Word: boldak
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Reported by Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson/Washington, Anthony Davis and Terry McCarthy/Kabul, Tim McGirk/Spin Boldak and Alex Perry/Mazar-i-Sharif
...list of Taliban demands has been a guarantee that the lives of Supreme Leader Mullah Omar and the other commanders be spared. Their conduit has been a respected Soviet war veteran, Wakil Samat Noorzai, living in Spin Boldak, near the Pakistani border, who flatly informed the Taliban leadership that he didn't have the clout to enforce such a promise. Soon after, Omar urged his men to fight to the death. Negotiations for the peaceful handover of Kandahar's eastern borderlands to supporters of exiled King Mohammed Zaher Shah fell apart, and Taliban resumed control of the area. On Friday...
...Taliban's command and control structure, as the Pentagon claims, but the militia's lower echelons remain intact, along tribal lines. A commander usually recruits from his own village or town, even if the unit ends up fighting in the other corner of the country. Last week, in Spin Boldak, about 60 miles from Kandahar, I met a Taliban named Abadullah, a bright fellow in his mid-twenties whose sun-weathered face glowed red through his beard. He'd studied engineering before joining the Taliban, and he strutted around with a walkie-talkie...
...friends and commander were from the same village in Wardak province. He was worried of what would happen if Spin Boldak fell to the opposition forces: "Nobody around here is from our tribe. We cannot trust them. Somehow, our commander will have to lead us back home." He and his comrades were debating whether to take their weapons with them back to Wardak - and risk being detected as fleeing Taliban - or hide them in Spin Boldak and return for them later. Abadullah wanted to take his AK-47 and a few rocket-propelled grenades with him. "The journey home...
...refugee camps, it's the women more than the men who do the talking. The men are stoic in their grief, while the women keen. At a camp near Spin Boldak, on the road between the Pakistani border town and Kandahar, few Taliban were on patrol and the burqas were off. Most women wore shawls, and they revealed their faces, often decorated with tattoos on the chin and forehead, when they were speaking of how they escaped Kandahar during the bombing raids, or trekked for 15 days to reach a road when they were fleeing Uzbek troops advancing on their...