Word: gardez
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...small stretch of pine trees at Dara, a village near Gardez, Special Forces and Afghan allies hunker down on a frontline. Al-Qaeda?s forward positions lie across a few hundred feet of rocky ground, in the first of the mountains of Shah-I-Kot. The sky is filled with light snow and the drone of U.S. strike aircraft pounding the white capped peaks above. Occasionally, the jagged walls of rock rumble with explosions, and belch plumes of black smoke. Within hours the ground attack will recommence. Led by U.S. soldiers, these bedraggled Afghan fighting men in dirty shalwar kameez...
...discuss a common response to crime and terrorism. Delegates called for clearer definitions, condemning what they called Israeli "state terrorism" against the Palestinians. AFGHANISTAN Setback to Peace Interim leader Hamid Karzai?s appeal for more international troops proved timely: heavy fighting broke out in the southeastern Afghan town of Gardez while he was visiting London. Reports said at least 60 people died as a Kabul-appointed governor, Pacha Khan Zadran, tried to lay claim to the Paktia town. Residents supported local Pashtun leader Haji Saifullah. British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Karzai he could not expand his commitment beyond...
...special forces in the area remained confined to base and warplanes circling overhead declined to intervene. Other Afghan forces loyal to Karzai's interim government in Kabul also declined to get involved in the fighting at Gardez, which saw as many as 60 people killed. The reason was simple: it was hard to pick a side. Both sides fielded former Taliban fighters, and the dispute centered simply on the allocation of power among rival warlords...
...fighting at Gardez will not have helped Karzai's efforts to recruit a larger peacekeeping force. The interim leader has urged the United Nations Security Council to expand the current force of almost 5,000 deployed exclusively in Kabul, in order to help the new government project its authority beyond the capital. But although President Bush offered U.S. help in training a new national army (when such a force becomes possible), he remained politely but firmly opposed to committing any American troops to peacekeeping duties. And Thursday Britain's Tony Blair, whose soldiers are leading the Kabul mission, also rebuffed...
...muscle to function as the law of the land. But foreign reluctance to participate is based on the very real dangers that lurk in a mission that would ultimately require disarming hundreds of local and provincial warlords. After all, it's not only in isolated cases such as Gardez that the post-Taliban power arrangement threatens to break down into new fighting...