Word: afghanistan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chief concern of the U.S. is to prevent the new leadership from kicking out the U.S. air base in the northern city of Manas, which is a vital transport link for America's war in nearby Afghanistan. About 50,000 coalition troops passed through it in March alone. On Saturday, Otunbayeva assured U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the new Kyrgyz government would abide by previous agreements to let Manas operate. But the Russian government has lobbied hard to force Kyrgyzstan to evict it, with a senior Russian official telling reporters on April 8 that "in Kyrgyzstan, there should...
...February 27, Staff Sergeant William "Seth" Ricketts, 27, was killed by small-arms fire in Badghis province, a remote and previously uncontested area of western Afghanistan that has recently seen an upsurge of violence. On his fifth tour since joining the Army the day after 9/11, he became the 997th U.S. casualty in the war, according to Pentagon records...
...temporary coffin carrying Ricketts arrived at Dover Air Force Base on March 2. (The body of Specialist Ian Gelig, also killed in Afghanistan, arrived on the same plane.) Dover is the first stop for dead soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families are often on hand to attend a brief, solemn ceremony as the flag-wrapped cases are removed from the plane and brought to the mortuary. The ban on media coverage of these transfers, in place during the Bush Administration, was lifted in February 2009, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ruled it should...
...part of President Obama's plan to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan by the fall, more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers cycle through the base every day, either heading into or out of Afghanistan. Flights between Manas and Afghanistan employ Air Force C-17 and other military aircraft, while those from Manas to Europe use commercial airliners. Beyond its bus-terminal mission, it's key to airlifting supplies into and evacuating wounded troops from Afghanistan. Air Force KC-135 aerial refueling tankers are also based at Manas...
...Kremlin and Bakiyev's government had deteriorated sharply in recent months, in part because of Bakiyev's powerful son Maxim, who had acted as a negotiator with the U.S. over the use of the Manas air base outside the capital, Bishkek, to ferry supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (Amid Wednesday's upheaval, the U.S. State Department said Maxim Bakiyev was on his way to the U.S. for consultations.) The opposition had also accused the Bakiyev government of taking an increasingly anti-Russian stance on various issues. Russian-language websites were recently blocked or shut down in Kyrgyzstan, prompting...