It's shortly before sunrise, and Maryanna Swanson, a Navy nurse from Long I...
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - It’s shortly before sunrise, and Maryanna Swanson, a Navy nurse from Long Island, thinks she may run out of T-shirts for all of the runners showing up for a Sept. 11 memorial race that she’s helping organize at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.
“My uncle was a fireman in New York City on 9/11 ... He was at Ground Zero,” said Swanson, a Navy Lieutenant junior grade, who was only 8 when the attacks took place. The U.S.-led coalition launched by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks ousted the Taliban from power for harboring al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and drove al Qaeda’s leaders, including Osama bin Laden, to Pakistan.
Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said it was folly to think Washington could ever rely on assurances from the Taliban about al Qaeda. Whenever al Qaeda operatives appear, however, they become a priority for U.S. counter-terrorism forces. Both groups could benefit from an eventual peace agreement with the Taliban. The first U.S. official estimated that as many as 4% of Taliban insurgents could try to join Islamic State.
“The cost has been high. There’s nobody here who hasn’t lost a friend or somebody that you know as a result of operations,” he said at Forward Operating Base Shorab in Helmand Province.
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