Word: hannan
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...ambush on Delta Company was just the start of a mission that illustrates the challenges and frustrations facing U.S. forces today. On the night the troops come under attack, they are headed into the craggy ridges outside Kandahar to join an operation by coalition forces to corner Maulvi Hannan, a Taliban commander with known links to al-Qaeda. But the ambush and the injuries to the five soldiers force Turner to make some split-second decisions. While an Afghan interpreter tries to clear away local onlookers, the captain is busy on the radio. The medevac helicopter for the wounded soldiers...
That's a recurring theme. U.S. officials say Taliban units are led by a few wizened commanders, such as Hannan, who operate in the mountains they know well enough to walk blindfolded. The commanders, the U.S. says, maintain a nucleus of 10 veteran fighters and bombmaking experts plus dozens of fresh recruits, usually teenagers from local villages and radical madrasahs, or seminaries, in nearby Pakistan. The commanders' effectiveness determines how much money and how many guns and new jihadis are doled out to them by the Taliban's secretive, 10-man military council, whose members move back and forth across...
...recent days, a U.S.-led offensive has flushed Hannan and his fighters from their hideout in the mountains of north Kandahar. According to reports of the battle, which involved coalition special-ops troops, as many as 30 Taliban fighters have been killed out of an estimated force of 165. Turner and his company are assigned to wait for the Taliban when they spill out of the ravines. It's a tall order: there are a dozen draws leading out of the mountain labyrinth, and Turner has no way of knowing which escape route Hannan and his men might choose...
...canyon again, but the surviving Taliban have disappeared. Eventually a Chinook arrives, first picking up the coalition special-forces unit and then the soldiers from Delta Company. Back at Kandahar air base, the operations commander, Colonel Bertrand Jes, is satisfied with the mission. It isn't clear yet whether Hannan, the prime target, was killed in the bombardment. But as Jes says, "The Taliban had safe havens up in the mountains. They were cocky at first. Not anymore. We've destroyed their support structure." Yet many U.S. officers are worried that as soon as the U.S. forces return to their...
...Hope is what kalgoorlie is built on. "That man," says Rev. Marumba, pointing to a statue of Paddy Hannan in the town's main street which bears his name, "he discovered gold here. They say he pushed a wheelbarrow from Perth." But on a day trip out to the mining town of Laverton, Marumba is prospecting for souls, not gold. Stretching his legs at Laverton's roadhouse after the 3.5-hour drive north, he spots some Aboriginal teenagers. "When you're in Kalgoorlie," he tells them, "come to church." But Marumba's most important work is being done out here...