem to be headed on. The president-elect can crack down on what he sees as a minority of U.S. stooges, but he doesn’t have any ideas about how to reconcile the two sides.

The protesters, meanwhile, know what they don’t want – and that’s another six years of Putin. But they, too, lack any effective strategy to pressure Putin to either reform the system, or step down.

It’s all shaping up into a perfect storm of long-term trouble for Russia. And that’s terrible news for America and the world.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union extensively.

Russians head to the polls on Sunday to vote in presidential elections most expect Vladimir Putin to win handily. If Putin wins, he was previously president from 2000-2008, he will return to the Kremlin after a four-year stint as prime minister. But, support for Putin’s return is not universal – a vocal opposition has been protesting the election for months.

NBC’s Jim Maceda, who has covered Russia since the days of the Soviet Union, is in Moscow following the elections. He answered reader questions about the elections, Putin’s hold on power, the opposition, etc.

Please replay the chat below.

Related links: Could Vladimir Putin be in power until 2024? 10 key questions about Russia's elections
Anti-Putin activists pay high price, but refuse to back down
U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, a laid-back Yankee in trouble in Putin's court
Anti-Putin protesters: Coping with bitter cold and big questions

At first glance, Michael McFaul seems an odd fit for the post of U.S. ambassador to Russia. Pushing 50, McFaul, a political scientist and tenured professor at Stanford University, has spent almost all his career in the halls of academia, not in diplomacy.

And he hardly looks like a threat; on the contrary, he’s engaging and jovial, combining a plain-speaking folksiness with a laid-back attitude he must get from his Montana and California background. Yet Professor, now Ambassador, McFaul has hit the Russian tarmac with all the force of a howitzer shell.

Just two days on the job (he arrived in mid-January) and he’d become headline news on Russia’s Kremlin-controlled Channel 1, which ran a story about a string of Russian opposition leaders lining up outside his new residence at Spaso House that day, suggesting they were coming to get their instructions from the man who once wrote "Russia’s Unfinished Revolution."

The Russian reporter’s suggestion was that McFaul, a fluent Russian speaker, had come back to finish business.

A red flag of anger suddenly waved defiantly across the national media. McFaul hadn’t yet found his work-out gear in his boxes and he was already being compared to those evil ambassadors of yore, conniving in the shadows to topple the host regime.

Siberia-style cold shoulder
But McFaul has taken the Siberia-style cold shoulder in stride. In fact, he says, he was only at that meeting for protocol.

Both Russian government and opposition leaders had come to see the visiting Deputy Secretary of State, William Burns, not him.

And he points out the Russian media never mentioned the rest of his second day on the job.

Cars with ribbons, balloons circle Moscow to protest Putin

"I had some very warm, cordial and substantive meetings with people like the Foreign Minister, Prime Minister [Vladimir] Putin’s foreign policy adviser, President [Dmitry] Medvedev’s foreign policy adviser, so when I read that it was unwelcome – well, we didn’t have the camera crews out for those so I guess that’s the problem, right?" he says.

The real problem, of course, is that, with presidential elections in March, McFaul’s past advocacy for a more democratic Russia has become easy prey for the Kremlin propaganda machine.

Tens of thousands of Russians defy cold to demand fair elections

In the same vapor breath, thousands of pro-Putin protesters who braved sub-zero Moscow temperatures in early February could be heard chanting "No Orange" (referring to the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution in Ukraine) and "No U.S. Embassy!" 

But, typically, McFaul is brushing off his rude welcome. In a veiled apology, he says he’s learning from his mistakes (while not naming any).

Anti-Putin protesters: Coping with bitter cold and big questions

'Invigorating!'
And he’s raring to go. "If you stop learning, to me as an academic that’s the most insulting thing you can say about anybody.’’

How does he sum up his first month as Ambassador? "Invigorating!"

And McFaul is already making his presence felt in other ways. He’s checking official records, but believes he’s the first resident of Spaso House to set up a Nerf Basketball hoop in one of the giant reception rooms.

