Word: afghanization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...skeptical now. The past four months in Senjaray have taught him how difficult it is to do COIN in an area that is, in effect, controlled by the enemy - and with a command structure that is tangled in bureaucracy and paralyzed by the incompetence and corruption of the local Afghan leadership. Indeed, as the struggle to open the school - or get anything of value at all done in Senjaray - progressed, the metaphor was transformed into a much bigger question: If the U.S. Army couldn't open a small school in a crucial town, how could it expect to succeed...
...1/12's problems were compounded by a practically nonexistent local government, led by a district governor who insisted on keeping his office at the battalion's forward operating base, rather than among the people. "And then the Afghan army regiment we were supposed to partner with was diverted to Helmand province, for the battle in Marjah," says Brown. And the so-called civilian surge - the civil and economic development component of the offensive, led by the State Department - arrived late and weak. "So the 1/12's been out there, pretty much alone," a State Department official based in Kandahar told...
...Zhari is strategically crucial, the gateway to Kandahar city from the west, the staging area for most Taliban activity in the region. It is a largely rural district straddling the Afghan Ring Road and the Arghandab River. It includes the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's hometown of Sangsar. The Taliban aren't outside agitators here; they are neighbors - not exactly beloved neighbors, given their propensity for violence and peremptory taxation, but more trustworthy than a deeply corrupt Afghan government and much more familiar than the foreign troops. Senjaray is the largest population center, a town of somewhere from...
...Bundestag in February, German troop levels in Afghanistan will also increase from 4,500 to 5,350 later this year. (Germany is already the third-largest troop contributor after the U.S. and Britain.) The new mandate places a heavier emphasis on civilian reconstruction projects and the training of Afghan soldiers, which will make German soldiers more visible - and potentially easier targets. (Read "Germany's Doubts About Afghanistan Grow After Revelations About Air Strike...
...finally referring to the "war" in Afghanistan, the government knows only too well that the Afghan mission is becoming deadlier. But on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned against a hasty withdrawal, saying: "If we were to retreat on the spur of the moment now, Afghanistan would return to being a shelter for world terrorism in a very short time." The question remains, though: How many more casualties will an increasingly skeptical German public tolerate...