Word: terrain
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...that's if the Americans get lucky. Whereas U.S. special forces have recently revised their training for the sort of urban jungles they had to cope with in Mogadishu, there has been little or no training for Afghanistan's terrain. "We're going to figure out this cave business as we go along," says a former special-forces commando. In much the same way, they will figure out what to do if they catch up with bin Laden or another al-Qaeda leader. In that event, the special forces would have to choose between a "snatch-and-grab" mission--tossing...
...Pashtun ethnic group, which, with 40% of the population, is Afghanistan's biggest. Shirzai is wary of the forces of the Northern Alliance, who are mostly Tajiks (25% of all Afghans) and Uzbeks (6%) and who are poised, should the Taliban fall, to greatly expand the limited terrain now under their control. "If the West allows the Northern Alliance to gain an upper hand, it will be a terrible mistake," says Shirzai...
...fight and everyone else braces for something terrible. This war turned last Thursday night. Throughout the day, combat helicopters had carried U.S. special-operations troops ashore from the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, anchored in the Arabian Sea off the southern coast of Pakistan. The forces choppered over miles of desert terrain to an airstrip at Dalbandin, close to Pakistan's secret underground nuclear-test site and just south of the Afghan border. There they prepared to be delivered into Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan to begin a furtive ground war in which no one knew exactly what came next...
...family of eight from Jalalabad to his native Kama district a few days after the bombing began on October 7. But, he said, his mother, sisters and brothers felt unsafe even in rural Kama. So the family eventually decided to head for Pakistan. A tough journey through mountainous terrain had enabled them to illegally enter Pakistan, and set up a new home in Peshawar...
Caught between America and bin Laden: for Saudi rulers there could hardly be more uncomfortable terrain. Hence, the Saudis have been lobbying Washington against broad attacks on terrorist bases in the Middle East and downplaying the possible use of the state-of-the-art Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh for strikes. In the belief that President Bush's seeming ambivalence toward the Palestinian cause helped inflame tensions before Sept. 11, the Saudis are appealing for much stronger U.S. pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state. "Wake up, and look at what you are doing in the Middle East...