Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Precision munitions are worse than worthless if their targets are selected by dishonest men. Western diplomats and Afghan intelligence sources in Kabul say that until recently the special forces in eastern and southern Afghanistan have relied on untrustworthy informants who tricked the U.S. into sending in lethal air strikes on their tribal enemies. Both the Kabul-bound convoy and the Qila-Niazi wedding party, for example, were targeted by Pacha Khan, a former provincial governor, derided by one official as a "Pentagon-created warlord," who was using American munitions to take care of his own business, according to Afghan government...
...four times before we act," says Gardez governor Taj Mohammed Wardak. Americans are also training local militias to hunt al-Qaeda. In Gardez alone, the special forces have recruited more than 200 men, giving them better guns, warm clothes, food and $200 a month. (In all, Western diplomats in Kabul tell TIME, the Americans have more than 15,000 Afghan fighters on the payroll, mainly in the Jalalabad and Kandahar regions...
...Georgia, at least a dozen al-Qaeda members are hiding in the Pankisi Gorge along the country's northeastern border, according to a U.S. official. They are thought to have arrived there after the fall of Kabul, finding the wild and remote gorge a safe harbor on their way from Afghanistan to Chechnya--where the Muslim rebellion is a favorite al-Qaeda cause...
...structured with peacekeeping as their primary mission. In Bosnia, says Grant, American forces will not walk down a street unprotected, while British and French soldiers soak up information in cafes. Unsurprisingly, it is Europeans who shoulder the burden of keeping the peace in Kosovo, Bosnia and now Kabul. But suggest to European policymakers that their primary military role should be mopping up after the Americans have fought a war, and they throw a frightful fit, as if they were being relegated to the second rank. Given that European taxpayers will never pay for their armies...
...weeks U.S. forces had been watching as Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters gathered south of Kabul. Code-named Operation Anaconda, the battle plan aimed at this force was a hammer-and-anvil strategy. Friendly Afghans, assisted by U.S. special forces, would flush the enemy from the north and northwest toward three exits of the Shah-i-Kot valley, where American troops waited. To the south, battle positions Heather and Ginger were divided by a hill christened the Whale, while to the east, battle position Eve guarded escape routes over the high mountains to Pakistan. But after two days of fierce...