Word: footing
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...foot, even a city of 18 million people can feel like a village. I was reminded of this during the attacks on Mumbai a year ago, when the only way to get around was by walking. For three days, my world shrank to a tiny patch of the city's southern tip as I trudged through seemingly endless loops between the places where a handful of terrorists had holed themselves up before they were killed by commandos. The curving path from Nariman House back to my hotel is imprinted on my memory, along with the kindness of the stranger...
...Help if You Aren't There Persuading fighters to think of laying down their arms might be the easiest part of a new approach. They also need to believe they will be safe if they do so. Many Taliban foot soldiers joined the movement simply because they ended up on the wrong side of a local power equation. As with Jameel in Wardak province, affiliation with the Taliban offered them protection. So if they are going to disarm, they need to be confident that the side they are joining will stay and win - otherwise, desertion could be a death sentence...
...given how much natural gas and oil Turkmenistan has under its desert sands, the U.S. and Europe look determined to keep trying to get a foot in the door. Just how they can achieve this in a crowded marketplace - and without a warmer welcome from the wary Turkmen - remains to be seen...
...recruited the U.K.'s former Director of Special Forces, Sir Graeme Lamb, to work on what General David Petraeus called "local level reconciliation and reintegration." But documents cited by the BBC this week recommended that attempts to reconcile be made at the "operational" and "strategic" levels - not just with foot soldiers, but with leadership as well...
...wonders what such a process would look like, given how the Marines' reintegration procedure works at the foot soldier level. Many, if not most, of the Afghans involved were illiterate, and accustomed to making agreements not rapidly, on chairs, with a relatively new governor, but over time, on cushions, along older networks...