Word: afghan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Joint U.S.-Afghan operations are plagued by mistrust, with the living quarters of allied and Afghan troops separated by walls, razor wire, guarded gates and machine-gun nests. "Currently, coalition forces eat, sleep and play in separate spaces from the people they are trying to train," U.S. Marine Captain Jason Moore noted in a report earlier this year for the Corps' Command and Staff College at Quantico, Va. In part, that's because Taliban sympathizers in the Afghan military have shot and killed U.S. troops. "Intentional or not, it conveys a sense of distrust, hostility and disrespect to their hosts...
While President Obama is setting timetables for Afghanistan, hoping to start bringing U.S. troops home by 2011, Mackenzie's words note that the very concept of deadlines is largely foreign to Afghans. "Time is not seen as a valuable resource in Afghan society," he wrote. "Correspondingly, the use of calendars at all levels is virtually nonexistent...
...difficulty of the task. Less than a year into his presidency, Obama had to come before the nation to explain that it was losing a war. "The status quo is not sustainable," he said, staring directly into millions of living rooms. (See pictures of life in the National Afghan Army...
...Obama strategy for victory has several parts, few of them novel. He will up the troop strength to nearly 100,000, from just 32,000 when he came into office. He will redouble efforts to support the corrupt Afghan government, build up the so-far scattershot Afghan security apparatus, and refocus efforts on establishing a sustainable, non-narcotic agricultural base for the economy. He promised to begin removing troops in July of 2011, but offered no guidance about the pace of withdrawal or an end point for the war. "As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond...
...surge, officials at the alliance say. But this will still fall well short of the 10,000 troops Washington has been seeking. And it is likely to come with demands for a more robust strategy to build civil institutions, including benchmarks on stamping out fraud and corruption in the Afghan government...