Word: shahs
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General Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, calls the recent assault on Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants in the Shah-i-Kot Valley an "unqualified and absolute success." But he concedes that pockets of resistance remain and promises to go after them unceasingly. The British last week pledged to help, committing 1,700 troops to the effort. Who are these holdouts, and what are their aims? To find out, TIME embarked on a search for surviving Taliban fighters who refuse to yield. It required weeks of negotiation with Taliban commanders, who finally proffered an invitation to meet...
...recent Shah-i-Kot offensive, far from deterring the opposition, has emboldened it. Applauded in the West as a victory for the international coalition, the operation has been celebrated by Kandahar Talibs as an American failure. "How many bodies are there?" asks a former Talib, mocking U.S. claims of a major victory and citing eyewitness accounts of only a few Taliban and al-Qaeda corpses. "With all their power, the Americans could not capture our fighters," he says...
...which makes Karzai's mission to Rome later this week especially important. He is going there to bring back the country's exiled King, Mohammed Zahir Shah, in an effort to reconstitute national unity. The King's 40-year reign, the country's last taste of peace and prosperity, was ended by a coup in 1973 while the monarch was in Italy for mud-bath treatments. At an interview with TIME, the King appeared in notably better health than he did five months ago, when world leaders began looking to him to help fill the vacuum left by the Taliban...
...says. That means the U.S. could not have useful operatives in London mosques, and the British just did not. And some businesses make the same mistake, according to George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, an intelligence firm in Austin, Texas. "The expat community in Iran missed the fall of the Shah. In Russia they missed the fall of communism," he says. "They tend to rely too much on their personal contacts. They think, 'If I know the Shah's brother-in-law, I'm well connected, and I know what's going on in the country.'" The story of oil development...
...Kieran Prendergast says. Moreover, in the run-up to the June 22 loya jirga, or grand meeting of all Afghanistan's regional elders, which will decide who succeeds Karzai's administration, tension is only expected to increase. Against the warlords, the frail 87-year-old former King Mohammed Zahir Shah is not anticipated to prove the instrument of peace his supporters hope...