Word: haq
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Still, it seems clear that the war planners in Washington cannot afford to ignore the Alliance; the assassination of anti-Taliban Pashtun leader Abdul Haq last week makes the Alliance warlords the only rebel commanders of any stature. Even if Dostum and Atta can't seize Mazar-i-Sharif, the U.S. will need their experience when it sends its own ground troops into Afghanistan. Last Friday, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem told reporters that the U.S. "will utilize all of our forces and all of the types of warfare that we have to bring to bear." He characterized...
...plans were sent further into disarray on Friday when Abdul Haq, a heroic mujahedin commander who lost his right foot fighting Soviet occupation in the 1980s, was captured by the Taliban and hanged in Azra, south of Kabul. Haq had entered Afghanistan to drum up support for a multiethnic government among his own people, the Pashtun of the south, but was captured as he tried to escape on horseback under cover of U.S. air strikes. Haq had feared that the bombing campaign would jeopardize his efforts to win support from Pashtuns - the Northern Alliance is mainly supported by ethnic Uzbeks...
...anyone who has been clinging to the notion that America can win this war the easy way, the fate of Abdul Haq should serve as a powerful antidote. Few knew how to fight in the rugged Afghan steppes and summits better than Haq, a legendary mujahedin guerrilla who lost his right foot to a land mine while helping rout the Soviets. He left Afghanistan during the post-Soviet power struggle and renounced politics after his wife and son were murdered in his Peshawar, Pakistan, home. But he recently returned to the Afghan frontier, hoping to enlist defectors and warlords...
...Last week Haq and 19 lightly armed aides slipped into Taliban territory to persuade fighters to rise up against the regime. But informers trailed him. For two days the Taliban staked out the home where Haq was staying. Early Friday morning Taliban troops surrounded him on three sides. Cut off in the Khyber Pass, Haq placed a call on his satellite phone to his nephew in Pakistan; word of Haq's distress soon reached the CIA. As Haq tried to escape on horseback, the U.S. sent an unmanned Predator surveillance plane to shoot a Hellfire missile at his pursuers...
...American military, Haq's demise was a humbling end to a humbling week. Since the beginning of the campaign, the President's men have reminded Americans that this "new" kind of conflict could end up being as protracted as the cold war. And yet for a while the war seemed to be following a faster script--precision bombs clearing the way for a quick ground operation. After less than two weeks, the Pentagon was claiming that its bombs had "eviscerated" the Taliban's military capability. But last week that optimism faded. Dreams of a hit-and-run war gave...