Word: helmand
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...Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Zaher Azimi said Dadullah's death, in the southern province of Helmand, could open a schism between rival Taliban commanders in the south and prompt defections from less committed fighters. "I think Dadullah's death will affect enemy ranks. We know he was the key Taliban figure who had the ability to center the Taliban efforts under a central command," he said...
...slowed and the warlords returned to opium cultivation as the U.S. turned its attention toward Iraq, whole provinces were back in the drug business and officials in Washington began to be worried the Taliban would reap the benefit. If it were a sovereign state, just the southern province of Helmand--a Taliban stronghold--would be the second largest source of opium in the world. The rest of Afghanistan would be the first. "The drug trade," Debat observes, "is the blood of the insurgency in Afghanistan...
...instilled a stoic acceptance of pain and privation that would hobble most modern militaries - few are prepared for the discipline required for service in a regular army. One U.S. drill sergeant wryly recognizes that time is an elastic concept for most of his trainees, and a tribal leader from Helmand estimates that any given day finds as many as half of the ANA soldiers in his province stoned on hashish...
Afghanistan also turned out to be harder to control than to conquer. In the summer of 2006, fresh contingents of U.S. and British troops had to be deployed to reassert the authority of the democratic government in Kabul over outlying areas like Helmand. Whereas in Iraq the capital city was the main conflict zone, in Afghanistan the capital city was the only place under any kind of control...
...McCaffrey, after an inspection trip in June, calls the Afghan army "miserably under-resourced," with "no mortars, few machine guns, no grenade machine guns and no artillery. Many soldiers and police have little ammunition and few magazines." The police are even worse off. Mohammad Akhunzada, the former governor of Helmand province in the south, says the police "are overwhelmed. They are fighting the Taliban with no support, with one magazine [of ammunition] between them. Sure, they call in the coalition forces, but they take 24 hours to arrive. How are they supposed to provide security under those conditions...