Word: nato
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President of Estonia Toomas H. Ilves discussed the relationships between the EU and NATO, and between Estonia and the Soviet Union yesterday at the Harvard Kennedy School...
...While NATO troops remain in the area, the drug traffickers will stay away. Some have fled south to Pakistan's empty Baluchistan desert; others are holed up in the nearby mountains of Musa Qala, while the rest have decamped to Nimruz province, a major smuggler's crossing into Iran. Says Gretchen Peters, an author and expert on Taliban drug ties with traffickers: "Counternarcotics, just like counterinsurgency, is like playing whack-a-mole. You knock it out in one place, and it pops up somewhere else." (See pictures of Afghanistan's battlefield priest...
...drug lords will be looking for a chance to return to Marjah as soon as the NATO troops move on. That opportunity may present itself this summer. As McChrystal turns his attention to other Taliban strongholds in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar province, he will depend on Afghan security forces to protect Marjah. In the past, the drug lords have exploited the absence of Western troops to strike alliances with Afghan officials, getting them to play the Taliban's role of protectors of the drug trade. Khan, the farmer, has seen it happen before. "When there is no Taliban, the government...
...propaganda value - to give up. Unlike the drug traffickers, insurgent fighters didn't have to go very far to hide from McChrystal's troops. Abdul Rahman Jan, a tribal elder and former Helmand-province police chief, points out that "hardly a single gun was captured by the NATO forces." He believes that many of the Taliban fighters simply moved back from their quarters inside Marjah's mosques and madrasahs to stay with their families. Wherever they are, the insurgents will keep an eye on the poppy crop. Says Jan: "When the trees and fields get greener and bigger, the Taliban...
...also has a greater role to play in mediating this conflict. Imagine if a small group of its more powerful states got together and proposed fast-tracked EU and NATO membership for Israel, provided it negotiates a two-state solution and comes into compliance with international law. The promise of such memberships and the economic opportunities and security guarantees that come with them just might put enough positive pressure on Israel to do the right thing. Should the Israelis fail to take action, the EU would then need to consider punitive trade sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa...