Word: afghanization
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...visitor who dropped by her home was MILF commander Mokasid Delna. That relationship is important, says Kit Collier, an Australian political scientist who recently compiled a report on combating terrorism in Southeast Asia for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. "Delna was in the same Afghan training camps in 1991 as Umar Patek, making him a key ally," Collier says. Zamboanga police chief Col. Lurimer Detran has told the media that Salahudin Hassan, who carried out the bombing at Edwin Andrews Air Base, is a relative of Delna...
...Collier warns that if peace talks between the Philippine government and the MILF breaks down, Dulmatin and Patek would be well placed to launch further terrorist attacks. "There's no doubt they are very canny operatives. Patek in particular is a combat veteran of impressive credentials, an Afghan veteran who has also been fighting - going back to the 1990s - alongside the MILF...
Just a few miles up the road is the biggest gift of all: a $128 million hydroelectric-dam project that when completed will provide enough power to light 1.7 million Afghan homes, for about a quarter of the population. It has some 200 immediate job vacancies that could provide income to hamlets like Madin's and plant the roots of a thriving community. But the Taliban prevents potential workers from even approaching the dam site. Shervington believes he needs at least another 100 troops to drive out the insurgents in his area, but foreign forces are already stretched thin...
...American project came to a halt. Decades of war and neglect ensued, and the power plant fell into disrepair. By the time U.S. engineers returned to the powerhouse in 2002, it was squeezing out just 3 MW, and even that only because of the efforts of the head Afghan engineer, Rasul Baqi. He and the few remaining engineers improvised, hammering crude approximations of broken parts out of scrap metal and piecing together electrical lines with barbed wire. He never missed a day of work, he says, not even during the worst of the fighting, when the mujahedin stood off against...
...monthly foreign casualties in Afghanistan exceeded those in Iraq for the first time since 2003. On June 13 hundreds of Taliban escaped in a daring jailbreak in Kandahar city; many joined an audacious attack on a strategic district just outside the former Taliban capital a few days later. Though Afghan National Army forces, backed by NATO troops, were able to contain the assault, it was a stark reminder that the Taliban, declared all but dead in 2002, remains resilient. A campaign of kidnappings, targeted assassinations of government officials and suicide bombings throughout the south has belied claims that stability...