Word: onset
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...onset of winter may also hamper U.S. efforts to use helicopters in strikes and to deploy special forces - freezing rain reportedly played a role in bringing down the helicopter that crashed in Afghanistan last Saturday, and the weather last week restricted U.S. efforts to insert more commandos on the ground...
...most ridiculous example of this solicitousness is the talk in Washington of hurrying the fighting so as to finish before the onset of Ramadan. We'd already limited air strikes on the first Friday of the war in deference to Muslim sensibilities. This is odd in the extreme. The Arabs had no compunction about launching the Yom Kippur War on the holiest day of their enemy--and during their own Ramadan. Indeed, Egypt celebrates the 1973 Yom Kippur War not just as the October War but as the Ramadan...
...coordinated move against the Taliban on both fronts reflects a U.S. concern to score a morale-boosting victory before the onset of winter bedevils prospects for progress on the ground. The Pentagon has faced mounting domestic political criticism over a four-week bombing campaign that has thus far produced no tangible shift in the balance of power in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance, too, has criticized the U.S. for failing to subject the Taliban frontlines to sustained aerial bombardment, with frontline commanders questioning whether the Americans were serious about helping tilt the balance in favor of the Alliance. The sustained bombing...
...Northern Alliance forces at Mazari al-Sharif and north of Kabul despite the three-week air campaign. This looks like long war, then, in which the U.S. and Britain may be forced to take greater risks on the ground, even as some alliance partners grow skittish about the onset of winter snows and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan...
...thousands of wretchedly poor Afghans fleeing their homes to avoid the fighting may speak more forcefully to the citizenry of America's alliance partners than the promises of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair that this war is for the benefit of the Afghan people. And as the onset of winter leaves millions potentially facing starvation in a country that was largely dependent on food aid long before the current war began, the humanitarian crisis may soon begin to compete with the priority of overthrowing the Taliban regime in the minds of many alliance partners...