Word: senjaray
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...walk," the local police chief told him. "We have to drive." And so they drove - 20 km west of Senjaray and then south. They were nowhere near town. "You might well ask, Why there?" Ellis says. Well, as it happened both Hajji Lala and the police chief owned farmland just south of the proposed canal. "But who was I to stand in the way of progress?" Ellis adds, dryly. "I could put hundreds of people to work, pay them 600 Afghans [$3] a day." It was the beginning of a partnership. Ellis wanted to prove he could produce. The project...
Ellis understands the rationale for the rules - "It's what distinguishes us from the Taliban" - but that doesn't make them easier to enforce. Just after the fatal IED attack in February, a man on a motorcycle emerged from a crowd in south Senjaray and seemed to charge a U.S. patrol. "They shouted at him, tried to get him to stop, but he kept coming - faster, it seemed. Finally, they fired a warning shot into the ground, but it bounced up and hit the guy in the hip. What the soldiers couldn't see was that he had two kids...
...apparent that almost any development project the Americans tried in Senjaray would end up benefitting the Taliban - except one: reopening the Pir Mohammed School...
...Rules of Engagement Senjaray is a warren of mud walls and unpaved streets, dust and more dust, shaped like a hornet's nest hanging from the branch of a tree. The branch is the Afghan Ring Road, a two-lane paved highway. The U.S. fort is located just north of the highway; the Taliban control the land to the south, a lush farming area, irrigated by water from the Arghandab River. The dividing line is a canal that runs along the southern border of the town; the Pir Mohammed School sits on the banks of both that canal...
...Senjaray had an odd, lugubrious battle rhythm. There were few direct confrontations between the Americans and the Taliban; the usual sounds of war, the crackle of small-arms fire and thump of mortars were rarely heard. Just an occasional boom - as an IED went off. Sometimes the Taliban blew themselves up, attempting to set the bombs; occasionally, Americans were the victims. On Feb. 21, one American was killed and another severely wounded in an IED explosion just south of town. "I decided to stop the patrols down there after that," Ellis says. "Given the rules of engagement, it was just...