Word: helmand
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...last year, the British army deployed 3,300 soldiers to Afghanistan's Helmand province - an arid, mostly desert region in the country's southwest. Tasked to provide security for ongoing NATO reconstruction and humanitarian efforts, they expected little combat. But within weeks the troops were engaged in daily battles with the Taliban and, by the end of their tour in October 2006, had fired 480,000 rounds of ammunition, fought in nearly 500 skirmishes and mourned the loss of 15 comrades...
Exposed wires dangle from the ceiling in the dusty hallway outside the medical center at the military base on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. Conditions on the base are spartan and, amid mounting casualty rates, some of the young British soldiers serving there as part of the NATO-led mission complain their work isn't properly appreciated back home. They expressed these concerns during a July visit by the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband and, within the past two months, they have been able to make their case to a stream...
This spring, when Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped in the southern province of Helmand, the Afghan government, going against U.S. wishes, exchanged the hostage for five Taliban prisoners. It is also alleged that another Italian, photographer Gabriele Torsello, was ransomed for $2 million last October, fueling speculation that these more recent kidnappings may be motivated by financial as much as political gain. "Rumors are going around that the Koreans are worth $1 million a head," says Parliamentarian Khalid Pashtun. "So of course this is going to encourage more kidnappings." At this point it's unclear if Meier's abductors...
...latest victory in the war on terrorism took place on the night of May 11 in Helmand province, Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence had tracked Mullah Dadullah, thought to be the Taliban's top guerrilla commander, to a location near the border with Pakistan. By all accounts, what happened next was a model of surgical counterterrorism. When it was over, the Americans delivered Dadullah's corpse to Afghan authorities, who draped it in hot-pink sheets and displayed it for photographers in Kandahar, a ghoulish ritual that now attends the killing of any high-value terrorist target...
...precise details of his death remain unclear. NATO said he was killed during U.S.-led operations when he "left his sanctuary into southern Afghanistan." Intelligence officials said he was killed in the southern province of Helmand. But it remained uncertain whether Dadullah had been killed by an air strike or in ground combat, Western military officials said...