Word: area
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...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...
...multiple sources revealed that several of the town elders had driven across the border to Quetta, in Pakistan, to clear the canal project with the Taliban leadership. "Apparently, they made a very convincing pitch," Ellis says, and his superiors later confirmed to me. "The canal project would enrich the area. It would be there when the Americans were gone. And the Taliban agreed: the project could go ahead, but they wanted 50% of the workers' pay." (See pictures of President Barack Obama in Afghanistan...
...more dust, shaped like a hornet's nest hanging from the branch of a tree. The branch is the Afghan Ring Road, a two-lane paved highway. The U.S. fort is located just north of the highway; the Taliban control the land to the south, a lush farming area, irrigated by water from the Arghandab River. The dividing line is a canal that runs along the southern border of the town; the Pir Mohammed School sits on the banks of both that canal and one other, which runs along the eastern edge of the hornet's nest...
...another war - Vietnam, for certain - an American officer might have cleared the Taliban-controlled area with air strikes. But that sort of indiscriminate bombing doesn't happen in Afghanistan; General McChrystal has issued a series of tactical directives and rules of engagement banning most forms of air support. There are also new rules governing when and how troops on the ground can use their weapons. "Look at these," Ellis told me, tossing a fat sheaf of directives onto his desk. "Some of these are written by freaking lawyers, and I'm supposed to read them aloud to my troops...
...furious about the delay. "We're going to have a letter signed by the district and provincial governors, insisting that we go ahead," Menard told me, then proceeded to talk like a general. "This is essential. It would be the first nonkinetic breach of Taliban control in the area...