Sunday, April 18, 2004

I'll give you some excerpts from the story, and you guess the headline.

Ready? Here are the excerpts:

...In the latest attack, suspected Taliban ambushed a security checkpoint in Nimroz province late on Friday, opening fire with machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades and killing eight Afghan soldiers, a provincial official said on Saturday.

That capped a week of violence in which at least 22 people were killed in the region....

"I think the Taliban are more organised," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a journalist in western Pakistani who follows Taliban issues closely. "The Taliban now have a clear command and leadership structure. They know who is in charge."...

Yusufzai said American soldiers fighting in Iraq had also inflamed religious passions of Muslims, making it easier for the Taliban to recruit from Pakistan where many are believed to have found sanctuary among fellow ethnic Pashtuns after 2001.

In one of the bloodiest single attacks last week, officials in Barmal district of the eastern Paktika province said suspected Taliban fighters executed seven Afghans, including five government officials, and a woman and child.

The Taliban also claimed responsibility for executing the deputy chief of Mizan district and several of his colleagues in an ambush on Wednesday in southern province of Zabul. Local provincial officials also blamed the attack on the Taliban.

That same day a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military base in Kandahar city, wounding a senior Afghan policeman and two of his bodyguards in an attack blamed on the Taliban....

The threat of violence and huge logistical issues forced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to postpone elections this year from June to September.


Give up?

Here's the headline:

U.S. says Taliban's Afghan offensive weakening

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