Word: kush
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...trying to explain the worsening security situation on the roads, a British contractor recounts a joke that Afghans love to tell about themselves. It goes something like this: Alexander the Great was marching across the Hindu Kush mountains on his way to India over 2,000 years ago. The Greek had heard that Afghan tribes had fierce fighters, so he dispatched part of his force through the northwest, which was supposed to be the easier route, and led the remainder of his army straight through the middle of the Hindu Kush. The commander who had gone through the northwest, expecting...
...security of his troops, allegedly killed some 90 people, including dozens of civilians. It also reminded German voters that the distinction between supporting a combat mission - which is what they like to think their soldiers are doing - and tackling bad guys directly can blur pretty quickly in the Hindu Kush...
...making of his latest film, Opium War, which is set in a poppy field, Barmak had found the perfect site - a lonely hilltop in central Afghanistan, framed by the snow-covered peaks of nearby mountains. With the stunning vision of pink poppies swaying against the slopes of the Hindu Kush in mind, he finally obtained permission from the government to plant the illegal crop. Then he and his crew got to work building the set. At the first spring rain they planted the poppy seeds and started filming. Poppy-eradication teams tried to eliminate his set. Twice. Then the rains...
...Afghan war has grown noticeably soft. The reason is that to most Americans, the war in Afghanistan has always been principally a war against al-Qaeda--to retaliate for 9/11 and eliminate its safe haven--not a war to build a centralized, democratic state in the Hindu Kush, which is a far harder thing. Obama is right to increase America's military, economic and diplomatic muscle in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan, but that power surge will work only if he also sets more realistic expectations. Ultimately, the U.S. will have to cut a deal--or lots...
...this has combined to make the governability of Pakistan and the character of its latest leader matters of intense concern far from the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Al-Qaeda has "hundreds of training camps" scattered throughout the region, says a Western official in Pakistan. CIA director Michael Hayden has called FATA an al-Qaeda "safe haven" that presents a "clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to the West in general, and to the United States in particular." So the question becomes: How dangerous is Pakistan now--and does Zardari have what it takes to make...