Word: helmand
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Earlier this month, Lieut. Colonel William F. McCullough, commanding officer of the 1-5 U.S. Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand province, took part in an exercise in insurgent reintegration. He rose from a dusty couch and extended his hand to one Abdul Khalik, whom his men had detained for the previous three days on suspicion of insurgent activities...
Three days before, according to McCullough, Khalik had been among several Afghans caught in the middle of a Taliban attack on a U.S. battalion's foot patrols, on the road between the Helmand villages of Bagrabat and Hazarapas. "My men were walking on the road," he told Haji Assidullah and his fellow elder Jon Mohammed. "The car with these men [the detainees] sped up, drove right at them, didn't stop, almost hit two of my men, then the car behind that one stopped. Three men got out and started firing at my men. Two others on the side...
Taliban reconciliation is not a new idea. The notion of reconciling so called "little-t Taliban" as opposed to "big-T Taliban" is a common talking point among even enlisted Marines in Helmand province. In August of this year, General Stanley McChrystal 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...
...Public support for Britain's contribution to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan has curdled as the body count of British troops has spiraled, reaching 98 this year alone. An opinion poll taken earlier this month after an Afghan policeman shot dead five British soldiers at a checkpoint in Helmand province revealed that three-quarters of the British public want U.K. forces to withdraw within a year...
...Most exit strategies assume a more orderly withdrawal, in which NATO forces hand over control to Afghan authorities, whether district by district as Brown advocates or in larger increments. Yet the difficulties of training the notoriously volatile Afghan police force were highlighted by this month's Helmand checkpoint shooting (the dead soldiers had been mentoring the Afghan police) - and building up the Afghan army is only comparatively less problematic. A new report from the Berlin-based think tank SWP predicts that the Afghan National Army will reach its target level of 134,000 troops by 2011. But the report also...