Word: missioners
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...afternoon, a key ally of Berlusconi's, Northern League chief Umberto Bossi, was declaring that "the mission in Afghanistan has reached its end" and calling for Italy's troops to be brought home by Christmas. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, a die-hard Berlusconi loyalist, said Friday there are no immediate plans for a pullout but expressed serious doubts about the situation in Afghanistan. "Much has to change," Frattini told the daily Corriere della Sera. "There needs to be ... more attention on the people who suffer and on reconstruction. The general vision of the mission must be changed." Frattini wants more...
...Corriere columnist and former Italian ambassador to NATO, says Frattini's concerns echo those expressed in the halls of power across continental Europe. "He's saying what almost all European leaders are saying, either privately or publicly," Romano tells TIME. "There is a rather widespread idea that [the mission in Afghanistan] is not leading anywhere...
...American casualties soared to record numbers over the summer, European troop deaths have been creeping upward, provoking hard questions about the exact nature and objectives of the mission from London to Berlin. "The public doesn't really understand what we are doing there," says Romano. (See pictures of the U.S. Marines' new offensive in Afghanistan...
...could argue that the U.S. was playing a dangerous game when it killed a suspected top al-Qaeda leader in a brazen daytime helicopter raid in Somalia earlier this week. While the Americans swoop in and carry out targeted strikes such as this, the African Union peacekeeping mission to the country (called the African Union Mission in Somalia, or AMISOM) remains stymied on the ground, undermanned and vulnerable, its troops bearing an unenviable and almost impossible task. In a country that has been in chaos for nearly 20 years, what peace can 5,000 Burundian and Ugandan soldiers possibly keep...
...moon condemned the attack "in the strongest terms," and the U.N. Security Council did the same, reaffirming its support for AMISOM. But even if the peacekeepers sitting in Mogadishu ever get word of that support, they probably won't think too highly of it. According to its mission statement, AMISOM is supposed to be preparing the way for the introduction of a U.N. peacekeeping force into the country. At the moment, AMISOM is not in position to do any such thing...