Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...militiamen killed by Afghan soldiers during a battle last month. These Taliban, Mamabaidullah says, had been hiding in Pakistan and returned to attack a government office in a nearby village. Officially, 40 Taliban died in the ensuing firefight, though a source present at the encounter and an official in Kabul both put the death toll, which included seven Afghan soldiers, nearer to 90. It was one of the Taliban's biggest defeats since they were toppled in December 2001. Mamabaidullah had these bodies buried here to send a message "that if anyone comes into Afghanistan to kill or make problems...
...gradually, like a photograph developing." The big picture, according to Kandahar's police chief Brigadier General Mohammed Akram, is that "the Taliban are stronger now than at any time since the fall of their government." These neo-Taliban number in the "thousands," according to an Afghan security official in Kabul. They operate primarily out of Pakistan, guided by many of the same men?including supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar?who ran Afghanistan's ultra-orthodox theocracy from 1995 through 2001, when the group harbored Osama bin Laden and lent eager support to al-Qaeda. While maintaining close ties...
...suspected al-Qaeda members, but Karzai, among others, has charged that the U.S.'s avowed ally has shown little inclination to apprehend top-level Taliban, even when provided addresses where they could be found. "If we had sincere and honest cooperation from Pakistan," charges the security official in Kabul, "there'd be no Taliban threat in Afghanistan." After the battle near Spin Boldak, Mamabaidullah made the point less delicately by piling more than 20 bodies onto a dump truck, driving to the border and depositing them on Pakistani soil...
...Pakistan into giving him billions of dollars of support and arms during the Soviet occupation. In May 2002, however, the U.S. tried to kill him with a Hellfire missile strike, and coalition soldiers have launched several operations in his traditional strongholds of Nangarhar and Kunar provinces. A diplomat in Kabul believes Taliban leaders don't trust Hekmatyar, whose treachery is legendary even by the spectacularly duplicitous standards of Afghan warfare. But a former Taliban financier in Chaman says Hizb-i-Islami has forged ties with "mid-ranking commanders and ordinary Taliban," providing cash and motorcycles for cross-border attacks...
Such sentiments are noble enough. But the women's acts were unpopular with a spectrum of Kabul aid groups running from secular workers to fellow Evangelicals. "They broke every rule in the book," says Seiple, the former State Department religious-freedom ambassador. "They were women in a patriarchal society, didn't know the language [well], didn't know the culture and were counseled against doing this by other Christians." Says "Kay," a 13-year veteran of evangelical missions in another Muslim capital who reports that the incident eventually hampered her own work: "I'm sorry that they suffered, but they...