Word: arghandab
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Zhari is strategically crucial, the gateway to Kandahar city from the west, the staging area for most Taliban activity in the region. It is a largely rural district straddling the Afghan Ring Road and the Arghandab River. It includes the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's hometown of Sangsar. The Taliban aren't outside agitators here; they are neighbors - not exactly beloved neighbors, given their propensity for violence and peremptory taxation, but more trustworthy than a deeply corrupt Afghan government and much more familiar than the foreign troops. Senjaray is the largest population center, a town of somewhere from...
...hornet's nest hanging from the branch of a tree. The branch is the Afghan Ring Road, a two-lane paved highway. The U.S. fort is located just north of the highway; the Taliban control the land to the south, a lush farming area, irrigated by water from the Arghandab River. The dividing line is a canal that runs along the southern border of the town; the Pir Mohammed School sits on the banks of both that canal and one other, which runs along the eastern edge of the hornet's nest. "It's a crucial strategic position," Ellis says...
...polling station, Faiz Muhammad, 44, said he had nothing to lose. Since a landmine destroyed his left leg during the jihad against the Soviets, he has worked odd-jobs, most recently as a watch repairman in Arghandab, a volatile district north of the city. But the Taliban has suffocated life there, he says, with no respect for his past sacrifice. "We fought to live in peace, and now they are making things impossible, fighting the police. Damn them." (Read about the Taliban threat to disrupt the election...
...battle is being joined in a storied and auspicious place. Arghandab, just 10 miles northwest of Kandahar, is famous for its lush vineyards and pomegranate orchards. It is also a key symbol for the insurgency. Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, but were never fully able to conquer the Arghandab district, which remained an outpost of mujahedin defiance. Its shady groves, raisin-drying barns and deep irrigation canals provide excellent cover for fighters. Kandahar residents worry that the militants could use the Arghandab district as a base for an attack on the city itself, in an attempt to regain their...
...massing of Taliban fighters in Arghandab is a departure from the militant tactics that have evolved over the past two years. In 2006 NATO forces soundly defeated a Taliban force in nearby Panjwayi, and declared the movement all but dead. Since then there has been an increase in suicide bombings and the use of Improvised Explosive Devices. That approach was interpreted as one of weakness and desperation, but now it is starting to look like a recuperation strategy. The jailbreak and ensuing raid indicates the growing strength of the Taliban, whose fundamentalist Islamic regime was pushed from power when...