Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Will that appeal work? Not yet. Germany, the third biggest troop contributor to ISAF, has been the focus of the caveat debate because its 2,900 troops are restricted to the more secure regions of Kabul and the north. Karsten Voigt, coordinator for U.S.-German relations in the Foreign Ministry, says he is under constant pressure to do more in Afghanistan: in Washington last month, he says, one interlocutor told him that "Germans have to learn how to kill." Berlin will not budge, though, since neither the government nor the public has the stomach for putting German soldiers in harm...
...understand Afghan politics, the theory goes, just go to a game of Buzkashi. After a few hours on a muddy field north of Kabul, watching three dozen men on horseback charge each other to gain possession of a disemboweled calf carcass, the axiom starts to make sense. The game is simple enough: grab the calf from the ground at one end of the field, hoist it over the saddle bow, circle the flag at the opposite end of the field and drop it back in the original chalk circle to score. What makes it difficult is that every other...
...wrestlers to represent the presidential palace. For the past five years Karzai has been running the country as if he were a Western politician, and it has earned him little respect. Perhaps this new initiative will turn his reputation around. Instead of being laughed at as the "mayor of Kabul," as his detractors often call him, he could be known as a great Buzkashi sponsor. And in Afghanistan, that's a leader worth following...
...size of the U.S. force in Afghanistan is the bare minimum - not enough to guarantee victory, but sufficient to get bogged down for years. More than half of the country's gross domestic product comes from the burgeoning opium crop, and the national government exerts little power beyond greater Kabul. There is now an average of 20 insurgent attacks daily in Afghanistan, up from five a year ago. More importantly, some of those attacks are coming from Pakistan, where the U.S. military is formally barred from hunting down foes. That makes efforts to find bin Laden, believed to be holed...
...their reports have been fabricated. But last week, true stories broke to rival their worst propaganda. On Oct. 25, the German daily Bild published German soldiers' snapshots depicting up to six of them posing with human bones, possibly those of Afghan war victims. In one photo, taken near Kabul in 2003, a grinning soldier is holding a skull next to his bared genitals. A TV station later aired another set, [an error occurred while processing this directive] suggesting this macabre pastime may be more than a onetime occurrence. In Germany, the images have triggered acute embarrassment and outrage. Chancellor Angela...