Word: afghanistanism
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Often, the death of a private security contractor in Afghanistan goes unheralded; after all, they risk their lives for money, not country. Yet the drivers and guards who ride shotgun on the long convoys snaking over the mountains also suffer heavy casualties. Many have died heroically. Figures released to TIME by NATO showed that from June to September, more than 145 truck drivers and guards were killed in attacks on convoys and 123 vehicles were destroyed. (See up-close pictures of the war in Afghanistan...
Last month, Taliban fighters in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, hijacked two NATO fuel tankers. The robbery escalated into an international incident because NATO aircraft, following a German request, bombed the two stranded tankers while civilians were siphoning free fuel. The death toll - more than 125 Afghans perished, nearly half of them civilians - overshadowed the gruesome fact that the Taliban had beheaded one of the tanker drivers. Beheadings and killings of NATO supply drivers are a common occurrence, according to several private security contractors. (See pictures of the U.S. military's cat-and-mouse game with the Taliban...
...main supply arteries into Afghanistan are through mountain passes along the Pakistan border, through the fabled Khyber Pass, near Peshawar, and Spin Boldak in the south. The Khyber Pass was closed down by the Taliban seven times this year, and convoys were unable to get through, according to NATO. Currently, the Pakistani army, under pressure from Washington, is mounting a military operation to sweep Taliban fighters out of the Khyber Pass. On Aug. 30, near Spin Boldak, the Taliban attacked a major NATO convoy and destroyed 25 trucks and military vehicles. Contractors say that Taliban attacks have made vital supplies...
...main Kabul-Kandahar highway was once a showpiece for how Western aid would modernize Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Repaved in 2003, the 300-mile highway is now pocked with craters from roadside bombs. Travelers face three or four Taliban checkpoints along the way. A Western businessman says his trucking firm pays a local commander from $5,000 to $6,000 for the safe passage of each fuel tanker along the highway, a sum which he suspects the Taliban get a share of. He also claims that in order to ship fuel from Kandahar to a Dutch base...
...Read "Behind the Taliban's Resurgence in Afghanistan...