Word: ghazni
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...Meanwhile, aid workers say over a million Afghans are now at risk of starvation caused by years of war, drought and their government's ineptitude. To many, losing a part of their heritage in Bamiyan?and at the other Buddhist sites in Jalalabad, Ghazni and Kandahar?is only one of many tragedies inflicted on them by 20 years of ceaseless turmoil...
Moscow and Kabul's answer to the emerging rebel strategy of slow strangulation is to dig in at a few strongholds -- Kabul, Jalalabad, Herat, Faizabad, Ghazni, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif -- and await a change in the military or political equation that could give them an advantage. Most of the remaining 50,000 Soviet troops are garrisoned in Kabul and Shindand, the huge air base in western Afghanistan, as well as in Herat and a few other cities along the main roads to the Soviet border. As many as 100,000 Afghan troops - are deployed in the same areas...
...reprisals against the civilian population. When Soviet convoys are attacked by Afghan rebels, Soviet-led squads now retaliate by burning villages, fields and orchards and sometimes by executing the male inhabitants of nearby villages. Last July Soviet forces shot as many as 30 elders in the provincial capital of Ghazni. In October, after a series of raids on convoys outside Kandahar, the Soviets left some 100 civilians dead in nearby settlements. At times over the past year, they have mounted aerial and artillery attacks on Istalif, Herat and other cities, but without destroying the rebels' resiliency. Soon after...
...agony brought to an end through Soviet troop withdrawal as part of a negotiated settlement." Western military analysts in Pakistan said that the Soviets may be trying to soften up their withdrawal routes for the time when a pullout is arranged. But Moscow was hardly taking any chances. In Ghazni, south of Kabul, some 10,000 Soviet troops, along with ground and air support, were reportedly massed in preparation for a maneuver to seal off the border with Pakistan...
Armed with tanks, armored personnel carriers and helicopter gunships, Soviet forces launched major attacks last month in four areas: Ghazni, southwest of Kabul; Parwan to the north; Ghorband, 30 miles south of the capital; and the Kunar Valley to the northeast. Nonetheless, the Soviets have not yet pacified the forbidding, mountainous country. Even with an estimated 85,000 troops in Afghanistan, plus 30,000 in reserve near by, they are unable to control the countryside or protect their lines of communication from guerrilla ambushes. Says Naji Bullah, an official of one of the Afghan rebel groups based in Peshawar...