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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...
...School Ellis began his efforts to open Pir Mohammed in late January. To get permission to reopen the school, he needed the approval of three separate command structures - his battalion superiors, the Canadians who ran Task Force Kandahar and their NATO superiors at Regional Command-South, the NATO regional command for southern Afghanistan. He also needed the approval of the local, district and regional Afghan government authorities. That part wasn't too bad. Ellis was a gung-ho briefer. On Saturday, April 3, I watched him describe the school operation to a group of Canadian generals. "That...
When I arrived at Combat Outpost Senjaray on the afternoon of April 2, Ellis had just received terrible news. "You're not going to believe this, but they just [freakin'] postponed it," he told me. "The staff at RC-South found this regulation that says you can't build a security outpost that close to a school. It would endanger the kids." Ellis was agog. He had briefed the commanding general of RC-South, Nick Carter, on the project, and he was in favor. But General Carter was on leave - and his staff didn't want to take the risk...
That night, Ellis learned that his superiors had, once again, briefed their superiors at RC-South about the Pir Mohammed School operation. "They want to sleep on it at RC-South," Ellis said, rolling his eyes. "And battalion said they don't want me calling up, trying to convince them." (See TIME's audio slide show "The War in Afghanistan Up Close...
...Party's Central Publicity Department to recall their reporters from the disaster zone in Qinghai, according to Chinese journalists familiar with the orders. The likely motivation is to limit coverage of collapsed schools or other politically sensitive aspects of the disaster. President Hu Jintao cut short a trip to South America to oversee the emergency response. Premier Wen Jiabao flew to Qinghai on Thursday afternoon. "This is an extraordinary disaster," he told a crowd in Jiegu through a bullhorn as he stood by a pile of rubble. "The government and the State Council are very much concerned about the people...