US finds democracy a tougher sell abroad

He thinks he’s also the first to play badminton in the salon. McFaul is confident the chilly "first impression" will change.

"We’ll find our way and I think also Russia and our Russian guests will find their way in dealing with a different kind of group at Spaso House," he says.

And if it doesn’t get any better, Ambassador McFaul can always resort to his two secret weapons: basketball and badminton diplomacy.

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Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP - Getty Images

Two of the organisers of the upcoming opposition rally "For Fair Elections," anti-Kremlin blogger Alexei Navalny (R) and former chess champion Garry Kasparov (L), speak as they attend a meeting of the rally organisers in Moscow, on Jan. 31, 2012.

MOSCOW – By any standard, it was an impressive array of individuals. Seated under a large poster of a young Andrei Sakharov – the Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, 1975 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and spiritual father of their movement – the brain trust of Moscow's anti-Putin opposition sat at card tables debating their next move.  

The group was putting the finishing touches on the plan for this Saturday's protest – an hour march through central Moscow and a short rally across the Moskva River from the Kremlin. It will be the third mass opposition demonstration in Moscow since the December 4 parliamentary polls that were widely criticized for voter fraud in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party.  

Six weeks ago, more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets to vent their anger with the corruption and stagnation of the Putin regime. But since then, the end-of-year Russian holidays, followed by a Siberian cold snap with record-breaking temperatures, has undeniably sapped the protest movement's energy. The organizers collective fatigue was palpable.

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, led the meeting. Not because he's so smart he almost beat a super computer at chess, but because his countless arrests and beatings at the hands of Russian riot police had earned him the mantle. Seated beside him were the two young stars of the new generation of Russian dissidents, the right-of-center blogger Alexei Navalny and socialist activist Sergei Udaltsov. 

Str / AFP - Getty Images

Opposition activists hang their banner reading: "Putin, go!" atop a bulding's roof, just over the Moskva River river from the Kremlin (foreground) in Moscow, on Feb. 1.

Both men, in their 30's, had recently spent weeks in jail on charges of organizing illegal protests. Now they were subdued, speaking occasionally, but more often just listening, scrolling through their iPhone messages or tweeting.

Opposite Kasparov, sat Vladimir Ryzhkov.  He too had paid his dues. Once the youngest MP elected to Boris Yeltsin's parliament at age 27, Ryzhkov, broad-minded and articulate, was seen rather differently by Putin's Kremlin. The “dangerous” reformer has effectively been ostracized from mainstream politics. 

“No doubt the Russian Winter is not as inviting as the Arab Spring,” Kasparov quipped. “But I would say that 30, 40 or 50,000 in this weather will send a message across the river to the Kremlin.''

But what message will that be? Putin's propaganda machine will likely jump on any smaller turn-out, proving, they will no doubt say, that the protest is petering out.

By the end of their two hour meeting the protest organizers were clearly divided over what to do next to regain some momentum.

Navalny argued that the mass protests of December needed to grow bigger and more frequent to pressure the Kremlin. But author Boris Akunin argued that the days of the big protests were over. They were too costly, too time-consuming, and had already peaked. It was time, he said, to focus on smaller, flash mob-generated actions.

Misha Japaridze / AP

Russian opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov shows a V sign after he was released from a detention center in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012. Udaltsov, whose jailing became a rallying point for the Russian opposition, has been freed after a month in custody.

Indeed, across Moscow, such “attacks” are growing in number. On any given day, small groups of protesters walk out of the city's many subway stations, their mouths covered with strips of masking tape, on which is written “We Have No Voice.” They're arrested almost as soon as they walk into the street. They also have tried cyber-attacks on the Kremlin's Internet. Within hours of the launch of Putin's own website, it was jammed by thousands of emails calling on him to resign.

And in arguably the most startling “protest,” several activists managed to hang a giant banner on the top of a building directly opposite the Kremlin for all to see. Painted on the banner, both Putin’s likeness covered by a huge “X,” and beneath it, the words, “Go Away!” in Russian. Amazingly it took an hour for the police to spot it and tear it down. But, while often hilarious, none of these flash mob tactics are likely to keep Putin from winning a six-year term in the March 4 presidential elections.

