Word: kabul
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...days before launching the most ambitious military campaign of the Obama Administration, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, convened a meeting in Kabul of 450 tribal elders and scholars from Helmand province. The general's objective: to build support for Operation Moshtarak, a massive offensive on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah. McChrystal ran through the military phase of the plan, which would involve 6,000 U.S. Marines and British soldiers and 4,500 Afghan troops and police. Then he described how these troops would protect the town while a "government in a box" - a corps...
Even if McChrystal's officials are a huge success, two other crucial planks in Obama's plan to start pulling U.S. forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011 already look worm-eaten. One is the creation of a legitimate, reliable government in Kabul: since Karzai's contentious election late last year, Afghanistan's President has shown little inclination to ditch his corrupt cronies. Nor is there yet an Afghan security force capable of taking over from the Americans. Although U.S. commanders carefully talk up the contributions of the 4,500 Afghan National Army soldiers (two had been killed) and police...
...local Pakistani journalists with reliable Taliban contacts, suggests that Baradar was dispensable for the Pakistani intelligence since he broke last December with Omar. According to Peshawar journalist Rahimullah Yousufzai, Taliban sources said the two old comrades split over Baradar's supposed openness to talks with the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai, whom Omar and the Pakistanis despise. Also, Baradar was reportedly upset that Omar had shrugged off his warnings not to put too much trust in the Pakistanis. After Baradar's capture, says Yousufzai, "all the Taliban will be thinking, Who's next...
...that the Pakistani military remain close to the clan in order to preserve Islamabad's influence in Afghanistan. That is not a result the U.S. wants. The Americans blame the young Haqqani warlord Sirajuddin for the most lethal attacks, many of them by suicide bombers, on NATO forces around Kabul. U.S. intelligence suspects that the Haqqanis are sheltering dozens of al-Qaeda fighters...
...Weekend in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 1978 We turn out from the American School's Little League game, straight into a line of tanks. "It's a parade!" says my mother gaily, hoping we children won't notice that the soldiers have their guns cocked. That night, as Soviet-made MiGs strafe the city, our gardener and cleaner Mir Ali patrols the garden with an ax and a plastic baseball bat. The next day, the radio proclaims the birth of the People's Republic of Afghanistan. Tanks are wreathed in flowers, "doubtless following the prescription of some revolutionary handbook," my father...