Word: talibans
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...however, to Majeed Khan, a tribal leader in the rugged Uruzgan region of southern Afghanistan. That's a shame. Khan would have told his hosts some home truths. He would prefer to see more of NATO, if he could, because in recent months his region has been invaded by Taliban insurgents. "We cannot stop them from coming into our areas [because] there are no soldiers to stop them," said Khan earlier this month. "The soldiers [from NATO] come into the area, but then they leave and the Taliban come back. We don't encourage the Taliban...
...refocusing the alliance remains a work in progress. NATO forces are involved in peacekeeping in the Balkans, and its political leaders are concerned with extending its membership (in the teeth of Russian opposition) to post-Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine. But at a time of increasing Taliban activity in southern Afghan provinces such as Uruzgan, and a growing fatigue on the part of those nations that have troops in the area (and which are suffering a higher proportion of casualties as a result), it is the war in Afghanistan that puts NATO's challenges most sharply into perspective...
...loss. Canada has seen 81 fatalities in Afghanistan, almost all of them in the past two years. Based on the size of Canada's contingent, that is a higher rate than the U.S. has sustained in Iraq. U.S. casualties in Afghanistan have risen, too. From 2002 to 2004, the Taliban killed one U.S. soldier a week; last year the rate was twice that...
...such capabilities need the right culture in which to thrive, and Afghanistan, today, is not it. Last year was the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, with 6,500 deaths, according to the Associated Press - mostly insurgents but also civilians. Coalition forces, which include non-NATO countries such as Australia and South Korea, suffered 232 casualties. Opium exports have skyrocketed. Retired Marine General James Jones, NATO's supreme commander in Europe until 2006, now at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a think tank, told Congress in January that there is "a loss of momentum...
Reconstruction as a goal is fine, but NATO officials note that it is only possible where there is a peace to keep. As to which, consider this: the Taliban recently ordered four cell-phone companies in the country to shut down at night to prevent the U.S. military from tracking cell-phone-carrying insurgents, although the military says it doesn't actually do so. Zinni puts the situation in context. "European countries saying that, 'We contribute to NATO because we're involved in reconstruction,'" he says dismissively, "is like saying, 'I'm in charge of rearranging deck chairs...