Word: bloodbath
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Alliance commanders had been discussing surrender terms all week with senior Taliban commanders from Kunduz. The Alliance had given the Taliban forces until Thursday morning to surrender or face a frontal assault, but Dostum's cease-fire announcement appeared to have averted a bloodbath. Hours later, however, the guns were blazing and Alliance tanks were driving towards the city. Initially, the Taliban commanders had sought safe passage for the foreign fighters to Pakistan, but the U.S. was having none of a deal that might allow Al Qaeda fighters to escape...
...moment shaping the post-Taliban order. The various factions of the Northern Alliance are due to meet Monday in Germany with the Pashtun mujahedeen commanders and others who have taken over much of the south, as part of a U.N. effort to broker agreement on a new government. A bloodbath at Kunduz, where some 30,000 mostly Pashtun civilians are reportedly trapped, may sour the atmosphere for Monday's talks. But if large numbers of Afghan Taliban surrender and ultimately find themselves joining with Alliance fighters in facing down the recalcitrant foreigners, they may finally have found (at least symbolically...
...four thousand Taliban troops. So when the Taliban recaptured the city the following year, they took a bloody revenge, killing some 6,000 civilians. Everyone had been expecting that once the Taliban were under siege and in trouble, the city would rise up against them, precipitating a bloodbath. With the appetite for revenge in Mazar-i-Sharif, nobody was expecting the Taliban fighters to survive a battle for the city. That may be one reason why they might have decided to leave...
...Western alliance is currently patting itself on the back for acting early, so as to prevent Macedonia becoming another Balkan bloodbath. It has sent in an advance team of 400 soldiers, soon to be accompanied by a further 3,100, on a 30-day mission to collect whatever weapons the ethnic-Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army deign to hand over. Of course many of those guerrillas, particularly the more militant factions based around Tetovo, are still actively using those weapons and it's hard to imagine they'll be ready to hand them over in the next couple...
...while NATO may believe that it has acted precipitously to prevent another bloodbath, it has also sent an unfortunate message to separatist movements all over the Balkans: NATO won't tolerate armed separatist movements, but nor will it do anything to stop them. In other words, organize an army of weekend warriors, start shooting at the authorities, don't blink when NATO calls you names, and sooner or later they'll be negotiating with you. Or, to put more succinctly: kill 100, and they make a deal with...