Word: bagram
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...Complicated as it will certainly be, the future has already begun. British marines took control of Bagram airport north of Kabul Thursday, to pave the way for humanitarian flights - and also military deployments to expand efforts to snare Osama bin Laden and the rest of al Qaeda's leadership cadre. There was no word Friday on their whereabouts, but plenty of speculation - including Iranian reports that he may have already slipped into Pakistan. U.S. special forces are roaming the south, engaging in firefights with retreating Taliban fighters and gathering intelligence on the possible whereabouts of their leaders. And local Pashtun...
...action may be shifting south. Late last week both sides mobilized in preparation for a trench battle for control of the air base at Bagram--the front north of Kabul. "We will advance to the gates of Kabul within two weeks," predicts a senior rebel officer. Sources told Time that the Alliance, which is outnumbered 2 to 1 by Taliban forces around Kabul, has asked for close air support from American attack helicopters. So far, the Pentagon has demurred, but AH-64 Apache choppers are already suspected to be in the region, with...
...Allah Mahmad is an example of the human cement that holds together the opposition Northern Alliance. In other times he would have been a farmer, working in the lush wheat fields and fruit orchards of the Shomali Plain around Bagram. Instead, at 27, he has seen six years of combat. With his high-set cheekbones, goatee, checked shawl and round woolen cap he bears a passing resemblance to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the assassinated commander who assembled these forces. In a conventional army Allah Mahmad would be a captain. Here he's called commander, a hard-earned rank denoting his seniority...
...This former army base next to the Bagram airfield 50 km north of Kabul is a tiny slice of Stalingrad, circa 1942. Beyond the gates there's scarcely a building intact?just broken walls, smashed stonework, and ground littered with spent shell casings and twisted metal. Allah Mahmad exaggerates a bit when he says his men are holding the 40th Division base. For the past two years his platoon has been hanging on to about 100 sq m of ground inside the gate. Two small buildings still have roofs and their dark, fetid rooms serve as living quarters. There...
...strikes against targets in Kabul, there has been a nightly parade of vehicles from the city. On what they call the New Road, in front of the base, convoys of trucks, pickups and armored vehicles cross a low pass, their headlights visible as they head toward villages behind the Bagram front...