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Agents at a makeshift FBI operations base set up in a smuggler's town in the northern tribal area of Waziristan that's full of former Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives, have to spend as much time guarding against counterattack as scouting. Surveillance of the Pashtun, who live there on hilltops in adobe forts surrounded by 15-foot-high walls, is difficult. The only way that U.S. surveillance can pick up anything is if suddenly one of these medieval-like castles receives a burst of visitors, rumbling up the dusty trails in four-by-fours, but that isn't happening...
...might as well be called al-Qaeda Town. In an audacious show of force by an organization that is supposed to be on the run, al-Qaeda, according to U.S. and Afghan officials, has claimed the hamlet as its own and is using the redoubt as a base for attacks on U.S. forces. Strangest of all, this is happening in Afghanistan proper, where the U.S. military has, in theory, freedom of action to move against al-Qaeda...
...there's nothing we can do." U.S. forces are also frustrated at their inability to strike at the al-Qaeda operatives they know are inside. Says Colonel Roger King, spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan: "It's not like they're wearing uniforms and staying at a base that we can watch." --By Michael Ware/Angurada, with reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington
...American soldiers charged with negligent homicide in the June 13 road deaths of two 14-year-old South Korean schoolgirls crushed by a 45-ton armored vehicle under their command; by a U.S. military court at Camp Casey north of Seoul. South Koreans have demonstrated angrily outside the base, demanding that the soldiers be tried by the South Korean judicial system, and calling for the withdrawal of the 37,000 U.S. troops sta-tioned in the country. The Justice Ministry has described the acquittal as "regrettable," while two prominent political parties have called for a revision of the U.S.-South...
Time passes slowly in India, but not for Sunil Mittal. Four years ago, the 45-year-old entrepreneur was a bit player in the Indian telecommunications market, the owner of cellular franchises in Delhi and the small neighboring state of Himachal Pradesh. Total customer base: 116,000. Today, his Bharti Tele-Ventures is the largest mobile phone company on the subcontinent. Customer base: 2.5 million. He recently wrapped up a $1 billion expansion that quadrupled the size of his network in less than a year. Mittal even completed an acquisition of a competitor?from initial offer to signed contract...