June 2010
27 posts
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Snipers and sharp shooters behind deadliest month... →
The Times Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Taleban snipers and small bands of sharp shooters are partly to blame for more than 100 Nato deaths this month, making it the deadliest by far of the nine-year war.
Although Nato said that it was still too early to confirm a definite change in Taleban tactics, US and British officials admitted that more soldiers were dying in “pinpointed” attacks and “small...
Taleban 'snipers' start to find range →
TALEBAN snipers and small bands of sharpshooters are partly to blame for more than 100 Nato deaths in June, making it by far the deadliest month of the nine-year war.
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Jerome Starkey: Afghanistan: Leaving dam danger... →
The Scotsman Jerome Starkey, in Kabul
ANOTHER sliver of Helmand was handed over to United States marines yesterday, as the British garrison guarding a dam prepared to reinforce their battle-weary comrades in the death-trap town of Sangin.
About 150 soldiers at Forward Operating Base Zeebrugge, near the banks of the Kajaki Dam, were in the final stages of withdrawing last night, a spokesman said....
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I thought General McChrystal was ‘unfireable’,... →
The Times Jerome Starkey, in Kabul
The man who, in effect, ended General Stanley McChrystal’s glittering military career said yesterday that he thought the top commander in Afghanistan was “unfireable”.
In a candid interview with The Times, the journalist Michael Hastings said he never imagined he would get as much access to the general and his inner circle as he did. He insisted he was simply...
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Get on with the job, says stoic Briton who is... →
The Times Jerome Starkey, in Kabul
Lieutenant-General Sir Nick Parker was on holiday when Harry, 26, was blown up in Afghanistan. The British Army’s third-most senior officer raced to Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham, where his son had been evacuated from Helmand, last July.
By the time he arrived, Harry had lost his left leg. Less than two months later, when the General left for a 12-month...
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‘Betrayed’ troops mourn loss of charismatic leader →
The Times Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Soldiers at the Nato headquarters in Afghanistan last night said the mood was funereal. With General McChrystal having been relieved of command, many were left wondering whether his vision of victory was dead as well.
“Deeply disappointed” was how one senior officer described the reaction in Kabul. Others fought back tears. Many of them have dedicated their...
Afghanistan: McChrystal summoned back to face the... →
GENERAL Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is fighting for his job after a damning magazine profile showed him mocking senior figures in the US administration and…
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General McChrystal recalled to Washington after... →
The Times Jerome Starkey in Kabul
General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, was recalled to Washington today after a damning magazine profile showed him mocking senior figures in the US administration and criticising President Obama.
The general is due to leave Kabul within hours, The Times has learnt, after a morning of tense discussions with the Robert...
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Baby back ribs and steak survive General... →
The Times Jerome Starkey, Kandahar
The war is going slower than planned, victory remains elusive and the Taleban are inflicting record casualties on coalition forces, but there is, it seems, a glimmer of good news for soldiers in southern Afghanistan: T.G.I. Friday’s is here to stay. The American-themed diner at Kandahar airfield has survived a cull of fast-food joints despite strict orders...
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'We're trying to fix this place - so we never have... →
The Times Jerome Starkey in Kandahar
No one realised Joe was dead. The soldiers walked on.
Lieutenant Joseph Theinert, 24, a star athlete and the king of his high school prom, had jumped over a chest-high mud wall between two fields and stepped on a homemade bomb. His body was hurled into a narrow ditch and was hidden where it lay by the grapevines that grow in steep, undulating rows along...
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Taleban hang 7-year-old boy to punish family →
Read The Times’s exclusive investigation into Britain’s war in Afghanistan at our new website: US warned Britain to send more troops to Helmand |
US troops killed as helicopter shot down aiding... →
FOUR American servicemen were killed when their helicopter was shot down in southern Afghanistan yesterday, during a daring operation to evacuate wounded British soldiers from a firefight in Sangin.
“From time to time, God causes men to be born - and thou art one of them -who...”
– Kim, Rudyard Kipling
Afghan security chiefs quit over attack at peace... →
TWO of Afghanistan’s most senior security chiefs have resigned just days after the Taleban managed to infiltrate their security cordon and fire rockets at a tent where President Hamid Karzai was…
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Karzai welcomes jirga’s call for prison release as... →
President Karzai welcomed official calls to release hundreds of prisoners from US and Afghan jails yesterday as a gesture of goodwill to kickstart peace talks with the Taleban.
Hamid Karzai backs jirga calls for prisoner... →
PRESIDENT Hamid Karzai welcomed official calls to release hundreds of prisoners held in US and Afghan jails yesterday as a gesture of goodwill to kick-start peace talks with the Taleban.
Family fears for Briton held in violent Afghan... →
The family of a former British army officer jailed in Afghanistan on corruption charges have spoken of their fears for his safety after visiting him in one of the country’s most violent jails.
Taleban suicide squad attacks peace talks in Kabul →
A Taleban suicide squad disguised in Afghan army uniforms clashed with security forces this morning as President Karzai welcomed hundreds of dignitaries to a massive peace conference in Kabul.
Prospects bleak for President Karzai’s talks... →
President Karzai has been accused of handpicking delegates and stage-managing today’s Kabul peace conference, which is supposed to lay down the ground rules for negotiations with the Taleban.