Word: afghanistans
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...people - compared with 28.7 million in Saudi Arabia - Yemen, which came into being when North and South Yemen merged in 1990, is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. Long a source of jihadis, the region sent hundreds of fighters to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and, to judge by the number of captured, killed or identified insurgents in Iraq, continues to be one of the biggest suppliers of fighters to regional conflicts. It's common knowledge in the tearooms of Sana'a and in Western embassies that the government of northern Yemen used jihadis...
...pictures of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on LIFE.com...
...provided by manned aircraft - has muted such criticism. While it took 12 years, from 1995 to 2007, for the Predator fleet to rack up 250,000 flight hours, it reached the 500,000-hour mark just 20 months later. The Air Force currently runs 37 Predator "orbits" 24/7 over Afghanistan and Iraq, which requires about 150 personnel, as many as 10 pairs of pilots and sensor operators and four Predators. While their most important mission is to provide ground troops with real-time video for hours on end, the Predator crews can also fire missiles when high-value targets...
...August, President Obama laid out the rationale for stepping up the fight in Afghanistan: If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people. Obamas Af-Pak plan is, in essence, a countersanctuary strategy that denies safe havens to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, with the overriding goal of making America and its allies safer. Under Obama, the Pentagon has already sent a surge of 21,000 troops...
...This is a sound policy. If U.S. forces were not in Afghanistan, the Taliban, with its al-Qaeda allies in tow, would seize control of the country's south and east and might even take it over entirely. A senior Afghan politician told me that the Taliban would be in Kabul within 24 hours without the presence of international forces. This is not because the Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no more than 20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man Afghan army are still so weak...