Word: fight
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...frustrating because this is a way for them to start working with the elders, the community. If they can't make that connection, then we won't be able to hand security over to them." Many U.S. soldiers complain that the ANA simply isn't ready for the fight, that its soldiers are careless with their ammunition, often expending it all in the initial moments of battle. More training and better equipment will help, says Jenkinson. "I don't think the ANA is lacking the ability to fight the close fight. What they are lacking right now is air support...
...arrived in Afghanistan, the Korengal was relatively rich. It wasn't farming that sustained the area's residents; the rocky hillsides grow few crops. But a lucrative trade in the region's cedar forests funded satellite-TV dishes and fancy four-wheel-drive trucks. Local lore holds that the fight with the Americans began in earnest when the U.S., acting on a tip from a rival tribe, dropped a bomb on the lumber mill of a local chief, killing some of his relatives and leading to a campaign of vengeance...
...bringing corruption in their wake. As it has elsewhere in Afghanistan, the national Taliban movement co-opted local grievances. (Taliban, these days, no longer refers just to the regime that once ruled the country; the word has become synonymous with any number of antigovernment forces.) Tribal elders say the fight in the Korengal is directed and funded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who was once backed by the U.S. and has links to al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, says valley elder Sham Sher Khan, the way to counter the insurgency hasn't changed. He thinks reopening the timber trade would help...
...really that simple? Afghans like Khan say only a small fraction of the insurgency consists of hardened jihadis willing to fight to the death; the rest are ordinary, poor villagers who simply haven't been given a better option. Khan estimates that the insurgents earn from $100 to $200 a month, money that comes from the illegal trade in lumber. Similarly, analysts in Afghanistan's south, where U.S. and coalition forces are fighting an insurgency funded by the opium trade, argue that the U.S. policy of poppy eradication has only fueled the fighting by eliminating income without providing an alternative...
...drama with more far-reaching geopolitical consequences may be brewing in the Indian Ocean, involving two of the nations that have sent warships to fight the Somali buccaneers: longtime rivals India and China. New Delhi has had at least one ship in the Gulf of Aden since October, and late last year, with great fanfare, China deployed two warships to the same area. The ships have been active in interdicting pirates and coming to the aid of commercial ships in apparent distress - though they are not part of the U.S.-led Combined Task Force 151 (usually composed...