Kremlin's photo-doctoring backfires big time

Putin himself seems to have come to that conclusion. Creating massive traffic jams in central Moscow today as his convoy skidded over the icy snow from one campaign stop to another, he's got his swagger back. His camp believes the protest movement is too divided to coalesce around one opposition candidate. And, besides, the other official candidates – Communist Gennady Zyuganov, Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Social Democrat Sergei Mironov and billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets Mikhail Prokhorov – are all Kremlin-approved because they pose no real threat.

Andrey Smirnov / AFP - Getty Images

A police officer braves the cold as he detains a demonstrator wearing a carnival costume of death who tried to take part in an unauthorized stage protest just outside the Interior Ministry headquarters in Moscow on Friday. The sign on the protester's chest says "Corruption."

So what happens to the movement if Putin wins? Ryzhkov painted a dark picture: “There will be mass protests starting March 5th,” he said in his Moscow home and office following the meeting. “And then we stay in the streets until reforms start and Putin promises new legislative and presidential elections.”
 
“You mean Tent Cities,” I asked?

“Yes,” he replied. “Like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.”

And what if Putin doesn't reform, but instead cracks down?

“Unfortunately Putin is a dangerous man. He can start some violence like [Syria’s] Bashar al-Assad or [Libya’s] Moammar Ghadafi. But I hope that if he sees a half million people in the streets, he will start reforms instead of violence.”

Many middle-class, well-educated Russians are calling the protests a turning point. But is it the beginning of the end of Putin's political career? Or rather the beginning of an unprecedented second 12-year run of power for the only real leader Russians have known this century?

The answer is blowing in a bone-chilling, Siberian wind.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union since the 1980's.

Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP - Getty Images

Anti-Kremlin blogger Alexei Navalny speaks during a rally against the December 4 parliament elections in Moscow, on Dec. 24, 2011. Tens of thousands of people filled an avenue in Moscow to protest against the alleged rigging of parliamentary polls in a new challenge to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin's authority.

LONDON – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and those who work for him, seem determined to turn a relatively unknown, 30-something protester into a larger-than-life political rival.

It all began on a cold, December 4 afternoon, when Alexei Navalny stood up among a small crowd in Moscow and blasted Putin's United Russia party as one of “crooks and thieves” who had just stolen the parliamentary elections. The Kremlin put him in jail for two weeks. The tactic was obvious: keeping Navalny locked up would hinder his ability to organize a massive anti-Putin demonstration on December 24.

Instead, the move backfired and ended up boosting Navalny's profile – and street cred – at a time when the splintered opposition was hungry for a new leader.

By Dec. 24 he was out of prison and had become the face of the opposition. His rant in the bitter cold that day inspired more than 100,000 people in the street to “take back the election – by force if necessary” from those who had stolen it.
 
But catapulting Navalny into instant celebrity wasn't good enough for the over-anxious Kremlinites. Now they've made him the face of their own absurdity as well. 

Open up last Saturday's edition of Arguments & Facts, a popular national daily, and you'll find a photo of a beaming Navalny standing next to Putin's arch enemy, the oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky, himself sporting a Cheshire cat smile.

theguardian.com

A screen grab from the Guardian shows the original photo of Alexei Navalny with Prokhorov on the top left, the doctored one with Berezovsky and some other fakes that have been circulated online.

The caption reads: “Navalny has never hidden that Boris Berezovsky gives him money for the struggle with Putin.”

Well, it took Navalny and his corral of fellow bloggers a few nano-seconds to work out that the photo had been doctored.

In the actual photo, Navalny is standing next to another, Putin-friendly oligarch, Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of the New Jersey Nets and a candidate for Russia's presidency.

But standing next to Prokhorov is seen as benign because he's neither considered an agitator nor a serious threat to the Kremlin.

Instead of just pointing out the fakery, Navalny’s supporters took things to the next level – by beaming photos across the blogosphere of him standing next to the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a space alien, Putin and other action men.

