Word: stinger
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...total $4.2 billion over a six-year period, and the war in neighboring Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Refugee camps in Pakistan serve as bases of operations for 100,000 U.S.-supported mujahedin guerrilla fighters who are battling the Soviets. Pakistan is the main pipeline for the rebels' arms, including sophisticated Stinger and Blowpipe antiaircraft missiles...
...trappings of a James Bond thriller, including hidden treasure and a scheme to kidnap Philippine President Corazon Aquino. If actually carried out, an invasion could also have been bloody. Marcos, who was deposed in a People Power rebellion in February 1986, planned to buy $18 million worth of Stinger missiles, M-16 rifles, tanks, grenade launchers and enough ammunition to equip 10,000 soldiers for three months...
...chain of events that brought the Reagan Administration to the current impasse began in early 1986. At that time Washington pressured Islamabad to permit the Afghan guerrillas in Pakistan's border province to receive Stinger antiaircraft missiles from the U.S. Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq reluctantly went along, despite a warning from the Soviet Union that Pakistan would pay a high price. By last November, mujahedin equipped with Stingers were shooting down an average of one Soviet or Afghan aircraft a day. Last week, according to Radio Kabul, the rebels struck again, downing an Afghan transport plane and reportedly...
...Khost, near the border with Pakistan, requires a zigzagging flight of nearly an hour and a half. Taking off from the capital, lumbering Soviet-made An-26 transports climb steadily in defensive spirals. From pods mounted on their fuselages, they trail bright orange flares to divert heat-seeking Stinger missiles that the mujahedin rebels might launch from hidden positions below...
Pausing at the wreckage of an An-26, General Ghulam Farouq, Khost's Afghan military commander, pointed out that the "passenger plane" was downed three months ago by a U.S.-made Stinger ground-to-air missile. Though the twisted, charred remains retained a coat of green-gray camouflage paint and prominent military markings, the official line was that the craft was a civilian flight ferrying women and children to Kabul for medical treatment. In all, Afghan officials said, 36 civilians died in the attack. The rebels claim the flight carried military personnel and supplies...