Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have to stop giving tacit support and protection to terrorists, especially the Afghan Taliban. The Karzai government will have to end its corruption and close down the drug trade. There are plenty of other reforms necessary - the international humanitarian effort is a shabby, self-righteous mess; some of our NATO allies aren't carrying their share of the military burden - but the war will remain a bloody stalemate at best as long as jihadis come across the border from Pakistan and the drug trade flourishes...
...Things have gotten a bit hairy," admitted British Lieut. Colonel Graeme Armour as we sat in a dusty, bunkered NATO fortress just outside the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, a deadly piece of turf along Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan. A day earlier, two Danish soldiers had been killed and two Brits seriously wounded by roadside bombs. The casualties were coming almost daily...
...some ways, Helmand province - which I visited with the German general Egon Ramms, commander of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command - is a perfect metaphor for the broader war. The soldiers from NATO's International Security Assistance Force are doing what they can against difficult odds. The language and tactics of counterinsurgency warfare are universal here: secure the population, help them build their communities. There are occasional victories: the Taliban leader of Musa Qala, in northern Helmand, switched sides and has become an effective local governor. But the incremental successes are reversible - schools are burned by the Taliban, police officers...
...country - the U.S. and its allies are struggling to find a new strategy to stabilize Afghanistan. President George W. Bush has announced that about 4,500 more soldiers will be sent there early in the new year, but that is a fraction of what General David McKiernan, head of NATO forces in Afghanistan, has said that he needs to successfully conduct the war. Meanwhile, allied forces have been forced to rely on local militia leaders for intelligence gathering, delivery of supplies and to better understand the country's southern tribal networks. In the north, where the Uzbek and Tajik warlords...
...India, there is pressure for continued pressure on Pakistan. Even so, says former Indian intelligence chief Sood, things will get a lot worse before they get any better. "Just today there's been an attack on 160 NATO vehicles in northwestern Pakistan," he says. "I expect more bombings, even in Pakistan. There's going to be no let-up. There may be more suicide bombings." He says the task of ridding Pakistan of terrorists cannot be left to the Pakistani authorities. "It should be taken up by an international force," he says...