Word: qaeda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That it most certainly is. In October it will have been eight years since U.S. forces first went into combat in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and its local supporters in the Taliban. That makes the war there the second longest (after Vietnam) in U.S. history. More than 1,200 coalition troops have died in Afghanistan; some 730 of the dead were American, but other nations have suffered too. Britain has lost 175 soldiers in the conflict, and Canada 124. And the deaths in uniform are the easy ones to count: they do not encompass the thousands of Afghan villagers...
...Helmand, now controls wide swaths of Afghanistan. Over the past four months, a recent U.N. report says, the number of "assassinations, abductions, incidents of intimidation and the direct targeting of aid workers" has been higher than last year. Increasing numbers of foreign fighters - "most likely affiliated with al-Qaeda" - are fighting alongside the Taliban. "There is no question but that the situation has deteriorated over the course of the past two years," General David Petraeus, who as chief of U.S. Central Command oversees the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, said recently...
...elimination of safe havens across the border? It's a regional problem. Our success in Afghanistan and Pakistan - they are unique situations that are linked inextricably - I think that we can't be entirely successful here unless there is some measure of success against Afghan Taliban and other al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Similarly, and I met with General [Ashfaq] Kayani yesterday, I don't think that they can be entirely successful in maintaining security in the tribal areas unless Afghanistan is a stable state, so I think there is a shared mutual interest because they both feed on each other...
...receive terrorism training at camps in Pakistan. Meanwhile, other reports have Islamic extremists setting off from Pakistan to carry out deadly attacks in Europe, possibly including Germany. According to a report on the German public television channel ZDF, intelligence officials received a tip in May that an al-Qaeda commando had left Pakistan to launch terrorist attacks in Western Europe. The commando is reported to be made up of 15 men - including Americans, Arabs, Chechens and four Germans - allegedly under the leadership of al-Qaeda operatives Abu Abdul Rahman al-Najdi, who was born in Saudi Arabia, and a Californian...
...itself, with the aim of pushing for a withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan. Until now, Germany has been spared a major terrorist attack. But there is an ongoing and very real threat. German authorities say they have foiled at least six major terrorist plots since 2000. "Al-Qaeda has its eyes set on Germany," Guido Steinberg, an analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, tells TIME. "We've seen a growing number of attacks on German troops in Afghanistan," he says, including January's suicide bombing near the German embassy in Kabul. Steinberg, a former government...