Word: als
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...must be pursued relentlessly, from those who can be drawn into domestic political processes." He was quickly followed by U.S. Afghanistan-Pakistan Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, who told a BBC interviewer that "there is room in Afghan society for all those fighting with the Taliban who renounce al-Qaeda and its extremist allies, who lay down their arms and who participate in the political life of the country...
...what could be achieved in Afghanistan, the President has scaled back U.S. ambitions from the Bush Administration's lofty objective of turning the country into a modern democracy. "We have a clear and focused goal," he said in a policy speech in March, "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future." That goal does not necessarily require the defeat of the Taliban per se - a goal that many analysts have long deemed unrealistic. Many key Taliban leaders have little truck with bin Laden's global vision...
...Al-Qaeda is no longer even based in Afghanistan, its leaders now thought to be operating underground in Pakistan's tribal areas. Preventing it from reclaiming an Afghan sanctuary may not require keeping 70,000 or more U.S. troops in the country for years to come - particularly since that deployment in itself is a key driver of the Taliban's insurgency...
...made it clear that it will evict the MEK, though not to Iran. (Iraqi troops forced their way into the MEK's camp north of Baghdad on July 28.) Given the decline of the MEK's fortunes in Iraq, Tehran seems to have decided in late 2008 that the al-Qaeda commanders under house arrest had lost their value as bargaining chips. Several of them, including Saad bin Laden, appear to have been taken to the border with Pakistan and released. For Saad, however, freedom lasted only a few weeks before he was allegedly killed by a Hellfire missile...
...Western diplomats worry that the security vacuum may allow foreign terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda to move in. Osama bin Laden is widely admired in the arid north. It has become fashionable for Muslims to name their sons after him, while his picture adorns T-shirts and posters. In a speech in 2000, bin Laden named Nigeria as among "the region[s] most qualified for liberation." "Clearly there is a lot of concern in Washington with the idea that al-Qaeda can gain a foothold within the 65 million-strong Muslim population in northern Nigeria," says the U.S. official...