Word: helmander
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...rage and also out of fear for his own life, Mullah A rejoined the Taliban. Nowadays, he and his men ambush U.S.-led coalition targets in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, and he brags to TIME that recently his outfit blasted a dozen rocket-propelled grenades into the NATO base at Kandahar. (See pictures of U.S. Marines at war in Afghanistan's Kunar province...
...Western official, closely connected to efforts to reach out to the Taliban, blamed the failure squarely on President Karzai. In Kandahar and Helmand, which are now major Taliban strongholds, the official says, Karzai personally appointed many "violent and predatory" district officials and police chiefs from his own extended tribe. "When the police started robbing and pillaging," the Western official says, "the villagers had no choice but to turn to the local [Taliban] commanders for protection...
...Upon his arrival in Afghanistan as McKiernan's replacement last June, General Stanley McChrystal was pretty much presented with a fait accompli: the troops were arriving in Helmand. "The ship was moving in that direction," a military expert told me, "and it would have been difficult to turn it around." Indeed, it would have taken months of planning to change course. The additional troops were needed immediately to blunt the momentum of the Taliban and also to provide security for the Afghan elections. The trouble was, the troops would have been better deployed in Helmand's neighbor to the east...
...Iraq the military's counterinsurgency strategy turned around a similarly bleak urban situation - notably in Baghdad, where U.S. troops helped the Iraqis regain control of neighborhoods by setting up and staffing joint security stations. But the troops who should be securing Kandahar are fighting an elusive enemy in Helmand. (See pictures of the war in Afghanistan's Kunar Province...
...What can be done now? The military will want more troops to paper over its strategic mistake. It will resist any suggestion to leave Helmand and redeploy to Kandahar. "That would be a death sentence for all the people in Helmand who have supported us," a military expert told me. It is a compelling argument but, ultimately, a flawed one; death sentences are being delivered every night in Kandahar. And remember the military's poky timetable: "We are trying to decide now how to redeploy the troops we already have in Afghanistan, the units that provided the security...