Word: lashkar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mutual convenience. The province is the biggest opium-growing region in Afghanistan, which produces close to 90% of the world's heroin. While the U.S. and Afghan governments have announced measures to curb poppy cultivation, a visit to Helmand reveals how challenging such a campaign would be. Just outside Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, lies a vast expanse of poppy farms. A glut has driven down the market price, but the flower is still the country's most profitable crop, according to farmers. Officials predict this year's yield in Helmand will be double last year...
...tips them off, and we get ambushed." In return, the Taliban safeguards heroin factories and provides armed escorts for drug convoys. U.S. military officers say the confluence of drugs and militancy has left parts of southern Afghanistan virtually ungovernable. Says Captain Allen Dollison, a civil-affairs officer based in Lashkar Gah: "They're absolutely linked, absolutely interconnected, and it has to be addressed to solve the security situation...
...expects to see high-profile arrests in the coming months, in what will be the opening salvo against the drug trade's "command and control." Helmand's beleaguered police will get some relief when approximately 3,300 British troops take over for the much smaller U.S. contingent in Lashkar Gah. The reinforcements can't arrive soon enough. After the fighting on the way to Sangin subsided, about 50 policemen took up posts above a road south of town--the spot from which they were ambushed days earlier. They were exhausted and nearly out of ammunition. Their commander was worried that...
...three main Kashmir militant groups?Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hizbul Muja-heddin and Jaish-e-Mohammad?have also used the earthquake to stage a comeback there. Ex-guerrillas now deploy their motorized rubber boats, on which they had trained for commando maneuvers, to ferry passengers across the Neelum River where bridges have collapsed. Immediately after the quake, militants were first on the scene in many villages, getting there far quicker than the Pakistani army, and they applied their expertise in first aid to save injured people pulled from fallen buildings. Their knowledge of the saw-backed ranges along the Line...
...their relief work. Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, has noted his "concern" over the renewed strength of the jihadi groups, which may now find it easier to attract recruits and to wield political influence among ordinary Kashmiris. Still, the militants worry about another crackdown by Musharraf. As Lashkar-e-Toiba spokesman Yahya Mujahid told TIME, "We fear the government will toe the American line and curb our humanitarian work." And if that happens, says Mujahid, "The Kashmiris will die of hunger...