Word: kabul
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...this? The question has echoed over the past two months as TIME and other publications have reported grim stories from Afghanistan that are at odds with Pentagon accounts of victorious strikes against the enemy. On Dec. 20, U.S. planes rocketed a convoy of tribal elders going to Kabul for the swearing-in ceremony of Afghan leader Hamid Karza and then chased the fleeing tribesmen into a village, killing 60, say locals. On Feb. 4, a Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile at a man who U.S. Central Command thought might be bin Laden. Villagers say the dead...
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...