Word: afghanistan
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...document reiterates familiar aspirations for boosting the country's security, development and governance, but fixed targets are in shorter supply - and some appear to have been scaled back. For example, Germany, the third largest contributor to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, had been under pressure from its allies to boost its troop commitment, but two days before the London summit it announced an increase of only 500 extra soldiers plus a so-called "flexible reserve" force of 350 deployable at short notice - far fewer than Washington had hoped for, and with an emphasis on training Afghan forces rather than engaging...
Despite a retooled strategy that links a U.S. troop surge to efforts to build the Afghans' capacity to govern and protect themselves, Western optimism over Afghanistan's prospects has continued to ebb. So, a key task of the Jan. 28 conference convened in London by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and co-hosted by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was to foster confidence that a positive outcome could be achieved sooner rather than later. "Today's conference represents a decisive step towards greater Afghan leadership to secure, stabilize and develop Afghanistan," declared...
...lunch of goat's cheese and sea bass underlined how little would be decided at the conference itself. And the document's boilerplate contents revealed the limits on what had been agreed in the detailed negotiations that preceded Thursday's summit. (See video of the war in Afghanistan up close...
...China, voted to shut it down in 2009. The U.S government's offer to pay much higher rent meant that the base (now officially called a Transit Center in deference to local sensibilities) survived the threat of closure. It remains today as an embarkation point for troops bound for Afghanistan, and a reminder of the Great Game in which Kyrgyzstan is ensnared. (See 25 (more) authentic Asian experiences...
...Even if a growing consensus holds that a political solution is inevitable, the fighting is likely to intensify over the next year. But it will be, fundamentally, a contest over the terms under which the Taliban are to resume a role in governing Afghanistan, not over whether they will play any role...