Rich history of air-brushing
The air-brushing of photos for propaganda reasons is an old Soviet art. Joseph Stalin routinely had  friends and allies erased from photos taken with him when they became his enemies (often after he’d had them killed, as in the famous case of Nikolai Yezhov, the leader of the NKVD, precursor of the KGB, in the 1920s.) 

My personal faking favorite is the iconic shot of several Soviet soldiers holding up the hammer-sickle-flag above the German Reichstag building, marking the effective end of the war in Europe in 1945. If you look closely you'll see that the soldier supporting the flag-bearer is wearing a watch on his left arm. In the original, however, he has watches on both arms – suggesting that he might have looted them. The Russian magazine Ogonok removed the second watch just before publication.
 
Of course, the practice is not restricted to Russia. Ever since photographs became a means by which world leaders defined themselves to their public, photos of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse-tung, and going back in time, Grant, Sherman and, yes, even Abraham Lincoln, were doctored in order to enhance their image.   .
 
But seldom has a manipulated photo backfired with the same concussive effect that Navalny's has.

Staff / Reuters

Activists of the pro-Kremlin youth group "Nashi" gather to protest against the activity of Russian blogger, political and social activist Alexei Navalny with a fake placard of him in central Moscow Dec. 26, 2011.

One can even imagine the taciturn Putin, an ex-KGB agent, letting out an unforced guffaw as he scans Navalny's blog and finds the latest “photo-toad” (an English translation of the Russian slang for a doctored photo) of Navalny standing next to Bender, the robot from the comic strip Futurama.

Putin's camp had no doubt hoped to turn Navalny into an enemy of Russia's people. Instead, the Kremlin itself has become a lightning rod for Russians' scorn and mockery, and Navalny has seen himself launched into the stratosphere of a Marvel Comics hero, without even having to lift a megaphone.

In the lead-up to the March presidential election, Putin – still considered a shoo-in to win it all – may yet turn out to be his own worst propagandist.

Jim Maceda is an NBC news correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the Soviet Union since the 1980s.

AP Photo/Evrim Aydin, Anatolia

Rescuers search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed hotel in Van, eastern Turkey, late Wednesday.

By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent

LONDON – The pictures and video of the collapsed Bamyan Hotel in Van, Turkey, where at least eight were killed overnight by a 5.7 magnitude earthquake, were particularly eerie for me.

The victims were mostly the rescuers and journalists covering the aftermath of a previous, deadlier 7.2 magnitude quake that struck on Oct. 23 dozens of miles away. Worse – they had been told they’d be safe there.

As sniffer dogs and frantic first responders found and dug out at least 26 survivors – one died later in the hospital – I flashed back to September, 1985.

We were a group of about a dozen NBC News personnel who had just arrived in Mexico City to cover the destruction left by a massive 8.1 earthquake. Hundreds of buildings had collapsed, and thousands of people were killed. But we felt relatively secure on the 14th floor of the five-Star Marriott Hotel. We’d been assured that the building was “earthquake proof” and had only suffered “minor damage.”

And that’s just what the Bamyan Hotel staff had said to journalists after Turkey’s initial Oct. 23 quake that toppled at least 2,000 buildings and killed some 600 people.

“There’s no structural damage here,” one Turkish journalist said he had been told.

It sounded so familiar.

Ali Ihsan Ozturk / Andolu Agency via EPA

Rescue workers try to salvage people from a collapsed building after an earthquake in Van, eastern of Turkey, on Thursday. Click on the photo to see a complete slideshow.

Minutes into our first meeting to talk about the next day’s coverage, the floor started to shake. We all fell silent. Looking up, a hanging lamp banged against the ceiling as it swayed in 180-degree arcs. Someone said, “Uh oh.” Someone else stifled a scream. Then we felt the whole building begin to sway. It didn’t feel like it would stop. I didn’t believe it would stop. It was like a huge rollercoaster you have lost trust in. We were going to die. 

