Word: afghanization
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...nearly three years, as U.S. warplanes and drones hit targets spread across the country's corrugated, dun-colored mountains and green poppy-growing valleys, every mission detailed by the Air Force in its daily "airpower summary" has been deemed a success. In July, B-1 bombers began striking Afghan targets with 500-lb. bombs guided to their prey by a new targeting pod slung under the plane's belly. Known as the Sniper, the pod sends long-range, high-resolution video--it can tell whether an Afghan on the ground is armed--right into the cockpit. Such weapons systems allow...
...military dismisses such tallies as exaggerated, and their provenance is often murky. In no case is it murkier than in the Aug. 22 strike on the western Afghan village of Azizabad. What is not in dispute is that U.S. special forces on the ground ordered an AC-130 gunship to attack at least two houses after they and their Afghan allies came under fire. The result of the attack, however, is far from certain. The Pentagon concluded that up to 35 insurgents and as many as seven civilians were killed. But the Afghan government, backed by a United Nations inquiry...
Whatever the tally, officials both inside and outside the U.S. military say attacks that kill civilians occur with distressing regularity; they generate headlines only when dozens die. Afghans vividly recall the July 2002 bombing of a wedding party--celebratory gunfire led to retaliation by an AC-130--that killed up to 48 civilians and wounded 117 in Oruzgan province; many were women and children. This past July, 47 people were killed and nine wounded on their way to a wedding in eastern Afghanistan. Among the dead were 39 women and children, including the bride-to-be, Afghan authorities said...
...that has seen hundreds die in suicide bombings and explosions over the past month. At the same time, speculation is stirring that Wednesday's seemingly spur-of-the-moment attack on Gilani's convoy may have been retaliation for a U.S.-led attack earlier in the day along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Previous military activity in the same area has ratcheted up tensions between the trio of uneasy allies in the war against terror...
...seeking to give Pakistan political coverage. The United States' rules of engagement in the region allow for "hot pursuit" across the border if militants fire upon foreign forces. In one such incident, 11 Pakistani soldiers died in June when U.S. aircraft bombed a border post. American troops on the Afghan side of the border claimed that militants were firing at them from the border post, and that they didn't know Pakistani troops were stationed there...