Word: colonels
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...inequity is straining the network of fragile cease-fires in tribal areas. "We have sent many letters registering our complaints to the government, but we haven't heard back," says Colonel Gun Maw. Not hearing back from the Burmese junta is something to which the spokesman for the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) is accustomed. An ethnically based movement in northern Burma's Kachin state, the KIO waged a long insurgency against the Burmese regime before signing a peace treaty in 1994. Most Kachin are Christian, and they believe their faith makes them particularly vulnerable to persecution by the exclusively Buddhist...
...many parts of west Mosul. Iraqi security forces have crossed out some of the writing on the wall, but it's proving harder to erase the insurgents and their support base. "I knew AQ [al-Qaeda] was a problem, but I didn't know to what extent," says Lieut. Colonel Thomas W. Cipolla, battalion commander of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment. Cipolla, who is on his third tour in Iraq, took command of his battalion in mid-February after his predecessor was killed in a suicide car-bombing in west Mosul. "I certainly didn't know that there...
...military officials say they have captured many such suspected insurgents, but did not provide concrete figures. Nor would they say if these detentions have increased of late. "We have arrested a lot, but there's a lot of corruption here in Iraq," says Colonel Moslet Ahmad Attiyeh, commander of the national police's Salah battalion. "The terrorists pay their way out and are released," he says, whereupon they join other insurgents displaced from al-Qaeda's former stronghold of Anbar and the still volatile Diyala who have found refuge in Mosul...
...rubbish-strewn streets as Blackhawk helicopters circled overhead to provide support. But the residents of Mosul have experienced this type of neighborhood "clearing" operation many times before. "We've never been able to really hold the gains, and so these people have seen clearance after clearance, after clearance," says Colonel Volesky. And so Mosul will see such operations again and again, hoping that something will eventually stick...
...however, is not fixed. According to some soldiers, some sig acts today (those without fatalities, say) never would have been considered as such a year or two ago. And the value of the metric is a matter of contention, even on the record, among battalion commanders. The Lieutenant Colonel responsible for East Mosul says it is an excellent, valuable metric for progress, while his counterpart in West Mosul says the opposite. (See pictures of the U.S. military's struggle to retain control of Mosul...