Word: talibanizing
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...highway that runs between Kabul and the southeastern city of Kandahar is the most brutal evidence of the Taliban's IED offensive. The road is a showcase U.S.-funded project, meant to connect two of the country's most vital commercial centers. But today it is an automotive graveyard, littered with burned-out carcasses of vehicles and disrupted by crumbled bridges. One infamous stretch is lined with the wreckage of 40 transport trucks, the remains of a 90-minute enemy ambush dubbed the "jingle-truck massacre." (Afghans hang chains and coins from their truck bumpers, which create a jingling sound...
...troops died from a record 3,276 IEDs, a 45% jump from the year before, according to the Joint IED Defeat Organization, a Pentagon agency. This trend is expected to worsen in the months ahead, as thousands of incoming U.S. reinforcements push into areas where the Taliban has operated unchallenged. (See pictures of Afghanistan's deadly Korengal valley...
Faced with high technology and drones, the Taliban has resorted to its own innovations. When the militants ruled in Afghanistan, it was common to find spools of discarded cassette tape hanging from tree branches as a warning against banned pop music. They've since devised more lethal uses for the recording medium. After a recent roadside bombing of an American convoy in Ghazni province that killed three Afghan police officers, streams of tape were found ahead of the blast crater. The reflective quality of the tape, soldiers said, had allowed militant spotters to be forewarned of the arrival of enemy...
...bomb teams are caught on roads at odd hours of the night, unmanned aerial drones can be summoned to strike with Hellfire missiles within half an hour. Demartino says that during one week last summer, six IED teams were killed this way, one of which was comprised of Pakistani Taliban. It was a "train the trainer" team that was moving around the region to teach locals how to emplace bombs, he says. Once the team was eliminated, the attack rate dropped more than...
...accusing him of incompetence, goading him to defend himself and possibly give up information in the process. If interrogators choose to go on the attack, however, they may not "cross the line into humiliating and degrading treatment of the detainee." (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...