Word: districters
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...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...
...permission to reopen the school, he needed the approval of three separate command structures - his battalion superiors, the Canadians who ran Task Force Kandahar and their NATO superiors at Regional Command-South, the NATO regional command for southern Afghanistan. He also needed the approval of the local, district and regional Afghan government authorities. That part wasn't too bad. Ellis was a gung-ho briefer. On Saturday, April 3, I watched him describe the school operation to a group of Canadian generals. "That was one of the most impressive op rants I've seen in a long time," Lieut. General...
...access road and the police station he had proposed. Hajji Lala, the local warlord, insisted he had that covered. "I kept asking him for the names of the landowners," Ellis says. "He kept saying, 'No problem.' " But it was a problem. Most of the property in the Zhari district is owned by absentee landlords. When Ellis pressed Hajji Lala for names yet again in late February, he was told, "You're going to have to find out who owns that land yourself...
...April 3, I spoke with Ellis' immediate superior, Lieut. Colonel Reik Anderson, commander of the 1/12, and with the Canadian in charge of Joint Task Force Kandahar, Brigadier General Daniel Menard, who was 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...