But it did stop – and then began to sway backwards. More screams. And then sounds I can still hear – tons of screeching metal. And then more screams.

I ran – we ran – down what seemed like endless flights of stairs, yelling as much to myself as to the others, “Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic!!”

Amazingly, we got to what we thought was the ground floor and burst through the door. But it wasn’t the ground floor – we had rushed out onto the second-floor mezzanine garden. It was nighttime, but, silhouetted against the sky, I could see the outline of the hotel tower as it continued swaying.

More screeching metal. And then the realization came that we had to go back into the hotel, find the stairs in the dark, and get out to the street.

Which, with our hearts in our mouths, we did.

The Marriott survived that 7.8 aftershock. The staff who had said it was safe were – just barely – correct.
But none of us that September night dared go back into the building to grab any personal belongings.

This was years before it became standard for news teams to travel with tents, flashlights, water bottles and ponchos when covering an earthquake story – especially in a large metropolis like Mexico City. We were hardly prepared at all.

Hours later, and still very shaken, we checked into the Camino Real. It had one major thing going for it – it was only two or three stories tall.

Looking at the images of devastation in Van, it was obvious that the standards used in building the Mexico City Marriott were not applied. The Bamyan didn’t stand a chance against the 5.7 aftershock. Turkish government officials have complained for years about the rickety state of Turkey’s hotels and other buildings. But builders still cut corners. Some reporters staying at the Bamyan said they’d seen “small cracks” after October’s massive quake.

“I could easily put my hand through the cracks in the walls,” laughed NBC News cameraman Dave Moodie in the typical gallows style of a hardened journalist. Moodie had stayed at the Bamyan for a week while covering the worst-hit town, Ercis.

It is, of course, no laughing matter. He was shocked to see the hotel on TV this morning, flattened like a pancake.

And I will never forget those minutes in that Mexico Marriott – to this day I HATE to stay in any hotel room above the second floor.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London. 

Erik De Castro / Reuters

A U.S. soldier from 127th Military Police, Task Force "Cacti" and a linguist walk along a road during a patrol in Khas Konar district in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan on Oct. 6, 2011.

By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
 
We’ve paid so dearly for the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,600 U.S. troops killed and thousands more wounded, that it’s hard to believe that the country is still on the brink. But, it’s worth remembering that 10 years ago, Taliban henchmen were executing “adulterers” and other “violators of Sharia law” by stoning or with a burst of AK-47 fire to the back in the packed stadiums of Kabul and Kandahar.

Sick women were denied care in Taliban-controlled hospitals and clinics; girls were kept hidden from view, forbidden an education, quietly taking their places behind the family chattel when walking in the streets. And, of course, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida commanders had free reign back then – to plot their deadly attacks from their comfortable homes in Jalalabad, or train their new recruits in their camps along the border with Pakistan.
 
We know what happened. Ten years ago this week the U.S. launched an air and ground war against al-Qaida and the Taliban government that hosted and protected it.

 As forward observers often disguised as journalists or aid workers, agents of the CIA and U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency trained up and worked with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, while directing U.S. bombings of Taliban targets. Within weeks, both al-Qaida and the Taliban fled to Pakistan.

Within months the U.S. focus had shifted to Iraq. And within three years, the Taliban had regrouped, reloaded and retaken its strongholds in the south and east of the country.

In a symbiotic merging of forces, al-Qaida, from Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, provided the Taliban with money, logistics, and jihad credibility; the Taliban, meanwhile, gave al-Qaida plenty of young foot soldiers, and a battlefield for its foreign fighters.

Today the Taliban has been largely driven from and defeated in those former strongholds by U.S. military “surges” in 2009 (Helmand) and 2010 (Kandahar) – critical Taliban staging areas cleared and still held by mostly U.S. and British troops.

Ghost towns have sprung back to life. Schools and clinics have reopened. Roads are full of Afghan farmers moving their produce market. But in provinces and districts beyond those security bubbles, especially in the north and west of the country, the Taliban is present, and probing. Afghan government and security officials are killed or kidnapped almost daily. In the capital of Kabul, the Taliban seems to be able to strike at will.

