Word: talibanize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...threat. Just a day before Asif Ali Zardari, during his inauguration ceremony, swore to protect his country's sovereignty, a U.S. Predator drone launched five missiles at a suspected militant compound near the border with Afghanistan. The compound belonged to Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most notorious Afghan Taliban commanders based in Pakistan and a Soviet-era ally of the CIA. The Predator strike missed Haqqani, but it did kill four midlevel al-Qaeda operatives, government and militant sources told the Associated Press. It also killed as many as eight children, one of Haqqani's wives and a sister...
...worldwide. The billions of dollars the U.S. has pumped into training and equipping the Pakistani military appears to have produced neither a capability nor a will to decisively tackle the problem. Many in Washington even suspect that members of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence spy agency are actively supporting Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders and may be tipping them off about planned attacks. So while U.S. strikes on Pakistani soil may be controversial, the theory goes, they are the only option for tackling a threat the Pakistani security forces are unable to neutralize...
...reinforcements sent to Afghanistan would mean pulling troops out of Iraq. Petraeus evidently "doesn't think it's worth taking any more risks in Iraq to be able to shift more force to Afghanistan," said John Nagl, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former Petraeus adviser. A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan has led both presidential candidates to call for sending more U.S. troops there...
...minimize mistakes, the Air Force routinely conducts "pattern of life" studies of Taliban leaders and other key targets, using camera-carrying drones to plot their travels for days or weeks. That enables U.S. planners to figure out when the targets can be attacked without jeopardizing innocent lives. But not all air strikes can be so meticulously planned; U.S. or allied units can call in sudden strikes when they find themselves in a firefight or stumble on a meeting of Taliban leaders. When civilians are detected, strikes are called off--and some insurgents capitalize on this. "Sometimes it's a conscious...
Such attacks yield propaganda gold for the Taliban, which feeds on anti-American rage. "The more people turn against Americans, the more benefits the Taliban get," says Saifuddin Ahmadi, a 52-year-old Kabul cabdriver. In the Afghan capital, anger over civilian casualties is leavened by the knowledge that U.S. and NATO troops may be keeping Afghanistan from plunging into civil war. In the countryside, opinions are stronger. Haji Obaidulla, 65, who lives in Kapisa province, northeast of the capital, says he "would prefer civil war to being killed by American air strikes...