Word: helmander
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...military is hoping to draw down its 19,000-member force in Afghanistan and turn over responsibility for much of the troubled south to NATO forces. Washington also hopes the newly trained Afghan army, which has 35,000 troops, will assume a greater role. But in places like Helmand province, where few Afghan or foreign troops were stationed, the main burden of fending off the insurgents has fallen to an Afghan police force that is poorly trained and often overmatched by the Taliban. Says Sam Zia-Zarifi, research director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division: "They are totally...
...dangerous.'" Nobody is underplaying the risks. Last year's oef troops suffered 129 fatalities, almost twice the toll of any other year since operations began in October 2001. But Britain last week announced that it would soon start sending 3,300 new troops to the southern province of Helmand, and that the current British deployment in Afghanistan would rise from 1,000 today to 5,700 in the years to come. Canada has agreed to send 2,200 new troops to the south as well, a decision apparently unshaken by the death of a Canadian diplomat and serious injury...
...After nursing their wounds and regrouping across the border in Pakistan, Afghanistan's former rulers have found both a fresh strategy and renewed vigor to cause trouble back home. A bus bombing that killed 15 people (including six children) in Helmand province on Aug. 13 kicked off perhaps Afghanistan's bloodiest week since the Taliban fell in late 2001. Four days later, hundreds of guerrillas attacked a police station in Paktika province and killed seven Afghan policemen. Four more cops were taken hostage during another raid nearby, and last Monday, nine policemen were murdered by heavily armed gunmen in Logar...
...Kandahar governor, who was with Karzai when Rahman struck. Government authorities suspect Rahman, 22, who was shot dead by U.S. special forces guarding Karzai, was part of a larger Taliban conspiracy, and are holding his entire guard unit while they search for concrete proof. Neighbors in his native Helmand province say the young man appeared unhinged when he returned from Sheberghan...
...Kandahar the only clue to those behind the failed assassination was the dead gunman. Not much was known about him, except that he was a soldier, recruited into the government's ranks only weeks earlier and that he came from the vehemently pro-Taliban district of Kajaki, in neighboring Helmand province. Like thousands of others absorbed into military units or government positions in Kandahar since the fall of the Taliban regime in December, Rehman was not screened for Taliban or terrorist links. "That's what these people are doing, coming into the government through village connections or friends, that...