Word: gardez
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...bound convoy and the Qila-Niazi wedding party, for example, were targeted by Pacha Khan, a former provincial governor, derided by one official as a "Pentagon-created warlord," who was using American munitions to take care of his own business, according to Afghan government sources and tribal elders in Gardez. Says tribal chieftain Saifullah Khan: "Pacha Khan would phone up the Americans, point out a village and say they are all al-Qaeda." Pacha Khan denies the charges. After the attack on the wedding party, Saifullah visited the local base of the special forces. "We told the soldiers that these...
...eastern Afghanistan, the special forces have had a crash course in the complexities of local tribal feuds. U.S. soldiers are far more circumspect about calling in air strikes. "When we get information about Taliban or al-Qaeda, we check it three, maybe four times before we act," says Gardez governor Taj Mohammed Wardak. Americans are also training local militias to hunt al-Qaeda. In Gardez alone, the special forces have recruited more than 200 men, giving them better guns, warm clothes, food and $200 a month. (In all, Western diplomats in Kabul tell TIME, the Americans have more than...
...Even getting this far has not been easy. The U.S. and allied forces had run a hellish gauntlet over a boggy road coursing over gully beds and stony plains to this front near Mendzhavar. A mere 20 minutes from the center of Gardez, the surrounding villages belong to the enemy. "Everyone here is al Qaeda," says a nervous Afghan soldier pointing out houses from where a U.S.-Afghan column was ambushed last week. "We aren't safe passing through because we can't say which homes they're in and which ones they aren...
...Elsewhere, hundreds of Northern Alliance reinforcements sent from Kabul arrived in Gardez on Saturday afternoon. That raised murmur of discontent in the local Pashtun garrisons, because the reinforcements are Tajik fighters from the Pansjir Valley - longtime rivals of the Pashtun in Afghanistan?s complex tribal wars. One of the uniformed government infantrymen told Time they've been brought in to add punch to the Afghans? western assault...
...enemy?" Air support often proves decisive. "These massive bombs are dropped and when we advance again the tunnel mouths are sealed and they can't shell us anymore," says one soldier. Success is coming one rock at a time. Says one weary Afghan soldier riding a truck back to Gardez, "They are fighting to the death, it's what they want...