Word: qala
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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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...
People like Hadi and Hosain came by their skepticism the hard way: they have seen foreign forces defeat the Taliban in Helmand, then pull out, then repeat the cycle. The town of Musa Qala, north of Marjah, has twice been taken by NATO arms: by British and Danish forces in 2006 and by the U.S. in 2007. On both occasions, a new local government was created, and each time, the Taliban returned to murder those it deemed collaborators...