Word: talibanize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...allies have clearly recognized that those now fighting for the Taliban will be in Afghanistan long after Western armies leave. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband, in a speech to NATO July 27, called on the Afghan government "to separate hard-line ideologues, who are essentially irreconcilable and violent and who must be pursued relentlessly, from those who can be drawn into domestic political processes." He was quickly followed by U.S. Afghanistan-Pakistan Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, who told a BBC interviewer that "there is room in Afghan society for all those fighting with the Taliban who renounce al-Qaeda...
...treasure and an awareness of the limited patience of the U.S. public for another open-ended counterinsurgency war. And this at the same time as some of the key diplomats tasked with handling the conflict are speaking openly of the need to integrate most of those fighting for the Taliban into Afghanistan's political order. (See TIME's photos of the new Marine offensive in Afghanistan...
...there at the end of 2001, with 70 foreign troops - including 42 Americans - killed. Six more U.S. soldiers were killed on the first two days of August. The casualty toll is expected to remain high in the months ahead as U.S. troops are deployed to reclaim territory from the Taliban and block the insurgent offensive. In fact, the Washington Post reported July 31 that General Stanley McChrystal, the commander appointed by Obama to try to reverse the Taliban's remarkable comeback in Afghanistan, is likely to request further U.S. reinforcements beyond the extra 21,000 troops the President approved...
...modern democracy. "We have a clear and focused goal," he said in a policy speech in March, "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future." That goal does not necessarily require the defeat of the Taliban per se - a goal that many analysts have long deemed unrealistic. Many key Taliban leaders have little truck with bin Laden's global vision, seeing their own jihad as entirely local in its scale and objectives. Even in 2001, many were unconvinced that their own fate should be tied...
...leaders now thought to be operating underground in Pakistan's tribal areas. Preventing it from reclaiming an Afghan sanctuary may not require keeping 70,000 or more U.S. troops in the country for years to come - particularly since that deployment in itself is a key driver of the Taliban's insurgency...