Word: afghanization
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...tribal elders and scholars from Helmand province. The general's objective: to build support for Operation Moshtarak, a massive offensive on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah. McChrystal ran through the military phase of the plan, which would involve 6,000 U.S. Marines and British soldiers and 4,500 Afghan troops and police. Then he described how these troops would protect the town while a "government in a box" - a corps of Afghan officials who had been training for this moment for months - would start administering the town. The elders all signed off on the plan, but not before...
There was good news from other fronts too. In Pakistan, a joint operation in Karachi by the CIA and Pakistan's own spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had netted a very big fish: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's military chief. In quick succession, the ISI had also rolled up two of the Taliban's "shadow" governors of Afghanistan's provinces and another senior figure. And in North Waziristan, near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, a missile launched from a CIA drone had struck at the heart of the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group responsible...
...drone strike earlier this month that either killed or severely wounded Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban. Knocking Mehsud out of commission may have been the favor Islamabad was repaying with the capture of Baradar and three Afghan Taliban "shadow" governors who were operating out of Pakistan. Mehsud had masterminded a suicide-bombing campaign that hit schools, police stations, bazaars and garrisons across the country, killing hundreds. (On Tuesday, another Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Qadir, ex-governor of Afghanistan's Nangahar province, was reportedly arrested, though neither Pakistan nor the Taliban spokesman would confirm the capture.) (See pictures...
...assistance is paying dividends for Pakistan in the fight against its domestic insurgency. Inside the forbidding mountain ranges along Pakistan's Afghan border, "the drones can hit where the Pakistani military cannot," says Talaat Masood, a retired general and independent military analyst in Islamabad. On Feb. 19, U.S. aerial surveillance helped the Pakistanis find and kill more than 30 militants in a bombing run in a forested valley in South Waziristan, which, until a major Pakistani offensive last October, had been crawling with Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters...
Washington's newfound friendship with Islamabad could still fray over one particularly vicious Afghan clan. The NATO forces' most dangerous adversaries are the Haqqanis, who have sworn loyalty to Omar while operating semi-independently in the eastern Afghan provinces and also across the border in Pakistan. Since the days of the jihad against the Soviets, Pakistani spy service the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has kept close ties with the Haqqanis. Now the Pakistanis are resisting demands by Washington to clear the Haqqanis out of their lair in the Pakistani territory of North Waziristan. Pakistani officials insist they will...