Word: areas
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...focused in on the cramped shacks of the informal settlements on the outskirts of the city. It would be clearer if the broadcasters passed their mikes to the shacks’ inhabitants, thousands of whom were forcefully removed from their dwellings in the city in order to make the area around the stadium look more developed and wealthy. Many people will wait in these euphemistic “transitional relocation camps” for up to 10 years. One of these individuals summed up their resentment for the government, lamenting, “They want to make a good impression...
...exaggerations about the school's size reflect a deeper truth: most everyone in Senjaray loved the idea that their children were learning to read and write - except the local Taliban. They closed the school in 2007, breaking all the windows and furniture, booby-trapping the place, lacing the surrounding area with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), daring the Canadians to reopen it. But the Canadians were overmatched, and it wasn't until December of 2009, when the Americans came to Senjaray, that people began to talk about reopening the school...
...week, few were surprised when the sound of heavy artillery and helicopter gunships began to reverberate from the forests around the city of Gubden. The husband of one of the suicide bombers who blew herself up on the Moscow subway on March 29 had been hiding out in the area, and the security forces were bound to come looking for him and his cohorts. The hunt began on April 11, turning several square miles of forest into a war zone on Russia's southern flank. Now it seems clear that the more measured approach to fighting the insurgency in Russia...
...fact, a no-brainer, a perfect metaphor. The Taliban closed schools; the Americans opened them. That this particular school was located deep in the enemy heartland, in a district - Zhari - that was 80% controlled by the Taliban, an area the Russians called the Heart of Darkness and eventually refused to travel through, in a town that will be strategically crucial when the most important battle of the war in Afghanistan - the battle for Kandahar - is contested this summer, made it all the more perfect. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...
...still does, but he's more 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...