Word: afghanization
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...years, if not decades, to bear fruit, and there are growing signs that America's patience is fraying. On July 23, Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that a lot more sacrifice would be required of Americans, but he insisted that it was worth the price to "straighten out" the Afghan-Pakistan border region because of the terrorism threat it potentially represents to Europe and the U.S. Still, American officials are lowering expectations after nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, insisting that progress rather than victory is the best that can be achieved over the coming year...
...seen the security for the Afghan people deteriorate over the last three years," Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told troops during a visit to southern Afghanistan on July 17. "We have to start to turn that tide over the next 12 to 18 months." Even as Mullen was hoping for a year and a half to turn things around, Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged on the same day that the U.S. public is war-weary and that progress must come quickly. "After the Iraq experience, nobody is prepared to have a long slog where...
Gates and Mullen face a raft of festering problems in Afghanistan: the Taliban and its allies are growing stronger, and they have killed 35 U.S. troops in the first three weeks of July - more than in any month since the U.S. invaded in October 2001. The Afghan government is salted with corruption, while its prisons are hellholes that turn citizens against their government. Pakistan remains a safe haven for launching attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan, and despite the Obama Administration's strenuous efforts at persuasion, Islamabad shows little interest in extending its campaign against domestic extremism...
...grapple with the war he inherited, President Obama has made several important changes. He and Gates fired the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan in May, replacing him with General Stanley McChrystal, who is currently in the middle of a 60-day assessment of how to turn the Afghan war around. Obama is dispatching an additional 21,000 U.S. troops there this year, bringing the total to 68,000 by 2010. His commanders recently ordered 4,000 Marines into Helmand province to begin the long process of "clear, hold and build" - driving the Taliban out of its strongholds, staying there...
...Camels in the Outback? Yes indeed. There are estimated to be over a million of these ungulates roaming at will through the desert, descendants of the original camel caravans led by Afghan drivers in the 1860s and 1870s. It was these migrant cameleers who helped opened up the continent's arid interior to travelers. The country's most famous train, the Ghan, www.gsr.com.au, is named in their honor. (See pictures of Australia's hidden islands...