Word: talibanism
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...Taliban ambush on Aug. 18 killed 10 French soldiers and wounded 21. It was one of the deadliest attacks on non-American troops in Afghanistan since 2001, prompting French President Nicolas Sarkozy to travel to Kabul in an effort to reassure his country's forces. On Aug. 19, a group of suicide bombers tried to storm a U.S. military base near the Pakistan border. Several blew themselves up, but the base's security was not breached...
...last few years, Iraq was the magnet for jihadis around the world. No longer. Afghanistan, which was the center of extremist pilgrimage when it was ruled by the Taliban, has retaken that position, according to European intelligence sources. "The degree to which Islamist extremists around the world have dropped their previous obsession with Iraq and now focus on the Afghan-Pakistan area has been astounding," says one French counter-terrorism official. "No one recruiting for or seeking to join jihadist fighting in Europe are trying to get to Iraq: it's all Afghanistan now," he reports "No one raising money...
...Netherlands, and Germany. Uzbekistan - whose radical groups also receive funding collected in Europe - may also be becoming a new transit point for Afghan-bound radicals. And with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf stepping down, "there's real concern the already wild and lawless border region will become a virtual Taliban-al Qaeda colony...
That was painfully clear to the French this week as they gave heroes' burials to 10 paratroopers killed during an ambush of Taliban fighters. France has 2,600 troops as part of the so-called International Security Assistance Force, a U.S-led contingent of 52,000 NATO soldiers, that continues to police Afghanistan in the war on terror. "Beyond the immediate human reaction to this loss of life, this attack is most instructive in telling us about the rapidly rising strength and capacity of the people we're up against," says Francois Heisbourg, special adviser to the Foundation for Strategic Studies...
...deadly force that the Taliban now pack as a result is evident in the escalating number of attacks - and casualties - inflicted on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan. Indeed even as the French paratroopers were being cut down by Taliban snipers in a valley east of Kabul Monday, two separate suicide bombing attacks struck US bases elsewhere in Afghanistan. The growing frequency and audacity of Taliban offensives are producing a spiraling death count among international forces - 183 of whom have been killed thus far this year, compared to 232 fatalities for all of 2007. Significantly, an Afghanistan scenario once considered under...