Word: qaeda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...Joint Special Operations Command, the secret corps of Army Delta Force and Navy Seals based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, although McChrystal deployed regularly to its forward post inside Iraq. In 2006 his unit succeeded in tracking down and killing Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal's record has not been without controversy. After the 2004 death by friendly fire of former NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, Pentagon investigators said McChrystal provided information that misleadingly suggested Tillman died at the enemy's hands when recommending him for the Silver...
During his presidency, a lasting peace deal has been negotiated with insurgents in the tsunami-struck province of Aceh. Has also drawn praise for blunting the influence of the Jemaah Islamiah, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization, with a steady string of arrests and detentions...
...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...