Word: stillness
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...Hamas - could easily escalate into a regional war with all of them. And there are a number of potential triggers for such a conflagration. Hizballah, which has rearmed in violation of U.N. resolutions and is even more powerful than it was before the summer 2006 war with Israel, still claims the right to retaliate for the 2007 assassination of its operations chief, Imad Mugniyah. And although Hamas is enforcing a halt to rocket fire from Gaza, it has also vowed to avenge the assassination of a top operative in Dubai in January. Israel, for its part, has threatened to attack...
...still does, but he's more skeptical now. The past four months in Senjaray have taught him how difficult it is to do COIN in an area that is, in effect, controlled by the enemy - and with a command structure that is tangled in bureaucracy and paralyzed by the incompetence and corruption of the local Afghan leadership. Indeed, as the struggle to open the school - or get anything of value at all done in Senjaray - progressed, the metaphor was transformed into a much bigger question: If the U.S. Army couldn't open a small school in a crucial town...
Later, as we headed back to the outpost in the gathering darkness, Ellis said, "Well, at least he knew we were Americans. Some of them still think we're Russians...
...Still, Ellis was confident the operation would go forward. This was just a bureaucratic glitch. Everyone thought so. On April 3, I spoke with Ellis' immediate superior, Lieut. Colonel Reik Anderson, commander of the 1/12, and with the Canadian in charge of Joint Task Force Kandahar, Brigadier General Daniel Menard, who was furious about the delay. "We're going to have a letter signed by the district and provincial governors, insisting that we go ahead," Menard told me, then proceeded to talk like a general. "This is essential. It would be the first nonkinetic breach of Taliban control...
Disaster A week later, Ellis was still waiting for the operation to be approved, when disaster struck - and a signature Afghan disaster at that. At about 5 a.m. on April 12, an American convoy passing through Senjaray on the Ring Road slowed on the curve in front of Dog Company's outpost. A passenger bus came up behind the convoy, traveling at a rate of speed the Americans deemed suspicious. The convoy tried to signal the bus to stop; the soldiers apparently used hand signals and pen flares, but fired no warning shots according to the McChrystal protocol...