Word: nato
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...Taliban's "shadow" governors of Afghanistan's provinces and another senior figure. And in North Waziristan, near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, a missile launched from a CIA drone had struck at the heart of the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for countless attacks on NATO troops. The network's current leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, survived, but his younger brother Mohammed had been killed...
...offensive was months in the planning, and little effort was made to keep it secret. If the Taliban chose to melt away rather than resist, McChrystal reasoned, it would give him more time to set up a robust administration - a good advertisement for those in other towns where NATO troops would soon have to fight. U.S. commanders even ordered an opinion poll of Marjah residents: they wanted to know how they felt about the U.S. and the Taliban and to gauge what they might want from his government in a box. (See pictures of the Taliban moving into the Buner...
...clear that only about 400 Taliban had dug in to fight. As in other such encounters between an overwhelming Western military and a local insurgency - in Iraq's Diyala province, for instance - the greatest threat to the troops came from roadside bombs and sniper fire. By Feb. 23, 13 NATO troops had been killed, as the U.S. total in the Afghan war pushed past 1,000. Estimates of Taliban casualties were around 120. Civilian casualties were low for such an intense offensive: 28 were killed in the fighting, though as the operation progressed, there was some bad news when...
...pockets of resistance continued, commanders downplayed expectations of a speedy campaign. "I guess it will take us another 25 to 30 days to be entirely sure that we have secured that which needs to be secured," British Major General Nick Carter, the top NATO commander in southern Afghanistan, told reporters on Feb. 18. "And we probably won't know for about 120 days whether or not the population is entirely convinced by the degree of commitment that their government is showing to them." If McChrystal's forces prevail, Operation Moshtarak will serve as the template for the far more challenging...
...bombers. Nor is the effect of Baradar's arrest on the top Taliban leadership yet clear. If he had indeed broken with Omar, then the group has most likely replaced him already. The Taliban was able to shake off the 2007 killing of its top commander, Mullah Dadullah, by NATO forces. "The Taliban are used to this," says Waheed Muzhda, a former Taliban official. "When Mullah Dadullah was killed, some people thought that the Taliban would give up. But it didn't happen, because the Taliban are waging an ideological war, and in an ideological war, this kind of thing...