Kamran Jebreili / AP

Afghan boys play with a ball on top of the remains of a Russian armored vehicle in Kabul on Oct. 6, 2011.

We’ll be here for a ‘long time’
We can’t know what happens next. Is Afghanistan headed, again, toward chaos? Or will it maintain some kind of representative government and contain the insurgents?

That really depends on what U.S. forces do after 2014. And let’s be clear, as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Lt. Gen. James Allen said just this week, despite all the political and economic pressures to the contrary, U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan for “a long time.”

U.S. war planners in Kabul tell me they’ll pull out part of the surge forces – some 10,000 troops, or two brigade combat teams – by the end of December. And the remaining 23,000 surge troops will return home by September 2012 – just two months before the next U.S. presidential election.

But both countries are already negotiating the details of a Status of Forces Agreement – or SOFA – to take effect after 2014. U.S. military sources in Afghanistan say that the SOFA will be similar to the one signed by the U.S. and Iraq in 2008, meaning tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in country, but in a low profile, non-combat role, mostly for training and logistics and to deter the Taliban from attempting to overthrow the Afghan government.

It’s unclear how long Allen’s “long time” commitment is, but it’s certainly years, not months. During which time U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan’s tribal belt would likely reach record numbers and the Afghan National Security Forces would benefit from U.S. know-how in long-term warfare and maintaining an air force and surveillance assets. Ideally, the U.S. would bottle up al-Qaida from the air while Afghan forces would contain the Taliban on the ground. At least, that’s the plan.

But that’s also a best-case scenario, and so much could go wrong.

Mohammad Ismail / Reuters

A school girl uses a mobile phone to take pictures of artifacts on display at Kabul National Museum September 25, 2011. Click on the photo to see a complete slideshow of Afghanistan: Nation at a Crossroads.

Worst case scenario
I’ve watched Afghan forces progress exponentially since 2002, when conscripts for the “new” Afghan National Army were given muskets and taught their right foot from their left. But fighting for their own destiny – will they wilt and run?

The words of a U.S. Army officer in charge of training Afghan soldiers in Kandahar – only two miles from the hometown of Taliban leader Mullah Omar – still give me pause. “I’d rather train the Taliban,” he told me one July night last year. “Seriously, compared to these guys, the Taliban make better fighters; they’re more disciplined and much more honest.” 

Another worry – the ethnic Pashtuns, including most Taliban fighters, have shown no interest in joining the Afghan Army. What if they succeed in their ancient dream of creating a borderless “Pashtunstan,” disregarding the Durand Line separating Afghanistan from Pakistan and incorporating their “Pakhtun” brothers to the east?

What would the U.S. do if its “non-combat” troops suddenly found themselves in the crosshairs of another Afghan civil war? Would it cut and run, like the Russians in 1989? Possibly. Would it have the stomach to call back in the cavalry, and try to reimpose military order? Not likely. Could it make an impact with drone strikes and bombings of Afghan cities, along the new front lines? Even less likely.

No, in this worse-case scenario, after all the U.S. has paid in blood and treasure, it might well find itself, by 2015, looking on helplessly as the Afghanistan that was to be its bulwark of democracy in South Asia turns the clock back a generation – to a time of brutal warlords, tribal feuds, drug wars and massive numbers of refugees.

An ideal time for international jihadists, al-Qaida leaders and affiliates of all stripes, and even Mullah Omar himself, to return to Afghanistan and reclaim the terror camps and homes they’d abandoned years before.

As is so often the case in Afghanistan, whether it’s success, stalemate or surrender – the endgame is anyone’s guess.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London who has covered the wars in Afghanistan since the 1980’s.

Related links:
Young Afghans reflect on changes 10 years after U.S. invasion
PhotoBlog: 10 years in Afghanistan: With US troops on a mountaintop outpost
World Blog: Kabul rocks...with music
Afghan warlords need help with cable, too
Strategies have shifted, but soldier committed to Afghanistan
World Blog on Afghanistan