Word: talibanism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That it most certainly is. In October it will have been eight years since U.S. forces first went into combat in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and its local supporters in the Taliban. That makes the war there the second longest (after Vietnam) in U.S. history. More than 1,200 coalition troops have died in Afghanistan; some 730 of the dead were American, but other nations have suffered too. Britain has lost 175 soldiers in the conflict, and Canada 124. And the deaths in uniform are the easy ones to count: they do not encompass the thousands of Afghan villagers...
...economy that just might, one day, heal the wounds of 30 years of war, President Barack Obama and his generals are shifting strategies. Their new doctrine emphasizes protecting the Afghan people over killing insurgents. "What we really want is the equivalent of a peaceful takeover, where the Taliban are forced out," McChrystal told TIME. Three days later, the general issued a "tactical directive" to ISAF forces reinforcing the point: "We will not win based on the number of Taliban we kill," McChrystal wrote, "but instead on our ability to separate insurgents from the people." To that end, the directive explicitly...
...human being is the most important thing in every point. The most important is the human being in the Afghan population that is making their decision on who they are going to back. It is more important than the enemy. Because at the end of the day, the Taliban, each of them are making a decision to participate in an insurgency, and we are trying to convince them that was a mistake. Some of them we won't be able to convince, and some we will. And then the most important is us too. Because everything we do that...
...that is to enable governance. At the end of the day, the amount of the population, the percentage of the population in the areas we serve, that we can provide enough legitimate governance in the eyes of the individuals, will determine our effectiveness. Because we are competing with the Taliban for influence and control of the population. The analogy that a smart young guy I work with is that it is an argument. In conventional war, what you do is, you have an argument, and when the argument is over, you start fighting. And no one thinks during the fight...
...success here to the elimination of safe havens across the border? It's a regional problem. Our success in Afghanistan and Pakistan - they are unique situations that are linked inextricably - I think that we can't be entirely successful here unless there is some measure of success against Afghan Taliban and other al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Similarly, and I met with General [Ashfaq] Kayani yesterday, I don't think that they can be entirely successful in maintaining security in the tribal areas unless Afghanistan is a stable state, so I think there is a shared mutual interest because they both...