Afghan war to loom large for Obama -- LATimes

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -- President-elect Barack Obama will inherit a war in Afghanistan that is certain to play a central role in his presidency, a conflict whose cost in blood and money is escalating even as many Afghans speak of a growing sense of peril in their daily lives.

Afghans followed the American presidential race with a great deal of interest. In a country with one of the world's highest illiteracy rates, relatively few people interviewed could identify both candidates by name, usually referring to "the young one" and "the old one" -- or to Barack Obama, who is much better known here, and "that other one." But many Afghans knew that both John McCain and Obama had called for an increased number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan -- a notion that is generally applauded, despite anger over the record number of accidental civilian deaths so far this year at the hands of coalition forces.