Word: afghanization
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...after the country's landmark presidential elections on Aug. 20, Afghanistan has seen the highest level of civilian deaths since the Taliban was routed out of power in 2002. As uncertainty surrounds the final outcome of the presidential vote, fraught with low turnout and mounting accusations of election fraud, Afghan civilians are at a greater risk than ever of violent attacks, aid officials warn. "With the outcome of voting in Afghanistan unclear, the danger and insecurity facing millions of Afghans continues and in fact is higher now than ever," says Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director. "Antigovernment groups...
Could Afghanistan's opium boom be over? Perhaps. According to the latest report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, opium cultivation has crashed in just one year, with prices at their lowest level since the late 1990s. "The bottom is starting to fall out of the Afghan opium market," says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the agency, which released its annual opium survey on Sept...
Journalists covering the Afghan war rely heavily on coalition forces to gain access to a hardscrabble backcountry populated by Taliban militants. So the reaction was far from muted when the news broke last week that the Defense Department was paying a controversial private firm to profile reporters seeking to accompany - or "embed" - with troops. Reporters quickly complained that it was tantamount to building a blacklist and that the U.S. military was deliberately working to sideline journalists critical of its mission...
...section titled "Key Takeaway Points," it was mentioned that my stories have been lengthy, with plenty of context and sources. It was added, however, that "most notably, he tends to quote experts" from a British think tank "which has been critical of the coalition mission and the Afghan government." A day after the e-mail - which included the Rendon analysis - was sent to the officer, my application was rejected without explanation. (See pictures of election day in Afghanistan...
...military spokeswoman in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker, acknowledged that public-affairs officers in "a couple of instances" had been found to have interfered with embed applications and were "corrected immediately." To her knowledge, she says, this has never happened in Afghanistan. "A cursory review of Afghan coverage completely disproves" the notion that it's a policy, she says, pointing out that reporters who are deeply critical of U.S. forces have been allowed to embed multiple times. The Rendon Group's media analysis, she went on, was part of a broader one-year, $1.5 million contract to ease some...