Word: taliban
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...foreign offices of one of the planet's most powerful nations. Afghanistan, NATO's first post-Cold War, non-European experiment and the U.N.'s most significant mission to date, has been termed a failure, leading many decision makers to contemplate the unthinkable: negotiations with the very same Taliban leadership that was defeated in 2001. The only problem is, negotiations are unlikely to be successful, and reliance on such stopgap solutions may only make things worse...
...keep Osama bin Laden on the run appear to have been effective. With the ebbing of public support for the war, and with casualties and costs reaching record levels, world leaders and military commanders are now clutching for solutions and exits, including possible power-sharing deals with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents. Kai Eide, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, said on Oct. 6 that "if you want to have relevant results, you must speak to those who are relevant." U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reiterated the new philosophy a day later, saying at a press conference that the only...
...President Karzai seems to be moving in the same direction. Last week he appealed to Taliban leader Mullah Omar for peace and offered to talk. And in September, during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, representatives of Karzai's government sat with former Taliban leaders and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in Mecca to discuss Afghanistan's problems over a sunset feast of more than 100 dishes. Both Karzai's government and Afghanistan's current Taliban leadership deny that any negotiations took place. But one of the attendees, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former representative of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate...
...Several weeks after the shooting, the Australian military flew in a group of reporters for a controlled visit to Tarin Kowt; on Oct. 5 it was announced that Australian and Afghan troops had captured a notorious Taliban bomb-maker. The publicity may have shored up Australians' enthusiasm for the Afghanistan mission, but it has yet to penetrate the mud-walled forts of Oruzgan's tribal chiefs, whose support is now needed more urgently than ever...
...Khosal said his father's men fired back at their assailants, who were only about 20 m away. The elders rushed Khan to hospital but he was dead on arrival. At first, Khosal says, the locals "were thinking it was the Taliban who had done the shooting. Then they heard someone calling out. It was the Australians' interpreter, who was surprised and was asking, Who are you?" When Khan's men replied, "We are police," Khosal says, they were told to lay down their weapons. Khosal says the Australian troops offered no medical assistance to the wounded Afghans...